Play as a hobbit corrupted by the Lord of the Rings, focusing on exploration and stealth, focusing on interacting with the environment to solve puzzles.
It's not like a game that should be in 2023. Whether it's the stiffness of character movement, the occasional twitching animation and model, and a large number of scene transitions covered by black screens, it all reveals the roughness of insufficient funding. In terms of gameplay, the platforming and stealth parts are not innovative, lack substantive content, and have almost no systematic system. Players spend most of their time operating Gollum bouncing around repetitive terrain and scenes, a linearly constructed world that lacks value to explore.
The only value of the game is that it tells a story that is not detailed in the main story of The Lord of the Rings. But if you're a non-Lord of the Rings fan, don't expect this story to have any real meaning.
Of course, I'm sure not many people really have high expectations for Gollum. So the less aggressive statement is: If I had to choose between "Lord of the Rings" and "Red Sky Island", I would choose "Red Sky Island".
No one cares if Gollum lives or dies
Let's start with The Lord of the Rings itself. As a well-known fantasy series, the IP of "Lord of the Rings" has not been adapted into a game, among which the more well-known are two "orc Pokémon" games "Shadow Mordor" and "Shadow of War".
When it comes to these two games, Gollum has already lost. Because in terms of gameplay, content volume and world view expansion, "Gollum" has nothing to show off compared to these two earlier "Lord of the Rings" adaptation games. Some might say that Gollum is an AVG game that can't be compared to an RPG. Gollum is hardly a qualified work in any dimension, as detailed below.
The story of the game "Gollum" takes place after The Hobbit: War of the Five Armies, that is, the period between the loss of the Ring by Gollum and the time Gandalf learns of the existence of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings: The Messenger of the Ring, and goes with Aragon to find Gollum. To be honest, this part of the story content that is not explicitly stated in the main story is not important enough to be supplemented.
In addition to Gollum, players will also meet familiar characters such as Gandalf, Elf King, and Ringling, as well as some original characters. Although they cannot be consistent with the image in the movie due to copyright reasons, except for Gollum himself, the rest of the characters have little expressiveness and presence, and the "tool man" attribute is very heavy.
It is gratifying to note that the character performance of Gollum itself is quite eye-catching, whether it is not understanding, making people hear the upset dual personality fragmented voice, or the crappy movement between a mouse and a monkey, all of which are very in line with my impression of the character of Gollum.
The game's makers sought to present the player with an "ideal" grunt, so they filled in a lot of praiseworthy details, including a portrayal of his big-eyed image and a delicate voice acting that is inseparable from the three sentences "My precious". It's a pity that the gameplay is really difficult to immerse yourself in, poor controls will always cause Gollum to die unexpectedly, and there are countless bugs that make people stuck.
Sometimes, I saw Gollum repeatedly fall into the Doomsday Mountain magma under my careless operation. I think Bilbo Baggins really don't steal the ring from Gollum, and directly let Gollum fall into the volcano with the Lord of the Rings in this game, ending the story of The Lord of the Rings early.
I can't tell which is stupider than the enemy or us
Although Gollum is essentially an AVG game, it still incorporates quite a bit of action. The main gameplay of the game is "platform jumping" and "stealth assassination", and there is very little puzzle component. Most of the time, Gollum will jump between cliffs like the protagonists of Uncharted and Assassin's Creed.
However, the controls of the game feel very bad. It can be clearly felt that the jumping action is directly attached to the edge of the platform, rather than free jumping. The judgment of the action is also strange, when you climb a reclining ladder, the jump does not allow you to climb quickly, it will only fall back to the original position. Sometimes jumping sideways between the vines on the mountain wall, you can't quickly move to another vine, but you will fall straight down. Some platforms that look like they can stand, but they can't land. The result is that the game is full of unexpected death points.
