2023 has already given us some terrible flops. Between delayed releases, huge day-one patches, and questionable monetization systems, frustration among many gamers is high. With The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (PC, PS, Xbox), a game is now being released that can overshadow the previous disappointments.
What kind of game is it? The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is an action game developed by the Hamburg studio Daedalic Entertainment. Adventure fans actually know them mainly for point-and-click titles like the Edna-duology, The Whispered World, or the Deponia series.
Gollum was announced back in 2019 and was originally supposed to be released in 2021. After a delay, the release took place today, on May 25, 2023. And already, it has secured a place as the lowest-rated game of the year – at least so far, as the year still has several releases ahead.
Broken and Full of Bugs
What is wrong with the new game based on The Lord of the Rings? 2023 has not exactly been the gaming year par excellence: From questionable humor in Forspoken to the performance at the launch of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor to just about everything in Redfall, several games made a rough landing at launch.
But Gollum can once again undercut the devastating Metacritic scores of the mentioned titles. Currently, it stands at a rating of 38 for PS5 and 43 for PC in the red zone. And that in an industry where a score of 60 is already considered pretty bad.
What do the ratings look like? The reviews on Metacritic range from 20 to 70, with the latter standing quite alone so far. We have summarized some of the worst ratings for you:
- Push Square calls Gollum “a broken mess of a game” and criticizes the outdated level design, clunky controls, and the “boring story”.
- Gfinity writes briefly and concisely: “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is, like the titular character, ugly, deformed, and infested with bugs.”
- GamesRadar+ saw potential with a rating of 40, although its “high points quickly get lost among all the ways the execution stumbles”.
Our colleagues from GameStar even had such serious technical issues, that they couldn’t write a review at all. GamePro managed to struggle through, stating: Fans do not deserve this.
The only exception is IGN Adria with a score of 70 points:
Surprisingly competent 3D stealth platformer, which has managed to accurately showcase one of the most famous anti-heroes in the world of fantasy entertainment. Despite its underdeveloped visual presentation, it is still one of the rare “Lord of the Rings” games that is worth playing.
IGN Adria via Metacritic
Whether the ratings can recover once some of the bugs are fixed remains to be seen. However, given the criticism of nearly all major elements such as mechanics, the story, and graphics, it seems rather unlikely that Gollum will develop into a success.
The price is unlikely to contribute to improving the mood. After all, one might concede Gollum the lack of an AAA budget, but at 50 € (60 € for the Collector’s Edition), the new LOTR game is not exactly an indie bargain.
It probably doesn’t help that the developers at least got the name of the special edition right:
