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Small creature from lord of the rings3/20/2024 These are issues that plagued mediocre stealth games 15 years ago, and it’s jarring to see them in 2023. Enemies have extremely limited parol patterns, are terribly nearsighted, and seem to suffer from acute, rapid-onset amnesia, forgetting Gollum ever existed not long after losing sight of him. Any time Gollum needs to go from point A to B undetected, it’s going to be a slog. Rather than a throwback, it comes across as outdated a poor facsimile of classics like the Prince of Persia series.įinally there are the stealth segments, which are simply bad. The paths are rigidly defined, and often involve blind jumps or best guesses at what the next intended handle is. Having experienced a modern Assassin's Creed or Tomb Raider game, here it feels far too easy to jump toward the correct point and fall to your death because you drifted to one side, or missed the part of the ledge that has the white line that establishes exactly where you can grab. Spacious rooms with handles to climb, walls to run, and leaps to take bring a faster pace of action, but the loose and floaty way Gollum moves and imprecise controls make it feel like something from the PlayStation 2 era. The platforming phases are more compelling, but still poorly designed. Trying to get anywhere involves too little speed, too much waiting, and an unfortunate amount of hearing Gollum choking on his own breath. It could be fun to run around with Gollum, thanks to his surprising sprint speed, but he has a stamina meter that depletes in just a few seconds and takes far longer to replenish. It never feels like there’s any point to it, just busywork. There’s always some conceptually different scenario, like crawling through small openings to detonate explosives, but functionally it’s a series of marches across the same areas over and over again. There’s the chores phase, in which Gollum goes from one waypoint to another to complete some menial task. There are generally three phases to any level, and they range from uninteresting to just plain bad. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was supposed to be on a grand Lord of the Rings adventure, and was instead stuck collecting bits and baubles for forgettable NPCs and hiding in bushes to hide from monotonous guard patrols. ![]() Prison Simulator: Mordor Edition is sadly less interesting than it sounds. ![]() However, most of your time is spent experiencing Gollum’s time as a prisoner during the years between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring in a linear, story-driven series of levels. It’s his clammy bare feet that we step into, ostensibly with the goal of regaining possession of the Ring from Bilbo Baggins. He and Sméagol are two sides of the same coin the good person that was Sméagol was tragically corrupted by The One Ring, twisted into this pathetic creature. Playing as Gollum sounded like it might’ve been a decent pitch for a game, since he’s one of the more interesting and famous characters in J. The one question it poses is: why would someone want to play this? Instead, it thrusts you into the role of the titular character without doing anything meaningful with his defining internal conflict, and sends him on a series of missions that are neither fun to play nor interesting to experience. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, however, is a game that does none of these things. ![]() Or it makes you think, with interesting ideas that challenge you to consider or reflect. Other times it’s to inform, with news or by exposing the audience to different perspectives. ![]() Sometimes it’s to delight, by entertaining with stories or fun gameplay. Whether it’s a book, a movie, or a video game, creative works generally exist for a reason.
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