The design of the stealth part is also unremarkable, and the enemy's actions are rigid "fixed patrol routes" and "fixed interval rotation directions", requiring the player to observe the pattern to find cover and hidden points and keep advancing. Gollum does not have any special abilities and ways to break the game except for throwing stones to draw attention and assassinate enemies behind his back, resulting in most processes that can only observe the guard route and follow the route set by the process. With such retro gameplay, it is difficult to enjoy it these days.
Gollum will go directly into a dark state that is difficult to detect in a dark place, and I don't know how this setting came about.
There are also quite a few problems with the enemy's vision and alert system. Sometimes I would be spotted above the enemy's head (although they never looked up), and sometimes I would be caught instantly while walking behind the enemy. When Gollum is spotted and triggers a chase, the highlight part comes. Even if he gets under the table in front of the enemy, Gollum can get rid of the chase, because the enemy has no action to grab it from behind the cover, and can only dry stare outside. After a while they will lose their hatred and leave, as if they were an amnesiac.
Best of all, the game only has autosaves, but it doesn't trigger when alert. So while the enemy is still chasing Gollum (with a question mark on his head), reaching the next scene will not trigger the save, even if he has escaped the current level. Once you die, you may even find yourself back in progress earlier than the previous respawn point.
There are basically only two types of enemies in the level, the "Melee" that chases Gollum and the "Ranged" that shoots arrows. Since Gollum runs faster than any enemy, as long as he bypasses melee enemies and ensures that he is not caught, he can ignore all level designs and rush through in a puff of smoke. The AI of long-range enemies is also very outrageous, and sometimes even if Gollum walks up to them, he will only shoot arrows all the way without catching it. I once dodged arrows by bouncing back and forth in front of two archers and regained the joy of playing Rhythm Heaven.
Somewhat stained with a split personality
In addition to platform jumping and stealth, Gollum has another gameplay, but with a small percentage.
As we all know, Gollum was originally a hobbit named "Smeagol", but the power of the Lord of the Rings gave him another personality, namely Gollum. In the game, the two personalities will constantly talk, and when faced with some plot decisions, the two personalities will also have different opinions. The player needs to choose an option to convince the other personality to agree with him, otherwise he will act as he wants.
Don't know how to convince the other person? A genius solution is to choose the option with the opposite opinion, and then deliberately lose out to another personality in the discussion, and you can act according to the ideal opinion.
The choice of some nodes will affect the plot, some scenes will change, and the fate of the characters will change. However, these changes are partial and will not affect the story of The Lord of the Rings.
Although the entire process of "Gollum" is more than ten hours long, the repetitive flow and visual effects are aesthetically fatigued. The story takes place in two main scenes, one is Sauron's fortress and the other is the elven territory, almost half of each. The game is also full of chat plot bridges, basically running back and forth in specific scenes, listening to the characters tell some content that complements the world view of the Lord of the Rings. But if you're not interested in the plot related to Gollum, I'm sure you'll get sleepy quickly.
There are countless vicious bugs in the game. Some scenes do not respond to the interaction with NPCs, and can only be solved by reading files. Reach the mission target point without triggering the plot, read the file to solve. I've even encountered scenes that didn't load up (yes, an entire area became a void without textures) and I had to re-play the current level before refreshing it.
There are also a lot of funny situations that happen during the game, such as a scene set in a chase battle, but no monsters come out to chase Gollum. Under the background of tense music, the scene of Gollum bouncing between the platforms like a leisurely strolling may go down in history. There are many similar examples, in short, the problems encountered in the operation of the game are only a lot more than in "Red Sky Island".
It can't be said that the game has no merit at all, and the puzzle solving in a process, and the parkour process design for tracking targets are not bad. But what can only be considered decent in other games is even much more impressive in the below-average performance of Gollum.
Epilogue:
If Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a short story that complements the Lord of the Rings worldview, or a small-budget movie, it may still be worth watching for Lord of the Rings fans. But as a ten-hour process, it is obviously a physically uncomfortable torture.
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