"A Journey to the West game, but you play the role of an old turtle carrying several masters and apprentices across the river."
Since its release on the 25th, Lord of the Rings: Gollum has been bombarded with non-stop bad reviews from the world's media and players, and so far, the game has maintained an average media score of 36 and a player rating of 1.2 on Metacritic, surpassing Red Sky Island as the lowest-rated game of the year.
This is a game that takes on the role of "Gollum" in the story of The Lord of the Rings, stealth through multiple scenarios. From the beginning of its announcement, the project has puzzled the outside world: the world of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Lord of the Rings" has countless backgrounds that can be used to adapt characters and stories into games, and the production team chose a short, ugly, and unpleasant "Gollum" as the protagonist, is anyone really willing to play such a creature for adventure? Or is there really something "unique" on the part of the producers that guarantees the popularity of a game?
Before the game's release, the confidence and talk that many producers showed in social networks and interviews deepened the doubts of the outside world, and they seemed to send the message that our game really has something.
However, word of mouth after the release of the work speaks for itself. This game has achieved rare results in audio and video performance, gameplay, script, etc. without exception.
In terms of graphics, thanks to the mature game industry system in the West, the modeling and texture level of the work is not a lag (compared to other aspects of the game), but the monotony of the art style and various inexplicable picture bugs make players not get a good look.
And the level design of the game is also very backward, giving people a blunt reproduction of the classic stealth game a decade or two ago, and the level binding, the gameplay is also extremely monotonous, most of the time in the game players are repeating the two actions of "climbing" and "jumping", and the operation of these two actions is also very poor, many players reflect that the judgment of their climbing point and jumping platform is too strict and inaccurate, the platform that should be easily climbed is not grasped, and the occasion that should have fallen inexplicably grabbed the platform, This is devastating to the player's gameplay experience.
Similarly, the game's plot is extremely boring. Probably in order to adapt the level and gameplay, what the protagonist "Gollum" does throughout the whole process is almost a cycle of "escape-jail-escape-escape-jailbreak", which neither shows the charm of the world view of "The Lord of the Rings" nor makes fans of the original work smile, even as a fan of selling IP, it is also a failure.
In addition to the content of the game, the developer of the work, Daedalic Entertainment, is a German game company, previously better known as "Abyss", the company has a wealth of 2D game development experience, some 2D works are also well received, but there are almost no 3D works, so "Lord of the Rings: Gollum" can be regarded as a failed attempt to enter 3D games.
As far as the IP of "The Lord of the Rings" is concerned, as the pinnacle of fantasy novels in the 20th century, there has long been such a popular and popular work as "The Lord of the Rings" in the film and television field, and the adaptation of games has not been satisfactory for many years, before "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum", the "Middle-earth" series is its most widely known work in the field of games, but the sales are not outstanding, so although "The Lord of the Rings" is suitable for adapting games in terms of content, IP also has a high topicality, but its potential in the game field still needs to be tapped.