A candidate for the worst game of 2023 comes from Hamburg: The Lord of the Rings – Gollum received terrible reviews on Steam and Metacritic upon its release in May. But a new game about King Kong is now giving it competition: Skull Island: Rise of Kong. True haters of Gollum won’t let that go unchallenged.
Where does Gollum stand? The adventure from Hamburg was supposed to become a AAA game from Germany in May 2023, but it turned out to be a complete failure and ended the development career of the acclaimed studio Daedalic, which had built a good reputation in Germany over the years with great adventures.
An insider report revealed how the failed game came to be. The sad low point: An apology letter to the fans, in which the title of the game was misspelled, was allegedly generated by the publisher using AI ChatGPT. The developers had no idea about it:
- On Steam, Gollum currently has 35% positive reviews.
- On Metacritic, it has a disastrous user score of 1.2/10 points on PC.
- The game was priced at €50 at release.
Where does the terrible King Kong game stand?
The new game “Skull Island: Rise of King” was released on October 17 on Steam and seems to be performing similarly poorly. Many find it particularly brazen that the game is priced at €40.
- On Steam, “Skull Island” has 36% positive reviews – although most were likely written ironically.
- However, on Metacritic, the game has now reached 3.6/10 reviews instead of the previous 1.2/10 points. So not so bad anymore.
How is the duel going?? As the site Dexerto suspects, the relatively positive score of the King Kong game on Metacritic may come from users wanting to ensure that Gollum remains the worst game of 2023.
Some reviews are written sarcastically:
- One 10/10 review carries the comment: “I will now play as the giant ape forever and ever. It is the best ape game of all time.”
- Another player writes: “This is the best game I have ever played. I wish Elden Ring were as good.”
Pranksters even give terrible games positive reviews
Were there such reviews for Gollum as well? Yes, Gollum also had some positive reviews on Steam that were clearly sarcastic.
For example, one user apparently rated Gollum in role prose on Steam:
“Nasty, fat developer should have let the game mature longer, then it would be fresh and lively and not so nasty. As it is, it’s not worth more than 15 coins. Gollum Gollum!”
Another player praised the “immersive storytelling” and a frame rate that sometimes even exceeds 9 FPS. He asks: What more could a Gollum gamer want?
Apparently, no game is so bad that you can’t find something good about it. Even if it’s only to make another game look worse.
Bad games have their own appeal:
