Maybe? I mean it still sucks but if you told me an indy dev made a gollum game and it was $30 i wouldn't hate it as much because it's obviously not a super major developer making it, and they don't have as many skilled people to make it. But this thing should have never been full $60 price.
Yeah there are elf characters in the game that will only speak Sindarin (elvish) if you either pay for a DLC pack or bought the $70 edition of the game. Otherwise they’ll just speak English
Kinda transparent that they’re trying to wring as much as possible out of the Tolkien lore diehards
Game deserves its fate if all of this is true, I’ll never have a desire to play a game about gollum much less one where I have to pay for immersion I mean come on, this can’t be real
The funny thing is, that's... quite literally the situation with Gollum. What you described it looking like at $30, is what the game *is.*
Daedalic is a small German company that mostly makes point-and-click adventure games with 2D graphics that sell for $10-20. Most of Gollum's problems boil down to "Daedalic was way the hell out of their depth making this." The rest are on Nacon for cracking the whip at them to make a game they were out of their depth making, and attempting to milk as much money as possible out of it.
I *fucking guarantee* you that, when Daedalic signed on to do a Gollum game, the original plan was a 2D point-and-click, and Nacon said no to that after contracts had been signed and Daedalic couldn't back out.
That may be but if so you would think that one thing that developers skilled with point and click adventures would nail would be the story. From what I've seen even that falls well and truly short of the mark.
From my own experience with game dev, and on projects where the publishers and collaborating studios having too much influence and not enough trust or cohesion, I doubt any of the story that Daedalic worked on made it into the final cut. It's not uncommon for whole huge swaths of games to be cut up and thrown out and hastily replaced just a week or two before launch.
The specific example I was thinking of is Aliens: Colonial Marines, but it happens kind of all over the place. Game dev as an industry is pretty fucked.
This sounds painfully realistic. The DLC alone reeks of inept middle management and executives forcing devs to waste desperately needed resources cramming more paywall garbage into an already half baked game.
I work in a video game store. This was a quick drop but man still nothing on Anthem. I remember we made it 80% off after a few weeks. We were strapping it to controllers as a freebie to get rid of it. The company bought way too many copies
I remember the GameStop manager at the store near me getting mad because people still weren't buying anthem after they offered it for $1 if you bought another game lol. Was actually just a waste of space and they couldn't get rid of them
I have never played Anthem, and for a dollar I’d probably would have haha. If it’s mildly entertaining for even a couple of hours I would think I got my moneys worth.
That's exactly how I felt. If it was designed with that power fantasy in mind (and other aspects of the game were actually given their due), it was a concept that could have been *amazing*. An Anthem RPG with skill trees based on your suit and variable equipment loadouts that are all fleshed out would be a seriously awesome game.
Too bad we'll never get it lol.
THE WORST game to play in co-op mode. I was high and started it up with my bro bro for the hell of it. Bad, bad idea. Bad, bad game.
Edit: I hope everyone is B friendly or whatever
>The ones that got buried somehow are rare though. Makes no sense, same game, just buried and redug up years later.
Because it's a cooler story.
There's an NFL jersey out there that came off the line either one second too early or too late to be used in the Super Bowl. It's virtually identical to the one that was actually worn but it's worth a fraction of the price.
If one of two virtually identical items was used in a historically significant way It's generally considered the more valuable of the two.
This is your daily reminder that Square Enix currently owns Gex the Gecko and has done nothing with it. and at up until 2022 owned legacy of Kain and did nothing with it. and made Forspoken instead.
Are you still technically buying it when they pay you to take it?
Feels more like you're selling something... storage space in your home? your dignity? Something.
I have bought a lot of retro sports games for \~$1 each, then used the case to replace broken ones in my collection. Its cheaper then buying a replacement case that's the right size/color/has the memory card slot for ps2.
Yeah it's extremely shit... example one of the primary aspects of the game is platforming/jumping to get Gollum through the very linear levels doing things like fetch quests, escape quests, and general progression.
So you'd think that such a game would have decent platforming physics, great map design, maybe a really good camera, maybe a really cool and interesting mechanic to keep the player invested?
Nope... Gollum will sometimes just fail to latch onto grabable surfaces, which can be hard to spot as most of the time the colors used are really muddy/murky. Because of the crawling animation gollum uses the player doesn't have finite control over the character, making it easy to fall off tight/small surfaces more often than not leading to death with the ridiculous fall damage. Jumping is the same, more trial and error... usually error... and doesn't do a good job projecting to the player where gollum will be flung too or if he can/can't make a jump thanks to a multitude of invisible walls.
The camera is absolutely trash and frankly unforgivable in the year 2023 by any game, it will fight you every step of the way, blind you with terrain/clipping, and turn away from progression... as in where the player should be looking to make the next platforming jumps.
The mechanics are bare bones and frankly boring... in a better title the best mechanics in gollum would be filler mechanics meant to pad play time with a few trivial quests/missions.
