Players can now play The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, but the results aren’t quite what they expected in several ways. Not only is this the worst-reviewed video game of 2023, but some hilariously unflattering comparisons to its pre-release pictures have been made.
Gollum for the PC has an overall Metacritic score of 43, while Gollum for the PS5 has a score of 40. (The website does not maintain ratings for the Xbox versions.) A 52 for Crime Boss: Rockay City and a 54 for the despised Redfall on PC serve as comparisons. To be fair to Gollum, only a very small percentage of video games released each year receive favourable reviews from critics to be listed on Metacritic, and I’m sure you could find much worse if you browse the Steam store’s bottom releases. Still, those are poor reviews.
In our own Gollum review, Alex Avard gives the game 2 stars out of 5, right in the middle of the evaluation curve, calling it “jeopardised, inelegant, and a little an eyesore.” Separately, Alex also tweeted a comparison of a pre-release screenshot from the video game with one from the shipping version, and the difference is astounding.
early in the day. One of the worst video games I’ve played recently is Gollum. The difference between this marketing screenshot and the actual video game gives you an excellent summary of why, if you can’t be bothered to read the entire critique.pic.twitter.com/3g2Cf9nR9L https:// t.co/ RW0556ov2vMay 25, 2023
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Games constantly advance, and the pre-release screen does note that it is in a “pre-alpha state” and subject to change, but this makes the utterly pointless Puddlegate debate look dumb. Take a look at those font styles instead of how much goofier and dead-eyed Gollum looks in this picture! Even Ice T would find this appalling.
Despite the funny nature of these contrasts, it’s awful to see a project that many designers spent many years working on launched in such a situation. We can only hope that the next project that Daedalic Entertainment works on will have more success than its previous, highly appreciated video games.
You can choose from the titles included in our guide to the top Lord of the Rings video games.
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Dustin Bailey, who is currently stationed in Missouri, joined the GamesRadar team in May 2022 as a Staff Writer. Since 2015, he has covered video games, first as a freelancer and later for almost 5 years as a news author at PCGamesN (with occasional dalliances into anime and professional fumbling). His passion for video games was ignited somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and today you can usually find him dividing his free time between playing classic video games, the newest blockbuster action-adventure game, or playing a significant amount of American Truck Simulator.
