![]() The good thing is you can get the best of it, with the Quality mode working to perfection. It’s very pretty in some of these sections, really telling a story in and of itself. Visiting these different locations like the Barad-dur Tower in Mordor or the Elven dwellings of Mirkwood is just magical, breathing additional life into the game. Whereas Gollum is a Lord of the Rings game, you can expect a lot of Middle-Earth in the background, and it’s amazing. While that makes sense, you could have as easily made it a cutscene. It’s not super important beyond a couple of moments, so I’m not even sure why it’s in the game besides to enforce certain story elements. This has a pretty specific tutorial moment in the game, but the function is just not there all that much. Stealth is always the preferred option.Īnother feature that is in LOTR: Gollum is a companion system. You can sneak up and kill some enemies, but it’s an afterthought in this game. One thing to not take lightly ia the AI, which can hear or see you if you wander too close. The levels aren’t huge mind you, and it’s usually best to take the non-scenic route, but figuring out your way through these locations is definitely worth the extra time investment. That being said, you can still do your own thing, with multiple paths to take. Most areas you’ll come across with stealth in mind starts with a quick overview of where you’re trying to go and the route to take, which I love. For instance, running along walls can be very inconsistent, working only when you have the perfect angle at times. Also, the controls are ridiculously touchy, often leading me to a quick death from overshooting a jump or missing a ledge altogether. It’s standard platforming, and that’s about it. Climbing to ledges, shimmying across them, running up a wall, jumping to the next wall and grasping vines to climb up, all blend together and make the different areas of the world feel like the same game you’ve already played. It makes sense why it’s here, Gollum is practically made for this style, but it tends to feel too samey after a while. Even so, listening to the battle of the psyches of Gollum and Smeagol is excellent, and wonderfully portrayed here.Īs for the gameplay itself, I could do without the repetitive nature of the platforming. Maybe I just missed the point, but if it’s well constructed, I shouldn’t. It’s great to see the choices being made, but I never felt a Telltale-like consequence of “this person will remember that”. In these, you have to either convince Gollum or Smeagol to do something, and while appreciated, I don’t know that they add the dynamic that was hoped for. There are some moments where it’s clear you’re just going for a different character’s take on a line, but other times it’s more than that. I like the idea put in place by Daedalic Entertainment in having the inner dialogues between Gollum and Smeagol, but I do wonder what makes them impactful. If you can handle these as they occur, it usually pays off with some meaty story for you to enjoy. Some feel like they shouldn’t even be there, feeling a bit like padding and long in the tooth. It’s not just in being slow, it’s that there’s a lot of repetition in what you’re doing, along with very dull sections of chapters. If I could give one piece of advice, it’s to stick around through the rough opening. It all culminates in a very interesting narrative that keeps you engaged with each morsel that comes your way. People severely underestimate him, which is what leads to many of the circumstances you’ll find yourself in. That doesn’t mean Gollum is lacking however, with plenty to say in any situation, along with manipulating people to his will. Here you find different motivations, for Gollum as well as others, and it livens up the foreground of this background character’s life. You tend to feel for Gollum at least a tad by the end of Return of the King, but he’s never fully explored past the means to an end he is.Īfter an extremely slow start (the first chapter is a tutorial and the first three a slog), everything picks up as you become a bit of a personal favorite of the warden. This is where Gollum tends to be at its finest, providing the schizophrenic hobbit some additional depth we haven’t seen. Here is where we find that out, along with some time with the elves leading to his appearance in the movies.Īs you’d think, narrative in this game is paramount to its success. We know from the movies he was in Mordor for a while, but beyond “Sauron tortured him”, we don’t know much more. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum follows the titular character in an exploration of his time captured by Sauron’s forces before his escape.
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