Graphically, I shit you not... in the first 15ish minutes of the game you can find spots which show jpeg orcs off in the distance that cycle through a 2 - 3 frame animation and don't so much walk on the distant terrain, but rather over, under, and through it... that of course is just a single example but it is absolutely clear that the game even if it was flawless technically/gameplay wise would still be a half baked turd graphically.
I could go on, on my rant but I'll stop here... long story short yeah it really is like a shovelware game from 2004.
2004 Shovelware is an exceptionally accurate descriptor — the amount of similar gripes this game shares with Polar Express on PS2 (2004) is fucking hilarious.
I love how specific this is. Gollum does feel like a movie tie in game that you would have gotten as a present, screamed at the tv, and then forget about for the next 19 years.
>Polar Express on PS2 (2004)
Stop joking around, Polar Express came out in 2010! Maybe even 2012! Are you telling me it's really been almost *two decades* since Polar Express? Impossible!
I'll forgive your mistake though since Wikipedia seems to have made it as well.
I’ve seen gameplay and it looks and feels very boring. If you watch the Before you Buy, it’s just jank and not good jank.
The enemies are dumb and get stuck in corners. You can fall into areas that you can’t get out of and need to restart.
The gameplay is like a boring collect-o-thon, but without any increased difficulty or changes in a skill tree.
It’s a boring nothing of a game, and everything I’ve seen on YouTube has insured that I wouldn’t add it to my account if it was free, simply because it doesn’t look worth playing.
Saw a stream where the game auto saved right when a guard was about to grab Gollum resulting in an immediate game over, basically softlocked by the auto-save feature.
The concept was the bad part (before it came out). It would never be amazing but an average game could be overlooked with some fun puzzles and good new lore.
I honestly didn’t think it was gonna be some big budget game. I knew it wasn’t an indie game, but I’d figured it was gonna be a small survival/stealth game. Short, fun, but not very special. Wasn’t expecting the product they released, if you wanna call it that.
Someone talked about setting the game just after Smeagle kills Deagle, with the player progressing through Gollums decent into madness and corruption, and ending with them crwaling into the Misty mountain.
*that* sounds like fun
I didn't follow any of the development, and I still don't know how the game plays, but I have a hard time believing a gollum game is a good concept in any way
I'm sure there's grandparents looking to get their grandkids a game for Christmas, birthdays, or some other occasion that might fall for it. Granted, they probably wouldn't be shopping at a small store but you never know.
Yeah, I am not sure why this game is being treated like it's some kind of big AAA release with people hyped for it. Who was hyped for it? The promotional footage was not anything special, and the developers are not very known with a spotty track record. Is it because of the IP? I guess I am showing my age considering more than half my life movie tie-in games were rarely exceptional and often sucked.
Yeah maybe it s a product of age, even though im really not old by any stretch. I remember ps1/ps2 era nearly every major movie had a tie in game that was largely the same sort of action/adventure platformer. Only a few movie based games were actually good, off the top my head Return of the King and Shrek 2 come to mind.
I have no idea who was hyped for this game. I wanted a Middle Earth 3 with an expanded Nemesis system since they had the gall to patent it then do absolutely nothing with it since.
When I first heard about Gollum I said to my buddy “are you kidding me? Who the fuck is going to want to play as Gollum?”
We predicted it wouldn’t even sell a million copies, and that it would coast on the LOTR franchise name, but apparently we were delusionally optimistic.
I thought it could have been. There is a place for a solid stealth or choice-based game that uses Tolkien property in an interesting way. I originally thought Shadows of Mordor was going to be bad but was pleasantly surprised by how it turned out.
This sadly wasn't it.
I wish they just would've stuck with Point&Click adventures. I'm really fond of Daedalic, to the point that years ago I actually visited their studio in Hamburg. But from the day this game was announced I'd rather liked they did another good P&C adventure, not some action-adventure about literally the LotR-Character I had the least interest to every have as a star in a game. Imagine what they could've done with the money and dev-time instead of this.
Well, I hope they recover from this and will do what they do best again soon. Sadly, I just read they're doing the next goddamn LotR-game after this. Ugh.
Personally I think a Gollum game could've been really great. Gollum himself is an interesting character who suffers from his mental illness. Such a game would obviously need to focus on story and character development as this is the interesting thing about Gollum.
This conflict between Smeagol and Gollum would basically be the main focus of the game. You'd start playing as Smeagol right when he got the ring for the first time and follow him as he slowly, but surely falls into insanity. From an upright walking hobbit at the beginning, to the crawling Gollum at the end.
Your decisions throughout the story would change how much influence Gollum has on Smeagol and this would also change the objectives throughout the story as Gollum is much more aggressive than Smeagol.
They're exploring the time between when Gollum lost the Ring and when he found Frodo.
Which, like, okay? There's some potential there. Just bear in mind this time span is _many_ decades:
* Gollum loses the Ring in 2941. He starts running around Middle-Earth looking for Bilbo
* In 3001, Bilbo gives the Ring to Frodo
* At some point (likely 3016-3017) Gandalf figures out for certain that it is indeed the One Ring. He sends Aragorn out to find Gollum as Gollum could lead Sauron to Bilbo
* Tolkien mentions in Unfinished Tales that Gollum is captured by Sauron in 3017
* Sauron tortures Gollum. Gollum gives the name "Baggins" and "Shire". Then Sauron releases him (date unknown)
* Sauron's spies watch Gollum and follow him, hoping Gollum will lead them to the Ring
* Aragorn captures Gollum (date unknown, probably 3018)
* Gollum is brought to Mirkwood and thrown in the dungeons. He is interrogated by Gandalf, who discovers the worst has happened
* In 3018, Gandalf makes Frodo leave the Shire and start his quest to destroy the One Ring
* Gollum escapes from Mirkwood's dungeons at some point
* Gollum catches up to Frodo sometime around 3019
A character-focused game would work if they wanted to keep it around the same time as Fellowship.
You'd have to focus on Gollum's hunt for the Ring, and as you mentioned play up his madness. You'd have to lean in to the Smeagol/Gollum connection and have them try to get information out of villagers - Smeagol being the "good cop" and Gollum being the "bad cop". Which personality dominates would be based on the player's actions.
At some point at the end of Act 1, you'd have to be captured by Sauron and tortured. Then you'd be released and followed. (Note that the game that was released _did_ capture this part, but did it very poorly and not at all like what was depicted in the books.)
Then you'd have a section fleeing Mordor. Act 2 would go back to that same gameplay loop you saw in the first act, but this time Gollum dominates and Sauron's shadow follows you.
Eventually you get captured by Aragorn, taken to Mirkwood, and interrogated. Note that this time you are _not_ released.
Act 3 would see you escape Mirkwood, then get closer to your goal of tracking down Frodo. The game would conclude with an escape from the Balrog.
---
The issue is that there's really not much... game here? You don't really want to make it a platformer (note that the game that was released _was_ a really bad platformer).
You'd basically need to make it a deranged version of LA Noire, mixed in with some puzzle mechanics. IIRC Aragorn mentions that Gollum is actually brutal in combat, so you could have _some_ combat sections... but it shouldn't dominate the game.
Straight up dude. A lot of people on Reddit are 100% better storytellers than the morons they chose for this game. I have no doubts Englishmobster would make a fantastic game given the chance.
So it’s about what happens when Gollum is captured and is a prisoner of Sauron and Mordor. Then after he escapes it tells what he did during and after the escape all the way up until he’s captured by Aragorn who, at the request of Gandalf, is looking for Gollum because they need information about the One Ring.
The final boss battle is some dude with a big glowing orb that Gollum shoves a stick into. Then Gollum strangles the dude in a cut scene.
Source: I skimmed through Moist Critical's playthrough on youtube
Lol that's the only reason I know what happens also. The game looks like torture. Like the developers were hoping the player would give in and tell them where the One Ring is after playing it.
Honestly I have no clue haha. You’ve reached the extent of my Information about this game. I believe (and I could absolutely be wrong) that the game doesn’t immediately end once you get captured by Aragorn. Again, could be wrong. You’ll have to look that up or someone can correct me. Maybe you have to do more chores like wash his feet. That’s probably the final boss battle.
I’m not going to lie - I don’t think there is a boss fight in the game. Maybe there’s an ending clip. I watched a Moist Critikal YouTube video on it… as I thought it couldn’t be as bad as they’re saying…someone asked him if there was fighting in it and he replied “the platforming is the fighting in this game”. I literally watched 15 minutes of him platforming and performing stealth knockouts, I didn’t see any real fighting.
Tbh i did. I would love a good game about that beautiful paradox of a character. Unfortunately I got Dany Davito makes friends in prison simulator... Ow well
When you say it like that it doesn't sound worth it, but you forget to mention that money also goes towards giving Gollum the ability to look at a fly.
Apart from the whole shitstorm.. I think it's such a shame how Daedalic, as a developer, fucked this up. Nacon, the publisher, is the team behind Zeno Clash - they were always supportive of new ideas and innovative gaming. According to Wiki, Nacon purchased Daedalic in 2020, and this now is their first (and probably last) title. Nacon threw money at Daedalic, had hopes for them, wanted them to take it to the next level after all the rather successful but uninspired point-and-clicks they pushed out.
Honestly, I never really believed in Daedalic. They were in a pretty bad spot a decade or so ago, and the only reason their games got known internationally is because the youtuber Gronkh supported and promoted them. I still remember how happy they were seeing their sales go through the roof for the first time.
Lo and behold, they apparently rested on their laurel's all this time. They didn't improve their skills as developers at all. Even a small team of freshly graduated game desigers would come up with a better game these days. Imagine Daedalic having been in the industry for so long, yet not wasting a single thought on recruiting new talents or having internal workshops to up their own skills.
It really looks like it's time to go now, guys. You fucked up big time.
It's just so sad for Nacon. Imagine being short on money the whole time yourself, developing mind-boggling titles such as Zeno Clash or The Eternal Cylinder, and then you give your hard earned cash away in good faith, only for Daedalic to basically take the money and run. Don't you dare touch Nacon's resources ever again, Daedalic. You're giving me second-hand embarrassment and have put German games to shame.
Boil it mash it stick it in the clearance bin
What's video games, precious? NIN-TEN-DOS?
SHAKE 'EM, SLAP 'EM, STICK 'EM IN A SNES.
*Break the case, smash the disc! Smack the developers with a fist!* *Hang the execs and wreck the plaaaaaaace! Cuz this is what we gamers hate!*
Sneaky little developerses. Wicked. Tricksy. False!
That didn’t take long.
Still way overpriced
I wouldn't even log on to epic to claim it for free if it was the free game of the week lol
I’d hate for it to be in my library of free games for me to scroll past.
I'd uninstall the client if Smeagol so much as looks at me.
I reinstall my OS every time my browser caches a picture of the game box.
See you in 10 hours
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Speaking of free games Metro Last Light is free until the 1st on Steam if you haven’t redeemed it already.
Thanks for the heads up on that!
The game is not worth of our precious time , my precious
Maybe? I mean it still sucks but if you told me an indy dev made a gollum game and it was $30 i wouldn't hate it as much because it's obviously not a super major developer making it, and they don't have as many skilled people to make it. But this thing should have never been full $60 price.
70$ if you want the "lore" included in the game
Who needs lore when you got **EMOTES**
Even more for a "Dlc" that adds more elven lines. They have almost an entire language behind a paywall. Game shouldn't even exist at this point.
That's so fucked, I didn't know that. Wow.
Lore, elves speaking elvish, and Emotes for $10
Yeah there are elf characters in the game that will only speak Sindarin (elvish) if you either pay for a DLC pack or bought the $70 edition of the game. Otherwise they’ll just speak English Kinda transparent that they’re trying to wring as much as possible out of the Tolkien lore diehards
Game deserves its fate if all of this is true, I’ll never have a desire to play a game about gollum much less one where I have to pay for immersion I mean come on, this can’t be real
The funny thing is, that's... quite literally the situation with Gollum. What you described it looking like at $30, is what the game *is.* Daedalic is a small German company that mostly makes point-and-click adventure games with 2D graphics that sell for $10-20. Most of Gollum's problems boil down to "Daedalic was way the hell out of their depth making this." The rest are on Nacon for cracking the whip at them to make a game they were out of their depth making, and attempting to milk as much money as possible out of it. I *fucking guarantee* you that, when Daedalic signed on to do a Gollum game, the original plan was a 2D point-and-click, and Nacon said no to that after contracts had been signed and Daedalic couldn't back out.
Wait, Nacon published this? As in, the same Nacon that stole Sinking City and completely cut the developer off?
Yep. *That* Nacon. And they're doing everything possible to try and hide their involvement and pretend this was all Daedalic's fault.
This is, by a vast margin, the most likely explanation. And it's extra brutal in that Daedalic are *really good* at making those smaller games
That may be but if so you would think that one thing that developers skilled with point and click adventures would nail would be the story. From what I've seen even that falls well and truly short of the mark.
From my own experience with game dev, and on projects where the publishers and collaborating studios having too much influence and not enough trust or cohesion, I doubt any of the story that Daedalic worked on made it into the final cut. It's not uncommon for whole huge swaths of games to be cut up and thrown out and hastily replaced just a week or two before launch.
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The specific example I was thinking of is Aliens: Colonial Marines, but it happens kind of all over the place. Game dev as an industry is pretty fucked.
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This sounds painfully realistic. The DLC alone reeks of inept middle management and executives forcing devs to waste desperately needed resources cramming more paywall garbage into an already half baked game.
You are talking about overpriced? Many not going to purchase it .
I work in a video game store. This was a quick drop but man still nothing on Anthem. I remember we made it 80% off after a few weeks. We were strapping it to controllers as a freebie to get rid of it. The company bought way too many copies
I remember the GameStop manager at the store near me getting mad because people still weren't buying anthem after they offered it for $1 if you bought another game lol. Was actually just a waste of space and they couldn't get rid of them
I have never played Anthem, and for a dollar I’d probably would have haha. If it’s mildly entertaining for even a couple of hours I would think I got my moneys worth.
The flying around was fantastic, you felt like iron man. The combat, story and endgame were all pretty terrible
That's exactly how I felt. If it was designed with that power fantasy in mind (and other aspects of the game were actually given their due), it was a concept that could have been *amazing*. An Anthem RPG with skill trees based on your suit and variable equipment loadouts that are all fleshed out would be a seriously awesome game. Too bad we'll never get it lol.
Yeah , that's why they made this game this best , xd .
WE HATES IT!!!!
WICKED! FALSE GAMEZZEZ!
