At instances, an occasion or character will be profoundly impactful to its originating fiction, however not the proper selection for a devoted highlight challenge of its personal. It’s laborious to consider a stronger working example than The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, a sport that essentially misunderstands the enchantment of its supply franchise, specializing in a personality who, by virtually any measure, is the mistaken selection for a lead. That stated, it’s not unattainable to think about the sport that may someway have made the bizarre premise click on. This isn’t that challenge; like its depressing and piteous lead, this sport is greatest averted in any respect prices.
Gollum tracks the story of the titular fellow within the time interval between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, largely throughout his slavery and misuse in Mordor and the associated escape to pursue his valuable ring. With its drab colours, deal with merciless and unappealing characters and chore-focused gameplay, it feels at odds with many of the core tenets and themes of Tolkien’s fiction. Even stripped of its connection to that vaunted legendarium, the storytelling is poorly paced, meandering, and sometimes incoherent. A promising exploration of the dichotomy between the Gollum and Smeagol character initially appears compelling however isn’t leveraged in a significant method.
Gameplay is break up mainly between old school linear traversal sequences and clumsy, uninteresting stretches of stealth. In navigation of the phases, the leaping is imprecise, phases are poorly structured to speak the place you’ll be able to go, and the digital camera is unwieldy, or typically even damaged, flipping totally the wrong way up whereas climbing or refusing to rotate to view the subsequent crucial soar. I died repeatedly and regularly to jumps that ought to have been simple or mistakenly guessed the place the subsequent platform may very well be reached. The one small blessing is frequent checkpoints to melt the blow of the infinite repeats.
Whereas horrible, I longed for these platforming sequences each time the sport switched to considered one of its plentiful stealth sequences. Not like any fashionable stealth sport, Gollum has no attention-grabbing tips or instruments to counterpoint these passages. As an alternative, the slippery protagonist can solely glide between the shadows previous immeasurably silly guards, alongside paths upon which it’s laborious to know whether or not you’ll be seen. No sense of mastery or management over the surroundings emerges. Once more, respawns are fixed. At any time when the sport requested me if I wished to reload to the final checkpoint, it was a drive of will to proceed.
Technical issues and poor implementation abound. Sound mixing typically makes voices laborious to listen to. Character faces (except for Gollum) are poorly animated or in no way. Onscreen figures transfer in good synchrony with each other, like one thing seen in early PS2 video games. Textures are muddy and lack element. Greater than as soon as, the sport demanded an goal that didn’t operate or seem and didn’t respawn upon a checkpoint restart; solely redoing the whole stage would repair the issue.
I consistently struggled towards the controls, digital camera, and targets as they have been introduced. And nothing in regards to the story or characters of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum provides motive to push previous the frustration. As a longtime fan of Tolkien’s fiction, it’s attainable that I preferred the sport even much less for the best way it appeared to misuse the supply materials. It’s laborious to have a extra damning indictment than to say that this Gollum sport isn’t for followers of The Lord of the Rings, however right here we’re.