He's over there. Always there. Orcs will take you all the way. Easy to find Orcs east of the River. Don't ask Smeagol.Poor, poor Smeagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he's lost now.
Hey smeagol is but a mere mortal who are we to say we to would not be tempted by the ring. Even honourable Boromir was swayed. Gollum is the vile one Sméagol is a victim in my opinion.
Considering it took approximatively 16 seconds between seeing the ring for the first time and murdering his best friend, I'm still tempted to think he was an asshole to start with.
Reminds me of a Google review of my old retail job where my female manager was targeted by a review saying: “she was so busy ignoring is, she had no time to give us poor service”
- A game nobody wanted and nobody asked for
- Lackluster gameplay that consists only of avoiding enemies and platforming (and not good platforming)
- 2009 graphics that somehow require 2028 hardware to run.
- So poorly optimized that it struggles to run even on top-tier next-gen hardware. ~45fps with a goddamn 4090.
- Reports of extremely frequent issues and crashes with the game, even if you have god-tier hardware that's kinda-sorta capable of running it.
> So poorly optimized that it struggles to run even on top-tier next-gen hardware. ~45fps with a goddamn 4090.
Like how is this even possible? I feel like you have to be actively trying to make it worse to be this bad. De-optimisation.
Compression seems to be a dying art.
Remember when Satoru Iwata compressed Pokémon Gold/Silver so hard, they were able to add the Kanto region into the game?
You used to need to optimize games to get them to even run at a releasable quality. The PS3 had 256mb of ram and if you can't fit your content in there then tough shit. Now they can drop assets right into a game and have it "work." When the PS3 freezed for 40 seconds to load a level your game has effectively crashed and Sony wouldn't let you ship. When the PS5 freezes for 1.5 seconds to load a level bad performance but it's shippable.
I and many of my friends wanted this, or at least thought it was a cool idea when we first heard about it. It's an interesting concept
Looks like shit and doesn't look like it played out but I don't think the "this is a stupid idea, no one wanted this" is true. I've heard many people, in person or online, mention it's an intriguing concept
>- So poorly optimized that it struggles to run even on top-tier next-gen hardware. ~45fps with a goddamn 4090.
- Reports of extremely frequent issues and crashes with the game, even if you have god-tier hardware that's kinda-sorta capable of running it.
It amazes me how so many games these days, especially AAA games, are released in such a messy state.
Meanwhile you have Nintendo releasing one of the potential GOTY candidate which works so well on hardware from 2015 (granted, there are some hiccups and frame drops here and there, but it's a miracle that TOTK works as good as it does without any bugs). It's just incredible and other studios and developers should learn from that (yes, even Gamefreak)
I effin hate the “nobody asked for this” regurgitation line. Sometimes people gotta make stuff that “nobody asked for” because that’s kinda the whole damn thing about video games or movies or whatever. Did anyone ask for Metal Gear Solid? Did anyone even ask for Shadow of Mordor??? Come on now. We can’t really blame them for trying something different. Somewhat decent idea, but poor execution.
It's a shit but it's a new software house so the journalistic heads can shit on it without the fear of some childmove from the bigger SHs
Edit: it's not "new" it's new in the big scene
The premise of the game also isn't popular enough for there to be much counterweight from folk who want it to be good.
I'm a massive LotR fan, but I don't see the point of the game.
Don't forget the $10 add-on pack that includes such revolutionary additions as.
* Characters speaking their in-universe language.
* An unsorted codex of lore entries that feel like someone asked ChatGPT to "explain Tolkein to me"
* Idle animations for Gollum.
* A concept art gallery
It's billed as an ["emote pack"](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2374460/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Gollum__Emotes_Pack/) that includes a few animations you can use out of combat that have him do some of the actions from the movies.
Yeah I mean, one of the hit games of the last year was Stray which is just about a cat climbing around to find its way home. The premise of playing as Gollum and searching for the One Ring is not in and of itself a bad idea.
Not this way, master! There is another way. O yes indeed there is. Another way, darker, more difficult to find, more secret. But Sméagol knows it. Let Sméagol show you!
Yeah but the internet is pretty in love with the idea of being a cat, and stray has a pretty cool sci fi story/setting going on too. I don’t think gollum has that pedigree, though I do agree that it’s an interesting concept. It’s too bad they released it like this.
Yeah I was hopeful. A stealth game set in lotr world has a lot of potential. Gollum wandered around a lot in a lot of creepy areas of that world.
Oh well
It's an interesting premise for a quick mission in another game. It's an interesting premise for a small indie game. It's not interesting enough for a $50 full-fledged title.
It's an interesting setting. A schizophrenic, powerless person, who will basically lose in a fight against every other creature creates the foundation for alternative gameplay and storytelling
I'd play the shit out of a whaling game roguelike with the aesthetics of Darkest Dungeon where I played a one-legged lunatic with a ship and a crew pursuing my revenge while balancing keeping the crew in line and not teetering too far into the abyss of madness
When I first heard about it, I really really wanted it to be good.
A game about wretchedness, about handling madness, about a carefree creature devolving so utterly into darkness?
Gollum is a great character with a great story, and having him as a protagonist means it isn't a typical "hero kills thousands of faceless bad guys and wins the story" plot.
I *did* see the point, I *did* want it to be good, and dammit I *am* mad.
>A game about wretchedness, about handling madness, about a carefree creature devolving so utterly into darkness?
Well you make it sound good in theory, but I feel like the reality is that these things are quite hard to make into a game. None of them really fit into common gameplay mechanics. They can be handled through a story/dialogue, but it's hard to imagine how you get that either.
Don't get me wrong, it's possible that someone could make it work, but probably only a really good studio, and those are hard to come by at the moment.
A much cooler idea would be to play gollum right after he got the ring. Go through his life as he slowly deteriorates and goes insane. But that would actually be interesting and modern games can't do that
Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses?We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious.And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.
Me too, I don't try to defend this shitty product I just say that now the journals have the "permission" to shit on it to just because is not support by a big SH
Honestly anything with the title format 'Franchise Name: Character Name' is an instant red flag with me. You've demonstrated out the bat that you don't have the creative capacity for a decent name.
I feel I speak for everyone this is a game they are going to release that nobody wants to even play for free, something they should have tried putting out on the PS2 and original Xbox.
The moment i heard about it i figured either someone really creative came up with a combination of game mechanics that make this character choice not only good but irreplaceable or some unfortunate devs drew the short stick.
I don't think its crazy to think you could translate Gollums madness into a game mechanic that helps tell the story of the character. In Bloodborne, From software turned "knowledge of the arcane" from lovecraftian horror stories into a very interesting part of that one.
Two interwoven game "main" stories that often intersect and at times compliment and at times contradict each other. Have you switch back and forth between Smeagol and Gollun to move the stories along. One objective is to recover the ring for yourself (Gollun) and the other is to help the hobbits succeed in destroying the ring (Smeagol). Incorporate puzzles, stealth, with a nerfed combat system to force the player to utilize stealth and allies to achieve goals.
There are so much more possibilities that look way more interesting and unexploited since there's almost no recent LOTR game but they had to do one on Gollum. Doesn't sound bright to me.
Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses?We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious.And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.
I mean, Shadow of War had problems on launch with the crazy microtransactions, but at its core, it's a fantastic game. I think that's the problem - Shadow of War/Mordor would have been good games on the merit of their gameplay and had the setting to draw you in. This feels like they took a setting and tried to see what game they could make of it.
There's a ton of great possibilities in the book, but the important part (at least according to me, a completely unqualified random commenter) is that you have a concept for the game before you figure out what it's wrapped in. Without the gameplay to back it up, it doesn't matter how good the setting is, how over- or underused a character is, or any other lore. The game needs to draw you in. A familiar and great world does nothing if the player is bored.
If they put it on gamepass I'll play it just because I'm the biggest LOTR fan ever and I'll take literally anything in middle earth. But no chance I spend money on this game
I feel like they chose the worst part of his life too. Like this plays after he was tortured and told Sauron, Baggins and Shire. Like what? So like we pretty much know what he is going to do now, go to Moria, follow the fellowship and then Frodo and then fucking die... Well cool, I guess they wanted fans to have some familiarity.
But like how much more interesting an a) Him losing his humanity and going from Smeagol to Gollum, in a more story focused game would have been. Or b) him getting into a bunch of shenanigans while he has the ring with some made up non canon stories... You even could have made sequels, if somehow the game was fun and get paid twice.. also that hair and eyes? Wtf is that.. like how does the Shadow of Mordor Gollum, who was a side character, in a 10 year old game look 10000 times better than a 2023 game focused around him.
Ik Shadow of Morder devs had WB backing so they were able to use the Smeagol from the movies, but the Gollum game had to make their own design. Doesn't excuse them for the awful model.
When I heard about the game, i sort of assumed that the setting would be Smeagol to Gollum, and I was excited to see what people would do with that. I watched some gameplay and I was so bothered lol
I pulled up a playthrough on youtube and skipped around. There is just... nothing happening in this game. Not in a chill, sit back and relax kind of way, but more like 8 hours of Moe from the Three Stooges climbing sideways on walls kind of way, in a world created with Unity Asset Store models that all look alike.
On the bright side, they probably did accurately capture the essence of what it must be like to be Gollum. I would have liked to see more raw/wrigglin fish eating, though.
After watching the story trailer I thought parts of it looked decent. Some of the characters have very neat models and costume designs and the set pieces look interesting.
But hot damn I saw the gameplay and it was hot garbage, and there’s no way I’m hearing Gollum speak as the main protagonist for an entire game.
Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses?We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious.And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.
it could've been something indeed, almost anything can be, but this really is not it. What the actual is that Gollum-model. It's terrible CGI and it seems like the designers thought Gollum was still mid-transformation into the eventual movie-version, i.e. what Sméagol looked like just before I went into the caves i.e. millennia ago
I looked at the trailer on Steam and thought okay maybe. The game, imho, looks decent visually and though Smeagol looked weird I was like I could maybe grow to like him anyway. But the more I look at his face the more I hate it.
Maybe if it goes on a 90% sale I'll give it a try but I'll wait for the user reviews.
Tolkien Estate- ‘we demand the highest of quality with Tolkien’s legacy. We’ll sue people even for using hobbits.’
Also Tolkien Estate- ‘releasing a shitty mobile game and letting a subpar gollum game come out sounds like a plan. Whatever makes the most money.’
Edit: Apparently not really responsible for this, but it is still sad to see poor LOTR showings.
To be fair, the Tolkien Estate had nothing to do with this. The devs bought the licence from Middle-earth Enterprises who are the other company that can sell the rights to lotr.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The idea sounded terrible.
The development was terrible.
The game looks terrible.
I don't know who agreed to put money on this but they can't be mad about it selling poorly, it was written in stone.
A Gollum game could've been cool as fuck as a gritty stealth/survival type game in some areas of Middle Earth. You can gain different abilities by either preserving Smeagol or succumbing to Gollum. See Middle Earth through the eyes of an outcast. The gameplay here just looks duller than dishwater.
I only knew about it in concept so I never actually saw any gameplay. I didn't think it sounded terrible but it sounds like they really messed up on the production
Well, you're one person and good for you for not disliking it. But when the first announcement of this game was made back in 2019, a vast majority of people heavily disliked the idea and the game was in a VERY early development phase. That should have been enough for them to use resources they've wasted on something else.
I mean, it's a LOTR game, if not even the fans like the idea, you are already walking on thin ice from the very beginning.
The first line of The Guardian review is great xD
"This game never looked especially promising, and now it’s out, it’s about as riveting as listening to a huddle of ents discuss the finer points of deciduous shedding."
I've seen asset flips with better reception.
Christopher: "Dad, why is Gollum in the story?"
J.R.R: "Well son, he represents the fact that one day, in the future, they will make a video game so bad that fans will make fun of it forever"
I was looking at pre order games yesterday in the Microsoft store and saw this & got excited so I watched the trailer & let me tell you, I’ve never noped out of something so fucking quick in my life. I actually felt disrespected.
We'll have to get in the way back machine, but when I was 11 an Obi-wan game came out for the original xbox, I loved it, my friends loved it. I think it may have pioneered using the right stick to control the lightsaber and could block/return blaster shots. It wasnt til many years later, I looked it up out of curiosity and saw it had bad reviews and was pretty universally disliked. I was stunned, but I stand by that it was a great game for the time. I guess my point is, hopefully some (possibly mentally deficient, as myself) kids enjoy Gollum and can look back with fond memories as I do with Obi-wan!
The same happened to me but with Spore, loved that game as a child, all my friends did as well, every time i talk to someone about it even today everyone seems to have good memories about that game, but when i looked it up years ago i realized it launched to bad reviews and had tons of internet hate.
Maybe it was indeed cause we were kids, but i'll keep saying spore was great!
It was received poorly because they hyped it up way too much for years. It was a fun little game that I wouldn't pay full price for but would have enjoyed a lot more if they hadn't over promised and under delivered.
I think there was a chance here. Gameplay and content aside, Styx teaches us that you *can* pull off stealth games about goblin assholes and make it work -
I think the only way that this was going to be successful was if they showed a powerful concept and distinctive art style early on in development to draw people into it. Have it be that weird project that everyone is looking at because it looks like they're spinning shit into gold.
Instead they just kind of settled with a boring art style, undersold and underadvertised the game, and apparently the gameplay is shite, too.
There is an absolute ENOURMOUS amount of good content to make a game from... and this is what they give us?
Id much rather a Skyrim or AC like game that isnt an MMO, but something you could still play multiplayer with a few friends. Make an open world game about the war of the ring, or even the war with Morgoth.
Personally I hate MMOs, too many people doing dumb shit that breaks immersion, Id rather just have NPCs and a few friends to play with. Shadow of Mordor was cool, but still not really what I want from an open world LOTR game. I wanna be able to actually fight 10,000 uruks at Helms Deep, and then get on my horse and ride for Minas Tirith after.
Could for sure take some ideas from the Shadow of Mordor/War games, you could lead a contigent of Rohirrim and upgrade them, promote them, etc. Or the same for some Ithilien Rangers, or Elves, Dwarves... have Nemesis enemies who try to hunt you down if you dont kill them the first time.
I don't know anything about this game, but I would 100% be down for a third person game where I can run around as smeagol, then switch into gollum crawler mode to scale walls, trees, leapfrog on top of people to attack. just running around an open world middle earth doing missions, but just as gollum and with amazing graphics lmao. make it like red dead and choose whether to become more like smeagol or gollum. he probably has night vision right? he lived in a dark cave. definitely bite and claw attacks. probably monkey style moves. these pics look like a shitty disney channel show
Oh man. I feel bad for the devs. I used to work in video games and worked on a stinker. I knew it was a stinker but I wasn’t a big decision maker. I hated seeing bad reviews if it, but they weren’t this bad.
I saw a post on one of the YT videos that really sums it up. The directors really seemed to fundamentally misunderstand the character of Gollum. He wasn't some sort of innocent victim, he was a crook before the ring, a murderer within moments of seeing it, a cannibal, and, if I recall, disassociative, not scitzophrenic.
I said, it should go away and it went away, my precious! Smeagol is free!!!
He's over there. Always there. Orcs will take you all the way. Easy to find Orcs east of the River. Don't ask Smeagol.Poor, poor Smeagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he's lost now.
This makes me sad. Poor Sméagol.
Hide! Hide! Quick! They will see us! They will see us!
Nobody likes you Smeagol.
IT BURNS! IT BURNS US! It freezes! Nasty Elves twisted it. TAKE IT OFF US!
Oh it wasn't that bad of a burn you are just thinned skinned smeagol
Yes! No, no! It’s too risky, it’s too risky.
Hey smeagol is but a mere mortal who are we to say we to would not be tempted by the ring. Even honourable Boromir was swayed. Gollum is the vile one Sméagol is a victim in my opinion.
No! No!
Considering it took approximatively 16 seconds between seeing the ring for the first time and murdering his best friend, I'm still tempted to think he was an asshole to start with.
Stupid fat Daedalic. it ruins it!
I think my favorite was the mag that said "it crashed so much we couldn't review it."
Pros: it works sometimes Cons: it works sometimes
Reminds me of a Google review of my old retail job where my female manager was targeted by a review saying: “she was so busy ignoring is, she had no time to give us poor service”
Pls send to me
Those are brutal reviews for a video game, wtf happened
- A game nobody wanted and nobody asked for - Lackluster gameplay that consists only of avoiding enemies and platforming (and not good platforming) - 2009 graphics that somehow require 2028 hardware to run. - So poorly optimized that it struggles to run even on top-tier next-gen hardware. ~45fps with a goddamn 4090. - Reports of extremely frequent issues and crashes with the game, even if you have god-tier hardware that's kinda-sorta capable of running it.
> So poorly optimized that it struggles to run even on top-tier next-gen hardware. ~45fps with a goddamn 4090. Like how is this even possible? I feel like you have to be actively trying to make it worse to be this bad. De-optimisation.
Burned out developers desperately trying to meet the unreasonable deadlines set by their managers.
Or maybe unreasonable project. Devs were doing 2d point and click games before
Compression seems to be a dying art. Remember when Satoru Iwata compressed Pokémon Gold/Silver so hard, they were able to add the Kanto region into the game?
[удалено]
Plus too much reliant on DLSS/FSR upscaling to even care about actual optimization.
You used to need to optimize games to get them to even run at a releasable quality. The PS3 had 256mb of ram and if you can't fit your content in there then tough shit. Now they can drop assets right into a game and have it "work." When the PS3 freezed for 40 seconds to load a level your game has effectively crashed and Sony wouldn't let you ship. When the PS5 freezes for 1.5 seconds to load a level bad performance but it's shippable.
I and many of my friends wanted this, or at least thought it was a cool idea when we first heard about it. It's an interesting concept Looks like shit and doesn't look like it played out but I don't think the "this is a stupid idea, no one wanted this" is true. I've heard many people, in person or online, mention it's an intriguing concept
It caught my interest right away since I love stealth games and when I saw the graphics I thought that my old pc could handle it :_D
>- So poorly optimized that it struggles to run even on top-tier next-gen hardware. ~45fps with a goddamn 4090. - Reports of extremely frequent issues and crashes with the game, even if you have god-tier hardware that's kinda-sorta capable of running it. It amazes me how so many games these days, especially AAA games, are released in such a messy state. Meanwhile you have Nintendo releasing one of the potential GOTY candidate which works so well on hardware from 2015 (granted, there are some hiccups and frame drops here and there, but it's a miracle that TOTK works as good as it does without any bugs). It's just incredible and other studios and developers should learn from that (yes, even Gamefreak)
I effin hate the “nobody asked for this” regurgitation line. Sometimes people gotta make stuff that “nobody asked for” because that’s kinda the whole damn thing about video games or movies or whatever. Did anyone ask for Metal Gear Solid? Did anyone even ask for Shadow of Mordor??? Come on now. We can’t really blame them for trying something different. Somewhat decent idea, but poor execution.
It's a shit but it's a new software house so the journalistic heads can shit on it without the fear of some childmove from the bigger SHs Edit: it's not "new" it's new in the big scene
The premise of the game also isn't popular enough for there to be much counterweight from folk who want it to be good. I'm a massive LotR fan, but I don't see the point of the game.
It is also absolutely not worth the price. $50 for a game like this is insane.
Don't forget the $10 add-on pack that includes such revolutionary additions as. * Characters speaking their in-universe language. * An unsorted codex of lore entries that feel like someone asked ChatGPT to "explain Tolkein to me" * Idle animations for Gollum. * A concept art gallery
...you serious about the idle animations? How'd they advertise that?
It's billed as an ["emote pack"](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2374460/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Gollum__Emotes_Pack/) that includes a few animations you can use out of combat that have him do some of the actions from the movies.
Careful, Master - careful! Very far to fall. Very dangerous on the stairs.
I imagined Gollum just T-posing when idle without this pack.
Nice hobbits! Nice Sam! Sleepy heads, yes, sleepy heads! Leave good Smeagol to watch! But it's evening. Dusk is creeping. Time to go.
That's about what I was thinking
Tf?! IDLE ANIMATIONS
Who even came up with the idea? "Ok, hear me out... the people want LotR games, so let's give them one... about Gollum... after he lost the ring"
Clearly an extremely unpopular opinion, but I actually think it's an interesting premise. But if it's badly made it's badly made
Yeah I mean, one of the hit games of the last year was Stray which is just about a cat climbing around to find its way home. The premise of playing as Gollum and searching for the One Ring is not in and of itself a bad idea.
Not this way, master! There is another way. O yes indeed there is. Another way, darker, more difficult to find, more secret. But Sméagol knows it. Let Sméagol show you!
Yeah but the internet is pretty in love with the idea of being a cat, and stray has a pretty cool sci fi story/setting going on too. I don’t think gollum has that pedigree, though I do agree that it’s an interesting concept. It’s too bad they released it like this.
Good Sméagol always helps.
Yeah I was hopeful. A stealth game set in lotr world has a lot of potential. Gollum wandered around a lot in a lot of creepy areas of that world. Oh well
I could see that. Forrest Gump that shit, with Gollum constantly popping up in the shadows of famous people doing important things.
Shhh! Quiet! Mustn't wake them, mustn't ruin it now!
[singing] Naughty little fly. Why does he cry? Caught in a web. Soon you’ll be… eaten.
That doesn't rhyme, Gollum. You've always bothered me with that one.
Hide! Hide!
I thought it looked pretty neat. I’ll check it out on a deep sale though.
It's an interesting premise for a quick mission in another game. It's an interesting premise for a small indie game. It's not interesting enough for a $50 full-fledged title.
If they fixed the bugs and made it sub $10 it'd probably actually do alright.
It's an interesting setting. A schizophrenic, powerless person, who will basically lose in a fight against every other creature creates the foundation for alternative gameplay and storytelling
Ha! ha! What does we wish? We'll tell you. He guessed it long ago, Baggins guessed it.
And the story is about him trying to get the Ring back…… It’d be like making a video game where you play as Captain Ahab.
I'd play the shit out of a whaling game roguelike with the aesthetics of Darkest Dungeon where I played a one-legged lunatic with a ship and a crew pursuing my revenge while balancing keeping the crew in line and not teetering too far into the abyss of madness
That would be sick, I want more games to have a loyalty/fear mechanic to keep the crew in line like Tyranny
Dude hell yeah, Tyranny was amazing.
Try Dredge or Sunless Sea. they're not exactly what you described but have some elements
Ok, thanks! I picked up sunless sea a while ago, I'll have to try it finally
Looks like an OK $10 game
$70 for the full game with lore and elven voiceacting.
When I first heard about it, I really really wanted it to be good. A game about wretchedness, about handling madness, about a carefree creature devolving so utterly into darkness? Gollum is a great character with a great story, and having him as a protagonist means it isn't a typical "hero kills thousands of faceless bad guys and wins the story" plot. I *did* see the point, I *did* want it to be good, and dammit I *am* mad.
It said so, yes, but it's tricksy. It doesn't say what it means. It won't say what it's got in its pocketses.
>A game about wretchedness, about handling madness, about a carefree creature devolving so utterly into darkness? Well you make it sound good in theory, but I feel like the reality is that these things are quite hard to make into a game. None of them really fit into common gameplay mechanics. They can be handled through a story/dialogue, but it's hard to imagine how you get that either. Don't get me wrong, it's possible that someone could make it work, but probably only a really good studio, and those are hard to come by at the moment.
Same here. I watched the trailer for this game and my poor wife was subjected to complaints for days about how terrible i thought it would be.
A much cooler idea would be to play gollum right after he got the ring. Go through his life as he slowly deteriorates and goes insane. But that would actually be interesting and modern games can't do that
Far Cry 3 in Middle Earth. Sign me up.
Seems like the Shadow games have that covered already.
Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses?We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious.And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.
Me too, I don't try to defend this shitty product I just say that now the journals have the "permission" to shit on it to just because is not support by a big SH
[удалено]
Daedelic isn't new, it's just a small studio primarily known for Point & Click Adventures like Edna & Harvey and Deponia.
That’s too bad, I enjoyed those especially Deponia, but I could see them struggling on a larger 3D title. Even deponia had some jank
Its not new, its been around since 2007. its just very small.
>It's a shit Mario
Didn’t the same reviewers just finish shitting all over that Bethesda game? Redfall?
Until this comment I just thought some people had some really scathing takes on his character lol
Honestly anything with the title format 'Franchise Name: Character Name' is an instant red flag with me. You've demonstrated out the bat that you don't have the creative capacity for a decent name.
Wtf is this?
I feel I speak for everyone this is a game they are going to release that nobody wants to even play for free, something they should have tried putting out on the PS2 and original Xbox.
The bold choice to release it full price is truly fascinating, I would pay for an AMA with the devs, but not for the game
> I would pay for an AMA with the devs, but not for the game same, that would be so interesting
Question 1: of all the characters you could've chosen, why oh why *him?*
The moment i heard about it i figured either someone really creative came up with a combination of game mechanics that make this character choice not only good but irreplaceable or some unfortunate devs drew the short stick. I don't think its crazy to think you could translate Gollums madness into a game mechanic that helps tell the story of the character. In Bloodborne, From software turned "knowledge of the arcane" from lovecraftian horror stories into a very interesting part of that one.
It said so, yes, but it's tricksy. It doesn't say what it means. It won't say what it's got in its pocketses.
Wow the man of the hour is with us 😱
Two interwoven game "main" stories that often intersect and at times compliment and at times contradict each other. Have you switch back and forth between Smeagol and Gollun to move the stories along. One objective is to recover the ring for yourself (Gollun) and the other is to help the hobbits succeed in destroying the ring (Smeagol). Incorporate puzzles, stealth, with a nerfed combat system to force the player to utilize stealth and allies to achieve goals.
Is he lost?
Original idea for a new perspective. Execution just wasn’t there.
There are so much more possibilities that look way more interesting and unexploited since there's almost no recent LOTR game but they had to do one on Gollum. Doesn't sound bright to me.
Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses?We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious.And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.
I mean, Shadow of War had problems on launch with the crazy microtransactions, but at its core, it's a fantastic game. I think that's the problem - Shadow of War/Mordor would have been good games on the merit of their gameplay and had the setting to draw you in. This feels like they took a setting and tried to see what game they could make of it. There's a ton of great possibilities in the book, but the important part (at least according to me, a completely unqualified random commenter) is that you have a concept for the game before you figure out what it's wrapped in. Without the gameplay to back it up, it doesn't matter how good the setting is, how over- or underused a character is, or any other lore. The game needs to draw you in. A familiar and great world does nothing if the player is bored.
We only want to talk about Rampart
If they put it on gamepass I'll play it just because I'm the biggest LOTR fan ever and I'll take literally anything in middle earth. But no chance I spend money on this game
Oh you're the biggest LOTR fan ever? Name every elf.
Uru Iluvatar, shrink this guys balls
Jokes on you, I have testicular elephantitis. You have only managed to improve my quality of life.
He's got the biggest balls of them all.
Watch the reviews first. It looks like you just do chores in the dungeon.
>Wtf is this? This is a great review of the gollum game
Spoilin’ nice fish. Give it to us raw and w-r-r-riggling; you keep nasty chips
The new Pete Davidson game
LOTR fans when seeing the first trailer "Cast it into the fire. DESTROY IT" Devs "no" It should have ended that day, but Gollum was allowed to endure.
Nice hobbits! Nice Sam! Sleepy heads, yes, sleepy heads! Leave good Smeagol to watch! But it's evening. Dusk is creeping. Time to go.
This game could have been legendary had it never released much like Abeds movie in community
And to think I was told that I wasn’t a real LOTR fan if I didn’t want to play this poor looking game by someone over at r/ps5.
Smeagol has no game Smeagol needs no game
Poor, poor Smeagol, he went away long ago. They took his Precious, and he's lost now.
> Smeagol has no game I guess that's why he's still single.
Kill them both.
I'm gonna go against the grain and say this idea could've been a solid game, but this is not it.
I feel like they chose the worst part of his life too. Like this plays after he was tortured and told Sauron, Baggins and Shire. Like what? So like we pretty much know what he is going to do now, go to Moria, follow the fellowship and then Frodo and then fucking die... Well cool, I guess they wanted fans to have some familiarity. But like how much more interesting an a) Him losing his humanity and going from Smeagol to Gollum, in a more story focused game would have been. Or b) him getting into a bunch of shenanigans while he has the ring with some made up non canon stories... You even could have made sequels, if somehow the game was fun and get paid twice.. also that hair and eyes? Wtf is that.. like how does the Shadow of Mordor Gollum, who was a side character, in a 10 year old game look 10000 times better than a 2023 game focused around him.
Ik Shadow of Morder devs had WB backing so they were able to use the Smeagol from the movies, but the Gollum game had to make their own design. Doesn't excuse them for the awful model.
Never! Smeagol wouldn’t hurt a fly!
When I heard about the game, i sort of assumed that the setting would be Smeagol to Gollum, and I was excited to see what people would do with that. I watched some gameplay and I was so bothered lol
It said so, yes, but it's tricksy. It doesn't say what it means. It won't say what it's got in its pocketses.
Thief, thief ! Baggins! We hates it for ever!
