The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (PlayStation 5) Review

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum's story is set in the time before The Lord of the Rings, but about 60 years after The Hobbit. This was the time described in The Fellowship of the Ring when Gollum is tortured at the hands of Mordor's inhabitants for information about the ring, screaming "Shire. Baggins." hauntingly into the night. However, instead of the narrative weaving into this wider world, the game is focused mostly on Gollum being a slave in Mordor.

Most of the incidental characters lack interesting Tolkienian naming convention in favour of things like "Thin Old Man", which is somewhat disappointing. Gollum himself is odd. As a focus for a game, the concept is fine, but the way this has been pulled off is not great, with a somewhat binary choice system and voice acting that misses almost all of the time.

Most of Gollum also takes place in caves, meaning the palette can be quite drab. The developers have tried to mitigate this with splashes of bright lava or a bit of foliage, but ultimately, it's still murky. There are a couple of other locations that do fare better with some colour and interesting designs, but they come late into the adventure and unfortunately do little to fix the visual language.

Gollum's character designs, bar a couple like Gandalf, are very ugly. Gollum himself looks very unusual. It's not terrible in every aspect, but this might be one of the worst depictions of him. The animation work is not great either, with jumping having basically no wind-up, characters walking like they have wooden legs, and a general lack of blending. With a stylised game, animations are often more important than fidelity.

Ray tracing is available, and when it's present it looks quite good. However, there are a lack of ray traced features on PlayStation 5, pretty much just adding to water reflections, and the impact that has on performance means it is not worth activating the mode. Performance mode is the best one to play, as it offers the most stable experience and verges on being fully playable.

Gameplay and level design could be worse, but it is not great. Unfortunately, the design of Gollum evokes the feeling of budget PS2 titles. Gollum's moveset is fine, with running, jumping, and hiding as expected - most of which works, but it's not particularly well catered for by the levels.

While Gollum is in Mordor, most of the levels are small, isolated events, such as corralling monsters into cages or bird breeding, which feel a bit odd, but do offer some variety even if not testing the player's abilities. The game just cannot seem to create compelling challenges to complete. Often, while partaking in stealth or climbing, glitches and oddities in the design sometimes result in sluggish controls, Gollum falling through the wall, and checkpoints that drop you right back into a game over.

Where Gollum is quite pleasing is in its music. The soundtrack has a good range and some great tracks that genuinely offer a bit of atmosphere. It and a couple of areas in the game offer glimpses into what Gollum might have been. It is hard to imagine a world where the game excelled, but it could have been at least good and a bit of fun.

Ultimately, this just is not it, and no amount of polish can pull it back. Couple this with DLC that offers emotes in a single-player title, and important The Lord of the Rings things like Elves speaking Elvish, and it becomes a very unfriendly package that can only disappoint and at worst, offend.