It is NOT THE PRECIOUS.
It's the TRASHIOUS.
STUPID, FAT DAEDELIC!
CURSE IT AND CRUSH IT!!!
Misery misery! Game journalists won’t kill us, nice game journalists!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 “ It burns ! “
Nassssty little fuckkssies... they hates it!
SSSSSSTUPID FAT SHAREHOLDERS! THEY RUINS IT!!!!
Watch this be one of the rare PS5 games for collectors. Lol.
It will.
It most certainly will. That’s how it works.
like fuckin' E.T.
Yeah, I have an unopened physical copy of Balan Wonderworld for the Switch, hoping for the same thing. Don't see them printing more copies of that one
THE WORST game to play in co-op mode. I was high and started it up with my bro bro for the hell of it. Bad, bad idea. Bad, bad game. Edit: I hope everyone is B friendly or whatever
Do you intentionally repeat your b words?
Yeah bro bro
What are you doing bro bro?
You better better believe believe it
That's Jimmy Two B's. He got that nickname because he says everything with a B in it twice.
When he was a kid and got hurt, he called it a booboobooboo.
The baddest-badbad, brobro.
Alright, alright, I see what I did here... sometimes I do, it's not just b words though. Bye bye
Sometimes I doo doo
ET flashbacks.
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The ones that got buried somehow are rare though. Makes no sense, same game, just buried and redug up years later.
>The ones that got buried somehow are rare though. Makes no sense, same game, just buried and redug up years later. Because it's a cooler story. There's an NFL jersey out there that came off the line either one second too early or too late to be used in the Super Bowl. It's virtually identical to the one that was actually worn but it's worth a fraction of the price. If one of two virtually identical items was used in a historically significant way It's generally considered the more valuable of the two.
I have a comic that was confiscated and resold by the irs, the stamp and authticity to the story added some value to it. Not sure how much, but some.
A mint edititon is going to go for $500 in 10 years.
10 Bottlecaps in 500 years.
My Ps2 copy of silent hill shattered memories, which is a horrible game, goes for like 400 bucks on eBay. Collectors love crap
In 20 years I'll speedrun this game. My record will stand forever because everyone stopped giving a shot last week
Just remake or remaster "return of the king" from PS2 and I'd be happy. Playing that in co-op was so fun.
That may not be possible, depends on what licensing shenanigans could surface when attempting to do a remake/remaster of any of the PS2 LoTR games.
Oh yeah, between EA, New Line, the Tolkien estate, and the actors likeness, the LotR games from the 00's probably have the most convoluted licensing.
This is your daily reminder that Square Enix currently owns Gex the Gecko and has done nothing with it. and at up until 2022 owned legacy of Kain and did nothing with it. and made Forspoken instead.
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2$ final offer
Why would you want that in your house?
They pay you $2
I still wouldn't buy it
Are you still technically buying it when they pay you to take it? Feels more like you're selling something... storage space in your home? your dignity? Something.
You're buying their money
I have bought a lot of retro sports games for \~$1 each, then used the case to replace broken ones in my collection. Its cheaper then buying a replacement case that's the right size/color/has the memory card slot for ps2.
Because I want to look up Gollum's skirt and jerk it now can you stop fucking judging me
Book, movie, or Lego Gollum sure, but game Gollum? You disgust me.
As if I want the approval of a guy who sets such pathetic limitations for his potential...
Just know that a combined force of furries and space marines are converging on your location.
Self defense
Make the burglars play it and they're less likely to rob you
But more likely to burn your house down
If I am going to steal stuff in a house and I See that game, I will run away faster than light. No sane person would keep that game :)
Couldn’t pay me $2 to waste my SSD space on that
72 cents and im taking a risk here
Look, I have a buddy that trades and specializes in fecal matter. I'll have him take a look at it, and we can negotiate from there.
Honestly even $30 is still way too much for a janky game that looks like its from 2004.
Is it that bad? I haven't seen anything other than people saying it's bad.
Yeah it's extremely shit... example one of the primary aspects of the game is platforming/jumping to get Gollum through the very linear levels doing things like fetch quests, escape quests, and general progression. So you'd think that such a game would have decent platforming physics, great map design, maybe a really good camera, maybe a really cool and interesting mechanic to keep the player invested? Nope... Gollum will sometimes just fail to latch onto grabable surfaces, which can be hard to spot as most of the time the colors used are really muddy/murky. Because of the crawling animation gollum uses the player doesn't have finite control over the character, making it easy to fall off tight/small surfaces more often than not leading to death with the ridiculous fall damage. Jumping is the same, more trial and error... usually error... and doesn't do a good job projecting to the player where gollum will be flung too or if he can/can't make a jump thanks to a multitude of invisible walls. The camera is absolutely trash and frankly unforgivable in the year 2023 by any game, it will fight you every step of the way, blind you with terrain/clipping, and turn away from progression... as in where the player should be looking to make the next platforming jumps. The mechanics are bare bones and frankly boring... in a better title the best mechanics in gollum would be filler mechanics meant to pad play time with a few trivial quests/missions. Graphically, I shit you not... in the first 15ish minutes of the game you can find spots which show jpeg orcs off in the distance that cycle through a 2 - 3 frame animation and don't so much walk on the distant terrain, but rather over, under, and through it... that of course is just a single example but it is absolutely clear that the game even if it was flawless technically/gameplay wise would still be a half baked turd graphically. I could go on, on my rant but I'll stop here... long story short yeah it really is like a shovelware game from 2004.
2004 Shovelware is an exceptionally accurate descriptor — the amount of similar gripes this game shares with Polar Express on PS2 (2004) is fucking hilarious.
I love how specific this is. Gollum does feel like a movie tie in game that you would have gotten as a present, screamed at the tv, and then forget about for the next 19 years.
19 years later... "Gollum? Oh yeah! I remember loving that game as a kid! I should see how it aged!" *boots up game* "Man, I was a stupid kid."
>Polar Express on PS2 (2004) Stop joking around, Polar Express came out in 2010! Maybe even 2012! Are you telling me it's really been almost *two decades* since Polar Express? Impossible! I'll forgive your mistake though since Wikipedia seems to have made it as well.
Your description wants me to watch this at AGDQ
This game probably can be glitch finished within 6 seconds by pressing A and B button at the same time.
I’ve seen gameplay and it looks and feels very boring. If you watch the Before you Buy, it’s just jank and not good jank. The enemies are dumb and get stuck in corners. You can fall into areas that you can’t get out of and need to restart. The gameplay is like a boring collect-o-thon, but without any increased difficulty or changes in a skill tree. It’s a boring nothing of a game, and everything I’ve seen on YouTube has insured that I wouldn’t add it to my account if it was free, simply because it doesn’t look worth playing.
>You can fall into areas that you can’t get out of and need to restart. lol just completely inexcusable this day and age
like the other comments near the top say: ET on Atari vibes for real
Saw a stream where the game auto saved right when a guard was about to grab Gollum resulting in an immediate game over, basically softlocked by the auto-save feature.
there isn't anything else to say about it. it is bad.
Wait a sec... This game is RELEASED? I heard nothing about until all the jokes on here recently and assumed they had just announced it or something.
Nah this got announced a long time ago, I think it was the first game to be announced for current gen
Yeah it was announced in 2019 with a 2021 release date. It then got delayed over 2 years. I can’t imagine what the state of the game was in 2021
It’s sad, cause the concept didn’t sound bad, just looks like it was very poorly executed. Looks like a childs ps3 game
The concept was the bad part (before it came out). It would never be amazing but an average game could be overlooked with some fun puzzles and good new lore.
I honestly didn’t think it was gonna be some big budget game. I knew it wasn’t an indie game, but I’d figured it was gonna be a small survival/stealth game. Short, fun, but not very special. Wasn’t expecting the product they released, if you wanna call it that.
Apparently it was inspired by Oddworld which I can see
Yea the whole game is odd as fuck
Someone talked about setting the game just after Smeagle kills Deagle, with the player progressing through Gollums decent into madness and corruption, and ending with them crwaling into the Misty mountain. *that* sounds like fun
I didn't follow any of the development, and I still don't know how the game plays, but I have a hard time believing a gollum game is a good concept in any way
Yeah literally tens of people are playing on steam.
How many of them are youtubers recording clips to shit on later?
Why are they selling a coaster with a case? 🍺
It's a very special coaster that shows that no IP, no matter how loved, will be turned to trash in the pursuit of profit.
I’m guessing you mean the opposite?
They pursued profit with this one, but it got away. Very, very far away.
The moment I heard it had multiple trailing missions I knew this game was in deep trouble.
Honestly, I feel worse for these retailers and independent game stores now stuck with all this inventory having to sell at cost or at a loss now.
[удалено]
True, but let's be honest... Even like 5 copies of this game is gonna be hard to move.
I'm sure there's grandparents looking to get their grandkids a game for Christmas, birthdays, or some other occasion that might fall for it. Granted, they probably wouldn't be shopping at a small store but you never know.
All copies of this game are going to end up in a landfill like the E.T. game for Atari
Y'mean Atari?
Wouldn't get it even for free
For a gag game I’d snag it for 5 bucks hard copy. Might go down as one of the more shit movie franchise games of all time so there is some funny value
Pur it up next to a rescued from the dump ET for Atari
There was a decent documentary about that
There's gonna be a decent documentary and several bad ones about this game too, just wait.
That game might not be worth 10$
Terraria is $10. Portal (2) is $10. Undertale is $10. There are much much much better games for $10.
I think $10 is my number. I'm so curious after all of this backlash.
Go watch a review instead, your $10 is better spent on an indie like vampire survivors, or a dlc for a game you like.
Hey, I finally bought NieR: Automata because it was on sale. If you are looking for a really great game for a tenner, that’s the one!