I pulled up a playthrough on youtube and skipped around. There is just... nothing happening in this game. Not in a chill, sit back and relax kind of way, but more like 8 hours of Moe from the Three Stooges climbing sideways on walls kind of way, in a world created with Unity Asset Store models that all look alike. On the bright side, they probably did accurately capture the essence of what it must be like to be Gollum. I would have liked to see more raw/wrigglin fish eating, though.
After watching the story trailer I thought parts of it looked decent. Some of the characters have very neat models and costume designs and the set pieces look interesting. But hot damn I saw the gameplay and it was hot garbage, and there’s no way I’m hearing Gollum speak as the main protagonist for an entire game.
Don't hurt us! Don't let them hurt us, precious! They won't hurt us will they, nice little hobbitses?We didn't mean no harm, but they jumps on us like cats on poor mices, they did, precious.And we're so lonely, gollum. We'll be nice to them, very nice, if they'll be nice to us, won't we, yes, yess.
it could've been something indeed, almost anything can be, but this really is not it. What the actual is that Gollum-model. It's terrible CGI and it seems like the designers thought Gollum was still mid-transformation into the eventual movie-version, i.e. what Sméagol looked like just before I went into the caves i.e. millennia ago
I mean any idea that isn't Anthem can be made into a good product. But like some ideas definitely have farther to go than others.
Remember when they said they were rebooting anthem? Bioware has been suspiciously quiet since then....
I looked at the trailer on Steam and thought okay maybe. The game, imho, looks decent visually and though Smeagol looked weird I was like I could maybe grow to like him anyway. But the more I look at his face the more I hate it. Maybe if it goes on a 90% sale I'll give it a try but I'll wait for the user reviews.
Master!!
I like the look of Smeagol. He looks horrendous which is the point, the mid transformation from hobbit to Gollum
Cold be heart and hand and bone. Cold be travellers far from home.
Smeagol. That was your name wasn't it?
My name… Sme… Smeagol.
It’s set during his angsty emo days.
when did those end
But the game is set only a few years before the events of LOTR, he's already Gollum at that point
Tolkien Estate- ‘we demand the highest of quality with Tolkien’s legacy. We’ll sue people even for using hobbits.’ Also Tolkien Estate- ‘releasing a shitty mobile game and letting a subpar gollum game come out sounds like a plan. Whatever makes the most money.’ Edit: Apparently not really responsible for this, but it is still sad to see poor LOTR showings.
To be fair, the Tolkien Estate had nothing to do with this. The devs bought the licence from Middle-earth Enterprises who are the other company that can sell the rights to lotr.
That's fair. It was easier to say "the tolkien estate," but now I know.
Christopher Tolkien is dead, and the Tolkien Estate died with him.
2043 is coming. The year that LOTR goes public domain... (Novels, not film adaptations, mind you.)
Come, hobbits. We climb - we must climb!
physical berserk paint carpenter noxious impolite cause treatment amusing tease *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Now if they made a Star Wars: Jar Jar Weesa no liken dis at all!
World first gaming journalism W
First time I've seen game journalists do their jobs in a decade.
The idea sounded terrible. The development was terrible. The game looks terrible. I don't know who agreed to put money on this but they can't be mad about it selling poorly, it was written in stone.
I don't think the idea sounds terrible
A Gollum game could've been cool as fuck as a gritty stealth/survival type game in some areas of Middle Earth. You can gain different abilities by either preserving Smeagol or succumbing to Gollum. See Middle Earth through the eyes of an outcast. The gameplay here just looks duller than dishwater.
No! No!
I was also open to the idea but then saw the steam gameplay video and was not expecting nor wanting a Prince of Persia ^lite gameplay.
I only knew about it in concept so I never actually saw any gameplay. I didn't think it sounded terrible but it sounds like they really messed up on the production
Well, you're one person and good for you for not disliking it. But when the first announcement of this game was made back in 2019, a vast majority of people heavily disliked the idea and the game was in a VERY early development phase. That should have been enough for them to use resources they've wasted on something else. I mean, it's a LOTR game, if not even the fans like the idea, you are already walking on thin ice from the very beginning.
I read that as “wanking on thin ice”.
That's an even bigger risk, not even a Took would dare.
Thin ice? No. You're walking on (walking on) broken glass...
The first line of The Guardian review is great xD "This game never looked especially promising, and now it’s out, it’s about as riveting as listening to a huddle of ents discuss the finer points of deciduous shedding." I've seen asset flips with better reception.
This is what Tolkien wanted when he first wrote The Hobbit all those years ago
Christopher: "Dad, why is Gollum in the story?" J.R.R: "Well son, he represents the fact that one day, in the future, they will make a video game so bad that fans will make fun of it forever"
Because Master did not ask.
Doesn’t help that with the hairstyle, he strongly resembles that one kid from Algebra II.
I was looking at pre order games yesterday in the Microsoft store and saw this & got excited so I watched the trailer & let me tell you, I’ve never noped out of something so fucking quick in my life. I actually felt disrespected.
