The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Review Thread

SmokedMeat said:
Pretty soon Apology letters will be bundled with the games.

Preorder the $100 Deluxe Edition to receive Apology letter 48hrs early!!
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Happy You Good GIF
 
"Please keep pre-ordering our games for 70 bucks. That way we'll keep learning from our mistakes so that some day we'll deliver you an actual good game. Thank you for investing in our education."
 
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Emedan said:
Bing could've made a better game.. Who thought it was a good Idea to make a game about Gollum? I remember the reveal of this and I asked myself that very question in a thread here.
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I mean... it could've worked.
It could've been a game similar in style to Styx, which was a great stealth-with-little-combat game.

Even the strengths of Daedalic, the generally good writing and quest structure seen in their point & click games (and others like Blackguard), are practically non-existent here.

How this ended up being a complete clusterfuck in every regard and how anyone could've waved this through during any of the internal milestones (did the publisher even do milestones?!) and why anyone thought they needed to sell this at AAA full-price... that will probably remain a mystery forever unsolved.
 
So according to some GAFERS this game will sell millions because the Lord of the Rings IP is massive and that's all that matters.

Spiderman and Hogwarts Legacy sold millions on brand strength alone and NOT because there also good games.

Right guys? Right..? Right...? Guys where you gone?
 
TheSHEEEP said:
How this ended up being a complete clusterfuck in every regard and how anyone could've waved this through during any of the internal milestones (did the publisher even do milestones?!) and why anyone thought they needed to sell this at AAA full-price... that will probably remain a mystery forever unsolved.
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A license for a game based on Lord of the Rings won't be cheap.
 
The artful mincer said:
So according to some GAFERS this game will sell millions because the Lord of the Rings IP is massive and that's all that matters.

Spiderman and Hogwarts Legacy sold millions on brand strength alone and NOT because there also good games.

Right guys? Right..? Right...? Guys where you gone?
Click to expand...
You should create a thread about this.
 
TheSHEEEP said:
I mean... it could've worked.
It could've been a game similar in style to Styx, which was a great stealth-with-little-combat game.

Even the strengths of Daedalic, the generally good writing and quest structure seen in their point & click games (and others like Blackguard), are practically non-existent here.

How this ended up being a complete clusterfuck in every regard and how anyone could've waved this through during any of the internal milestones (did the publisher even do milestones?!) and why anyone thought they needed to sell this at AAA full-price... that will probably remain a mystery forever unsolved.
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I mean how could it have? Gollum is not an interesting complex character, he's devoured by the Ring, that is all. He doesn't work in interactions with other characters. It's like making a game about someone with mega autism or something, how would you make that work? You need a character to grow, Gollum never could. If we look past that, what interesting stories can we tell about this creature? He is by chance an important character in the destruction of the ring, but who cares what he did before that? He live like a rat and caress his ring.
 
Emedan said:
I mean how could it have? Gollum is not an interesting complex character, he's devoured by the Ring, that is all. He doesn't work in interactions with other characters. It's like making a game about someone with mega autism or something, how would you make that work? You need a character to grow, Gollum never could. If we look past that, what interesting stories can we tell about this creature? He is by chance an important character in the destruction of the ring, but who cares what he did before that? He live like a rat and caress his ring.
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I was talking about the gameplay.

Gollum as a character is a baffling choice to begin with, yes.

But games are, as the name implies, about gameplay. I could live with a subpar character and story if the gameplay makes up for it.
Styx wasn't exactly the best writing ever, either. But at least there you cared about what was happening somewhat.
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme said:
What does it say in the video?