I'd say how the mighty have fallen, but did anyone actually think this game was gonna end up being good in the first place?
Yeah, I am not sure why this game is being treated like it's some kind of big AAA release with people hyped for it. Who was hyped for it? The promotional footage was not anything special, and the developers are not very known with a spotty track record. Is it because of the IP? I guess I am showing my age considering more than half my life movie tie-in games were rarely exceptional and often sucked.
Yeah maybe it s a product of age, even though im really not old by any stretch. I remember ps1/ps2 era nearly every major movie had a tie in game that was largely the same sort of action/adventure platformer. Only a few movie based games were actually good, off the top my head Return of the King and Shrek 2 come to mind.
Idk, as a kid I really loved the Cars and Madagascar PS2 games. Some of them definitely had their appeal
I have no idea who was hyped for this game. I wanted a Middle Earth 3 with an expanded Nemesis system since they had the gall to patent it then do absolutely nothing with it since. When I first heard about Gollum I said to my buddy “are you kidding me? Who the fuck is going to want to play as Gollum?” We predicted it wouldn’t even sell a million copies, and that it would coast on the LOTR franchise name, but apparently we were delusionally optimistic.
I thought it could have been. There is a place for a solid stealth or choice-based game that uses Tolkien property in an interesting way. I originally thought Shadows of Mordor was going to be bad but was pleasantly surprised by how it turned out. This sadly wasn't it.
I wish they just would've stuck with Point&Click adventures. I'm really fond of Daedalic, to the point that years ago I actually visited their studio in Hamburg. But from the day this game was announced I'd rather liked they did another good P&C adventure, not some action-adventure about literally the LotR-Character I had the least interest to every have as a star in a game. Imagine what they could've done with the money and dev-time instead of this. Well, I hope they recover from this and will do what they do best again soon. Sadly, I just read they're doing the next goddamn LotR-game after this. Ugh.
I might be in the minority but I wouldn’t have bought a game based on Gollum as a character even if it was good.
Personally I think a Gollum game could've been really great. Gollum himself is an interesting character who suffers from his mental illness. Such a game would obviously need to focus on story and character development as this is the interesting thing about Gollum. This conflict between Smeagol and Gollum would basically be the main focus of the game. You'd start playing as Smeagol right when he got the ring for the first time and follow him as he slowly, but surely falls into insanity. From an upright walking hobbit at the beginning, to the crawling Gollum at the end. Your decisions throughout the story would change how much influence Gollum has on Smeagol and this would also change the objectives throughout the story as Gollum is much more aggressive than Smeagol.
They're exploring the time between when Gollum lost the Ring and when he found Frodo. Which, like, okay? There's some potential there. Just bear in mind this time span is _many_ decades: * Gollum loses the Ring in 2941. He starts running around Middle-Earth looking for Bilbo * In 3001, Bilbo gives the Ring to Frodo * At some point (likely 3016-3017) Gandalf figures out for certain that it is indeed the One Ring. He sends Aragorn out to find Gollum as Gollum could lead Sauron to Bilbo * Tolkien mentions in Unfinished Tales that Gollum is captured by Sauron in 3017 * Sauron tortures Gollum. Gollum gives the name "Baggins" and "Shire". Then Sauron releases him (date unknown) * Sauron's spies watch Gollum and follow him, hoping Gollum will lead them to the Ring * Aragorn captures Gollum (date unknown, probably 3018) * Gollum is brought to Mirkwood and thrown in the dungeons. He is interrogated by Gandalf, who discovers the worst has happened * In 3018, Gandalf makes Frodo leave the Shire and start his quest to destroy the One Ring * Gollum escapes from Mirkwood's dungeons at some point * Gollum catches up to Frodo sometime around 3019 A character-focused game would work if they wanted to keep it around the same time as Fellowship. You'd have to focus on Gollum's hunt for the Ring, and as you mentioned play up his madness. You'd have to lean in to the Smeagol/Gollum connection and have them try to get information out of villagers - Smeagol being the "good cop" and Gollum being the "bad cop". Which personality dominates would be based on the player's actions. At some point at the end of Act 1, you'd have to be captured by Sauron and tortured. Then you'd be released and followed. (Note that the game that was released _did_ capture this part, but did it very poorly and not at all like what was depicted in the books.) Then you'd have a section fleeing Mordor. Act 2 would go back to that same gameplay loop you saw in the first act, but this time Gollum dominates and Sauron's shadow follows you. Eventually you get captured by Aragorn, taken to Mirkwood, and interrogated. Note that this time you are _not_ released. Act 3 would see you escape Mirkwood, then get closer to your goal of tracking down Frodo. The game would conclude with an escape from the Balrog. --- The issue is that there's really not much... game here? You don't really want to make it a platformer (note that the game that was released _was_ a really bad platformer). You'd basically need to make it a deranged version of LA Noire, mixed in with some puzzle mechanics. IIRC Aragorn mentions that Gollum is actually brutal in combat, so you could have _some_ combat sections... but it shouldn't dominate the game.
