The Lord of the Rings is a widely beloved franchise, and that makes it dangerous territory to tread upon unless you’re certain you’re going to do it right. Unfortunately, it became apparent months before release that Daedalic Entertainment’s entry into Tolkien’s universe was going to be somewhat of a letdown, the severity of which wasn’t made fully clear until it came out.
Prior to release, I was a huge optimist regarding LotR: Gollum. The images they released of the environments looked incredible, and given the alleged nature of the gameplay, I hoped travelling through Middle Earth would have been as exciting as Peter Jackson made it look. The books are widely known for how much we see the main characters traversing through Middle Earth, so LotR: Gollum seemed like it was finally going to give players a viewpoint into the journey that the titular character underwent over the years. Disappointingly, the game only shows a rather small glimpse of what that journey looked like, and it wasn’t the glimpse fans really cared to see.
While it makes sense to try to fill in some of the gaps in the story regarding what we know about Gollum prior to the books, much of the game takes place at a point shortly before the books cross his path. It’s a time period where Gollum experiences a great deal, but I would have been more interested in seeing what his journey looked like prior to having been captured by Sauron. While Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War have demonstrated how good Mordor can be as a setting, they made me want to explore more of the world. Not only that, but they’ve also spoiled me in terms of traversal and combat, all things that LotR: Gollum seems to be lacking.
I don’t always trust reviews for games because I like to make the judgment for myself. However, when you do a quick Google search of the game, you’re greeted with a plethora of gaming publications lamenting both the controls and the story; it’s not a great start. Daedalic describes Gollum’s “exceptional agility,” but any gameplay you watch doesn’t really make his movement look anything but painful.
My concern isn’t just that the game doesn’t necessarily look good outside of the environments, but that it doesn’t look like it feels good. The game appears clunky and unfinished, and in a market that’s filled with great games for oftentimes less money, it’s very hard to justify spending even $50 on a game that from the jump doesn’t show promise.
For the longest time, I kept telling myself that I was just going to get the game, not listen to the negative reviews and ignore my gut feeling about it. After all, even if I get some good LotR story, I’d be happy with that as a fan. The problem was, every time I’d look into the game, I’d find another reason to make me hesitate on pulling the trigger, and then I saw the development team’s apology.
Once I saw that the team behind the game had to address the game as having caused “disappointment” among fans, it became clear that there was now no longer any way I could justify this purchase. Even through their promises to fix the bugs and technical issues, I can’t help but to feel the disappointment of yet another missed opportunity.
Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated problem for Daedalic either. It’s becoming more and more common for developers to release games that frankly, have little right being released when they are. Redfall serves as the perfect example of this recently, touting reviews that mirror those of LotR: Gollum, and the problem goes farther back to games like The Master Chief Collection and No Man’s Sky.
That isn’t to say that these games aren’t worth playing. Many of the games that are plagued with negative press at launch are not “bad” games, but they’re broken upon release. Even after the developers fix bugs and glitches, oftentimes the headlines saying, “X Game Has Been Fixed After Y Changes” are not as loud as the ones that read, “X Game Was Broken At Launch.” The issue has become so prevalent, in fact, that people are compiling lists specifically of games that launched broken.
For some of these games like The Master Chief Collection or Fallout 76, they’re lucky to have a dedicated fan base that was loyal enough to wait for the fixes and the games are able to take off successfully, albeit later than they should have. For others like No Man’s Sky or Assassin’s Creed: Unity, the issues were too much to overlook for many players, and they were remembered only for what they were at launch and never what they became.
As a consumer, it makes it incredibly difficult to justify spending not only money, but my time on a game that genuinely might not work. I understand that there is a such thing as “Development Hell,” and that these teams are doing the best they can to work with the budgets, deadlines and expectations that they’re given. However, somewhere along the way there has to be something done to mitigate the overall load being put on developers, while also ensuring the level of quality that is coming to be expected.
On the other hand, this issue can also tend to have an unexpected upside, in the satisfaction I gain when I do choose to purchase a game and it turns out to be well-made and worthwhile — think Dead Island 2 or Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Regardless, I don’t think a game turning out to be “good” should feel the same as winning $5 on a $5 lottery ticket.
While The Lord of the Rings: Gollum turned out to be a miss in the grand scheme of LotR content, it still demonstrates a valuable, often joked-about aspect of the games industry and a lesson that should be learned from going forward. I don’t know about anyone else, but I would much rather wait longer for a fully fleshed-out game than be greeted by more titles that are far from precious.