🙀
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For example, that the team size was only about 85 people. Not even half the size of usual AAA dev teams.
Or that the overall budget was a meager 15 million Euros, because Daedalic did not find any additional investors that had any faith in them. Bear in mind with this one, though, that they also earned 30 million+ € from selling the company to Nacon, so I'm not sure if that was included in the number or not. Either way, we're talking about a VERY small budget here.
Or that a good chunk of them were very likely low-pay (if at all) interns.
Or that crunch in the company used to be normal and expected (incl. of course, unpaid overtime).
Or that their CEO was internally feared for his rather abusive outbursts.
Or that the actual idea for the game did not come from Daedalic, but King Art Games (which was hired to do a bunch of project ideas for them, among them this Gollum pearl) and then Middle Earth Enterprises picked that one for whatever reason. So as guilty as Daedalic is for many things, the vision of the project was not theirs apparently.
Or that the famous Twitter apology was not written by Daedalic, but the French owner/publisher Nacon and according to "anonymous" sources really was written with ChatGPT.
Or that the team itself was shocked that someone would publish the original gameplay trailer based on the state of the game at that point and the reception to it dealt quite a blow to them.

All in all, some things I had no idea about (like the minimal budget and team size), but IMO the video still fails to address some reasons for failure, like even the basic idea being doomed to failure already even if it had all been implemented amazingly.
Or the looks of Gollum himself not yielding a "mixed" reception, but an overwhelming negative one.
German media, especially state-funded one such as ZDF which produced this video, is known to be overly "nice" (some might just bluntly say dishonest) in its reportings, so that's not super surprising. They won't lie to you, but you'll sure find some omissions or "positive interpretations" such as these.
 
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I think I'm the only one who bought the game on PS5 here on the forum, I did it because of the reviews and and people opinión about this game... I wanted to try it for myself... The game itself is Atrocious!!! As much as I humbly want to see something positive, it's very difficult for me... And I've only been here for 1 hour and 30 minutes!!!

I'll try to finish it.





j2pMZl.gif


Stop this song, it's screeching.!!!

I even had to turn down the volume on my headphones.

When I started the game it had many technical errors and I had to download a patch that is almost the same size as the game xD.


But if i finishes the game, it will be a personal achievement.
 
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Heimdall_Xtreme said:
I think I'm the only one who bought the game on PS5 here on the forum, I did it because of the reviews and and people opinión about this game... I wanted to try it for myself... The game itself is Atrocious!!! As much as I humbly want to see something positive, it's very difficult for me... And I've only been here for 1 hour and 30 minutes!!!

I'll try to finish it.
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troll whats GIF
 
TheSHEEEP said:
ryan reynolds hd GIF
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As a video game expert, I have tried games with a score of less than 5, such as God Hand and they have been great, or The Callisto Protocol, which I really liked, and since I have willpower, what I started I must finish... It will be a arduous task. I know, but I'll test how far my mind can handle this game. 💪
 
Heimdall_Xtreme said:
As a video game expert, I have tried games with a score of less than 5, such as God Hand and they have been great, or The Callisto Protocol, which I really liked, and since I have willpower, what I started I must finish... It will be a arduous task. I know, but I'll test how far my mind can handle this game. 💪
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I've seen stranger fetishes, so this one is fine.

God Hand is rated very highly, though.
 
TheSHEEEP said:
I've seen stranger fetishes, so this one is fine.

God Hand is rated very highly, though.
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In fact, I never pay attention to video game reviews, for 15 dollars I said... It will be such a bad game?? , but yes indeed... The game is horrible. I even broke this sequence of the game...




I activated the explosions and went to hide.... Nothing happened and the scenario is the same... Until I jumped and the cutscene sequence came out.... Wtf???
 
Urrgggg.

This game made me waste an hour of progress, I was in this scene specifically.

The-Lord-of-the-Rings-Gollum-05-640x360.jpg


A scene where I have to follow a queen, suddenly when loading the checkpoint, my console found the file corrupted and I had to restart the level from the third chapter!!! I lost an hour of progress.


fix-corrupted-data-on-the-ps4.jpg


Because that game only has one save file, it's not like other games that let you save several backup files.




donald-duck-with-blood-6hcfpl6zq9cvy7zl.gif



:messenger_expressionless:

This game requires extreme patience, because of how poorly made it is.
 
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