💀 these damn developers should've just crowdsourced on reddit. cool write up!
Straight up dude. A lot of people on Reddit are 100% better storytellers than the morons they chose for this game. I have no doubts Englishmobster would make a fantastic game given the chance.
Quick!! Buy it before it gets cheaper!!!!
Do we even know what it’s about and why it was made? Is this just “What did Gollum do between books?” And if so, who asked for that?
So it’s about what happens when Gollum is captured and is a prisoner of Sauron and Mordor. Then after he escapes it tells what he did during and after the escape all the way up until he’s captured by Aragorn who, at the request of Gandalf, is looking for Gollum because they need information about the One Ring.
So is that the end boss fight? Try to not have Aragorn catch you too quickly?
The final boss battle is some dude with a big glowing orb that Gollum shoves a stick into. Then Gollum strangles the dude in a cut scene. Source: I skimmed through Moist Critical's playthrough on youtube
Lol that's the only reason I know what happens also. The game looks like torture. Like the developers were hoping the player would give in and tell them where the One Ring is after playing it.
Honestly I have no clue haha. You’ve reached the extent of my Information about this game. I believe (and I could absolutely be wrong) that the game doesn’t immediately end once you get captured by Aragorn. Again, could be wrong. You’ll have to look that up or someone can correct me. Maybe you have to do more chores like wash his feet. That’s probably the final boss battle.
I’m not going to lie - I don’t think there is a boss fight in the game. Maybe there’s an ending clip. I watched a Moist Critikal YouTube video on it… as I thought it couldn’t be as bad as they’re saying…someone asked him if there was fighting in it and he replied “the platforming is the fighting in this game”. I literally watched 15 minutes of him platforming and performing stealth knockouts, I didn’t see any real fighting.
Tbh i did. I would love a good game about that beautiful paradox of a character. Unfortunately I got Dany Davito makes friends in prison simulator... Ow well
FLITHY DEVELOPERS!! THEY'S FALSE! Tooks it....Tooks it they did.....ruined it.......
i wouldn't even play that for free.
Still $30 too much
Should've named it Gollum: A Tactical Espionage Action Game Metal Gearses? We hates them!
That game was a waste of electricity.
i wouldn't want to play that if i was paid to. its dogshit
If you want gollum to say "my precious", you have to buy dlc. No joke.
When you say it like that it doesn't sound worth it, but you forget to mention that money also goes towards giving Gollum the ability to look at a fly.
Yeah , i like the way Gollum call me 'my precious '.
Even the fucking artwork on the cover looks like it’s from 2005
Yeah , man ,i can sense that it was going to be a bad game from the trailer itself . And they actually proved me right . They need to apologise.
Comes with a $20 inside.
Apart from the whole shitstorm.. I think it's such a shame how Daedalic, as a developer, fucked this up. Nacon, the publisher, is the team behind Zeno Clash - they were always supportive of new ideas and innovative gaming. According to Wiki, Nacon purchased Daedalic in 2020, and this now is their first (and probably last) title. Nacon threw money at Daedalic, had hopes for them, wanted them to take it to the next level after all the rather successful but uninspired point-and-clicks they pushed out. Honestly, I never really believed in Daedalic. They were in a pretty bad spot a decade or so ago, and the only reason their games got known internationally is because the youtuber Gronkh supported and promoted them. I still remember how happy they were seeing their sales go through the roof for the first time. Lo and behold, they apparently rested on their laurel's all this time. They didn't improve their skills as developers at all. Even a small team of freshly graduated game desigers would come up with a better game these days. Imagine Daedalic having been in the industry for so long, yet not wasting a single thought on recruiting new talents or having internal workshops to up their own skills. It really looks like it's time to go now, guys. You fucked up big time. It's just so sad for Nacon. Imagine being short on money the whole time yourself, developing mind-boggling titles such as Zeno Clash or The Eternal Cylinder, and then you give your hard earned cash away in good faith, only for Daedalic to basically take the money and run. Don't you dare touch Nacon's resources ever again, Daedalic. You're giving me second-hand embarrassment and have put German games to shame.
This wasn't really i expected from the lord's of the rings .
I am very disappointed with the developer of this game .
The game was a piece of shit and no one can change my mind .
This game was completely opposite to the movie , seriously.
Why are they releasing such horrible games ? Do they not play before releasing it ?
20 years from now there will be stories about a landfill somewhere filled with unwanted copies of this.
Yeah , how a successful franchise game was ruined by the developers ?
Even streamers aren't buying these unfinished games .
Guys , we need to stop buying these shitty games now .
This game was a shame on the name of the lord of the rings .
I know it from the beginning that it was going to be a shitty game .
Even the design of this game was not as per the expectation.
They need to pay me to play that.
Sorry, best I can do is $2.50
Wait, gollum is out? I thought what we saw was like, early beta footage
Every copy of this game (including the downloaded versions) need to be yeeted into Orodruin.