After years of waiting, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has arrived, but with disappointing results. This Lord of the Rings story-driven action game, based on an iconic character in the franchise, is reportedly suffering from poor performance, poor controls, and a list of other things that pretty much made it sound like it’s not worth playing.
Per Metacritic, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum currently sits at an average score of 40/100, based on the 25 reviews that it currently has. Meanwhile, OpenCritic reported that only 5% of critics recommend playing this game and received a 43 percent average score. To understand how bad this is, Fallout 76 had an average top critic score of 53 percent on OpenCritic with a 7 percent score of those recommending this game. Meanwhile, it received an average score of 53 percent on Metacritic.
As an alternative, people on the r/Gaming subreddit are recommending The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth, a game that was released on PC in 2004 if they want to experience the world of J R.R. Tolkien. This old Lord of the Rings title has an average score of 82 percent on Metacritic. Basically, any other Lord of the Rings game would be more enjoyable than this supposed dumpster fire.
We also reviewed the game, and shared a similar sentiment about it not being designed very well, an also struggled with gameplay issues and reports of video game crashes.
People are really getting over current triple AAA titles being poorly optimized upon release. These titles promote so much in terms of graphics, story, and gameplay, yet the moment it arrives in players’ hands, more and more often they are unplayable, even when the recommended specs for PC players are low-end graphics cards.
The game was supposed to come out back in 2022 but was delayed for 8 months and developers promised that it would “deliver the best possible experience” once it releases. Not quite true, considering they’re getting roasted them on Twitter. At the moment, Daedalic Entertainment, the developers of the latest Lord of the Rings game, haven’t commented on the criticisms that were made amongst users and didn’t announce plans for an update.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is now out on Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. But you’re probably better off spending that money elsewhere for now.