Imagine spending 50 dollars on a game and upon opening it the developers say “sorry”.

This game is like if EA released a new FIFA game where you get to play as the guy who sweeps the parking lot.

I love my wife. She'll be out browsing the store and just randomly decide to surprise me with a game. It's super cute, but she never checks reviews and isn't a gamer herself, so this was one of those games that she bought me on a whim. I’m starting to think she might not love me.

Golum looks like the unknown offspring of Doby from Harry Potter and Toby Mcguire. Definitely looks like he's addicted to a lot more than just the one ring.

The worst part is that 10 years from now, a niche video game Youtuber will post gameplay of this and the comments will be filled with people saying "deadass, this game was my childhood frfr" and we'll all know that their parents secretly hated them and expressed it by buying this game for them to play too.

This game makes you feel exactly like Gollum. Bitter, sad, broken, depressed and alone. It's a Gollum type game.

This game is brilliant and should be treated as such. The player slowly descents into madness and turns into a screaming creature that talks to itself in self hatred, just like Gollum. The inconsistent controls is just the game immersing you in Gollum's descent into madness. A masterpiece of immersion.

As a world renowned Tolkien scholar, I can confirm that Tolkien did in fact intend for Gollum to wall run but knew that the world wasn't ready for such a groundbreaking innovation so it wasn't included in the books.

Simply looking at Gollum's busted ass face model gives you all the information you need to know about whether or not you should purchase this game. Yet, despite all the justified jokes… I didn’t think it was half that bad. I know what you’re thinking, that’s the madness talking, but please hear me out.

I’m not saying it’s a good game per se, but the story really got its hooks on me and wouldn’t let go for weeks after I rolled credits. So much so that I made an essay to try and rationalise my thoughts. If anyone from Daedalic comes across this review, thank you for an exceptional story. And I swear I’m not a victim of self abuse.

I played the game inspite or maybe even due to the bad criticisms it obtained from players and reviewers. Without having watched any in-depth review of the game I can guess which parts of the game were not so well received and I want to give some arguments here why I stil think that the game can be enjoyable and is actually a pretty good game for what it was meant to be.

Let me start with the core gameplay, which is a combination of a platformer and a stealth game. In many cases Gollum has to climb on big structures like buildings, rocks or trees in order to reach a certain location in the level. While the way this works feels a bit clunky at the beginning, it gets more and more natural the longer one plays. There are frustrating moments here and there where one needs to repeat certain difficult sections over and over again until a jump or another action fits. But I think that the game is very forgiving with the player, because it has many automatic checkpoints, so that the amount of repetition is kept to a minimum.

I only experienced a few cases where I felt like the game could have been more generous with checkpoints. For me the platforming parts of the game never got boring, because there were always cases where one had to investigate the environment in order to be able to find the next section. In addition, the different levels are very diverse and have some beautiful graphics as well, particularly in the woods by the elves.

The second big element of the gameplay are the stealth sections where Gollum needs to sneak past orcs or elves, sometimes also combined with platforming elements. To make this part easier, Gollum has the ability to look through objects to visualise enemies or other objects to interact with, very similar to Assassin's Creed. And this part was actually the most fun for me, because in many cases it was quite tricky to find a proper solution.

And as a third element of the gameplay there are few (I'd say) puzzles known from classical adventure games (which were the core expertise of the Daedalic development studio). Since here the objective sometimes was to find and collect stuff it was not very engaging most of the time. Because the yellow marker always showed where to go. And I think that this part of the game could have been made more exciting. If Daedalic would have made Gollum less action and more adventure it could have become a great game I think.

I still enjoyed Gollum, however. Because all the above mentioned game elements are woven into a story which gets more and more exciting the deeper one is in the game. Gollum must find his way out of the deepest areas of the realm of the dark lord and out of the impenetrable woods controled by the elves. All in order to be able to be free to find the thief who stole his treasure! And all while trying to figure out whether he wants to be “Gollum”or “Smeagol”. I must add it was utterly fascinating to see the struggle between Gollum’s two sides, and the revelation that it's actually more complex than one is evil and the other is not.

It honestly makes me kind of mad how much hate the game gets, when it genuinely has several aspects that are good or decent, like the story, enviroments and music. The story actually feels canon, which alone is incredible in todays landscape of always throwing source-material in the garbage. Mell is also honestly a great addition to the lore. If this had been released for the N64 or PS1, it probably would have been remembered as a cult classic. I'm someone who likes to play retro games from the NES to N64 era, even ones I have no nostalgia towards. Most of those games are janky and have either garbage gameplay or garbage story, but one of them usually redeems the other.

It's the same for this game, but people don't see it that way. Expectations are different today. It honestly just feels mean and heartless to trash this game so hard, when it's clear the devs actually did their best and were very passionate. I would never feel bad if EA had released something like this.
Kind of makes me afraid to ever release any fan-made work or indie game, because if you can't match a billion dollar studio, it's better to just not try I guess.

So, despite all the jokes and the hate… I recommend it. If you give it a chance you’ll find that despite all the bashing for this game, the story and the decisions you had to make are way more interesting than you ever could’ve expected. Perhaps wait for a sale. I'm ready for a sequel but something tells me we're not getting one lmao.

7/10