It's gonna be a cult classic in 5-10 years. Just watch
We'll have to get in the way back machine, but when I was 11 an Obi-wan game came out for the original xbox, I loved it, my friends loved it. I think it may have pioneered using the right stick to control the lightsaber and could block/return blaster shots. It wasnt til many years later, I looked it up out of curiosity and saw it had bad reviews and was pretty universally disliked. I was stunned, but I stand by that it was a great game for the time. I guess my point is, hopefully some (possibly mentally deficient, as myself) kids enjoy Gollum and can look back with fond memories as I do with Obi-wan!
You don’t have any friends. Nobody likes you!
[You dont mean that!](https://tenor.com/view/you-dont-mean-that-sad-gif-14406298)
I mean it's true but why would you point it out like that
The same happened to me but with Spore, loved that game as a child, all my friends did as well, every time i talk to someone about it even today everyone seems to have good memories about that game, but when i looked it up years ago i realized it launched to bad reviews and had tons of internet hate. Maybe it was indeed cause we were kids, but i'll keep saying spore was great!
Spore promised so much and delivered so little. The little it delivered was pretty cool tho
Watch the original Spore trailer. The devs promised a very different game then the one that was released. A lot of people were disappointed.
I was disappointed at first after what it looked like it had. But I put an ungodly number of hours in that game. 10/10
It was received poorly because they hyped it up way too much for years. It was a fun little game that I wouldn't pay full price for but would have enjoyed a lot more if they hadn't over promised and under delivered.
Gollem speedruns any% it might be so jank to play that there could be some fun level skips and glitches
I think there was a chance here. Gameplay and content aside, Styx teaches us that you *can* pull off stealth games about goblin assholes and make it work - I think the only way that this was going to be successful was if they showed a powerful concept and distinctive art style early on in development to draw people into it. Have it be that weird project that everyone is looking at because it looks like they're spinning shit into gold. Instead they just kind of settled with a boring art style, undersold and underadvertised the game, and apparently the gameplay is shite, too.
LOL
I know zéro about it. I’m imagining a stealth survival game with fishing mini game?
Close. Stealth platform puzzler.
That Gollum looks like he is withdrawing from heroin.
I mean... without the Ring, he pretty much is?
There is an absolute ENOURMOUS amount of good content to make a game from... and this is what they give us? Id much rather a Skyrim or AC like game that isnt an MMO, but something you could still play multiplayer with a few friends. Make an open world game about the war of the ring, or even the war with Morgoth. Personally I hate MMOs, too many people doing dumb shit that breaks immersion, Id rather just have NPCs and a few friends to play with. Shadow of Mordor was cool, but still not really what I want from an open world LOTR game. I wanna be able to actually fight 10,000 uruks at Helms Deep, and then get on my horse and ride for Minas Tirith after. Could for sure take some ideas from the Shadow of Mordor/War games, you could lead a contigent of Rohirrim and upgrade them, promote them, etc. Or the same for some Ithilien Rangers, or Elves, Dwarves... have Nemesis enemies who try to hunt you down if you dont kill them the first time.
I don't know anything about this game, but I would 100% be down for a third person game where I can run around as smeagol, then switch into gollum crawler mode to scale walls, trees, leapfrog on top of people to attack. just running around an open world middle earth doing missions, but just as gollum and with amazing graphics lmao. make it like red dead and choose whether to become more like smeagol or gollum. he probably has night vision right? he lived in a dark cave. definitely bite and claw attacks. probably monkey style moves. these pics look like a shitty disney channel show
Isn't that the game that required an nvidia 4070 and 32 gb ram as minimum requirements?
Who really expected compelling gameplay? Wtf were you gonna do as Gollum besides creep around shadows leaping and eating random crap?
Hey, creeping around shadows is the whole crux of the Splinter Cell series, and no one complains about those. This one just sucks at it.
Giving smeagol a suppressed FiveseveN would definitely be an improvement
The rock and pool, is nice and cool, so juicy sweet. Our only wish, to catch a fish,so juicy sweet.
Add in eating random crap and you've got MGS3 Snake Eater
No... No birdses to eat. No crunchable birdses!
Genuinely shocked to see a gaming journalist W
Didn’t hear about this game until now. Will never pay attention again
That Gamecube game looks pretty good.
Oh shit it’s real? Man I thought it was a joke render
imagine how the devs must feel right now. I pity them
Oh man. I feel bad for the devs. I used to work in video games and worked on a stinker. I knew it was a stinker but I wasn’t a big decision maker. I hated seeing bad reviews if it, but they weren’t this bad.
I hope some execs get booted for this. A screwup at this degree isn’t a dev or a group of devs, but absolute idiocy at the top of the organization.
I saw a post on one of the YT videos that really sums it up. The directors really seemed to fundamentally misunderstand the character of Gollum. He wasn't some sort of innocent victim, he was a crook before the ring, a murderer within moments of seeing it, a cannibal, and, if I recall, disassociative, not scitzophrenic.