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Gollum is way worse than even our lowest expectations (Review)
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- Опубликовано: 24 май 2023
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Gollum is the worst thing I've played this year. In fact, it's the worst thing I've played in a long time.
#Gollum #LOTR #Review
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Make all the DILF jokes you want, but DOROTHY MANTOOTH IS A SAINT YOU HEAR ME??? DOROTHY MANTOOTH IS A SAINT!!!!
15/10 Gollum voice. Actually beats Andy Serkis.
Still waiting for code SHILLUP
Obligatory "do not buy manscaped products, EVER". They are severely overpriced for the Alibaba 4 dollar shaver you get. Just buy a Wahl and don't rip yourself off.
@@spf50sunscreen80 I have had a Wahl for 8 or 9 years and that thing is still going strong. It was a Christmas gift and it is one that I will treasure forever. Of course, I also have a straight razor that I use to get the cleanest shave ever.
It looks like a PS3 game with facial animations from a PS2 game, truly a masterpiece of all time
Gday funny goose man
Oh hai Dolan
I’m so glad the Tolkien Estate is so defensive of the IP and only allows the best projects to go ahead! Right?
You shouldn't diss the PS2 & PS3 like that.
Yeah but some of the textures were fkimg epic.. alongside some that would get mocked on the ps3 🤷🏻♂️🙌🏻
Gollum looks like he’s addicted to a lot more than just the one ring.
Lol 🤣🤣
Haha. 🤣
Holy 🤣
Well his heritage is pot smoking hobbits so…..
Gollum looks me me getting under 6 hours sleep
As a world renowned Tolkien scholar, I can confirm that Tolkien did in fact intend for Gollum to wall run but knew that the world wasn’t ready for such a groundbreaking innovation so it wasn’t included in the books
he feared too many readers would have their minds melted at such a shocking feature.
Yes. After all, unfortunately, during Sir Tolkien's lifetime people were not able to experience the greatness of Titanfall 2.
@@mafata4200 Sir Tolkien actually a titan pilot that stranded here because of time travel, trust me bro
As tolien himself (faked my own death) this is true
@@sagegg5018 who’s Tolien?
I know like seven guys and two women that can do a near movie accurate gollum voice. How could they not have found someone with a decent gollum impression?
I think it would have been awesome if they just had Sylvester Stallone do Gollum's voice for no good reason.
@@slayerd357 I bet they would make Gollum suddenly able to use bow complete with exploding arrow, just like Rambo
@@NewNoobie "Lore accurate"
That's... an oddly specific skillset in your friend group. I've never heard anyone do a Gollum impression. ;)
I know several people who can do gollum impressions too, I think it’s kind of a common impression for people to attempt buh idk
I can't believe they had the balls to release this as a full price title
Redfall emboldened them.
50$ USD is full price? Bro get your facts checked
And the “Precious” edition which locks away the elf lanuage behind a paywall
@@DeltaAssaultGaming Emboldened by the flames of... GREED
there was some idiot called me a dipshit for saying this game is not full price then deleted his comment after realizing he's wrong, just putting this comment here to forever shame @Junii Senpai @juniisenpai3777 for being a thick brain
The inconsistent controls is just the game immersing you in Gollum's descent into madness.
Verisimilitude at its finest
Yeah. Gollum's other personality is wrestling with the player for control. :D
@Telleva The game really makes you feel like Gollum
Hahahahahha....noooooooo
See, I just did a Ryan Johnson.
Noo yes noooo
@@thrace_bot1012 heeeyeey I should do my job and kick you in the feels.
Super eyepatch wolf is my boss aswell
21:56 The fact Gollum can't easily get out of a body of water shows the developers didn't ask for Tolkien expert (or whatever) because Gollum is a Stoors Hobbit, and his people was known for swimming and boats
You don't even need to know that specific piece of Tolkien lore, just have seen any of the movies. Gollum was living at an underground lake when Bilbo found him and in one of the original trilogy (Two Towers I think) he was diving in a pond for fish and having the time of his life
@@mori6434 see what I expected was a survival-horror game, but this is so close to the edge between "game" and "proof of concept" that this shouldn't have even been sold for FREE.
“Gollum eats birds he doesn’t raise them” is so real and says it all
As someone who eats birds i understand
I too eat birds.
This doesn't just look unfinished, this looks like they just made a proof of concept build and shipped that as a final product.
To be fair, they couldn't have pitched this as a proof of concept, because they'd have been told to fuck off and start again
That's nearly all games lately.
@@jwberry23 Nearly all games since the start of games, the bad ones are just forgotten about
@@sambmortimerNo, AAA games used to have more quality to them. Even the bad ones usually seemed finished in most respects.
people keep buying, so they keep releasing crap
Gollum in canon: "What's it got it in its nasty pocketses?" "WE HATES THE BAGGINSES"
Gollum here: "I must perform taskeses for Lord Bezoses, or else no bathroom breakses, gollum..."
"What has it got in its PayPal accountses?"
"I mustes pays the rentses"
@@aegisScale I love how this comment implies that the current middle earth economy has precluded Gollum from home ownership and so he lives in an apartment. Morgoth mortgage rates are just too high these days.
@@Aldrnari956 cost of living in Middle Earth has been getting terrible recently, you can't even be a mutated wretch in a cave without selling your soul anymore.
@@aegisScale “You get your rentses when you fix this cursed door!”
21:58 this especially funny when Tolkien specifically points out that Smaegol's people are uniquely good at swimming for hobbits.
Not to mention he has webbed feet iirc
Yep, they're river folk. RIVER FOLK
He’s literally a river hobbit. His people’s entire culture revolves around water. Yet somehow he cant swim
I’m convinced that the reason this plays so badly and is so broken and unpolished is because people couldn’t bare to play it more than once when they were ‘testing’ it, so they were just like “yep… that-that’s fine!”
Or they were reduced to silence and the devs thought it was a good sign
@@generalalduin9548 probably 😅
Hopefully this kickstarts the Gollum-like genre which involves making anything you like, but having you play as Gollum.
I’d pay good money for a Gollum-like boomer shooter.
@@michaelplatt1959 ULTRAGOLLUM
The developers weren't creating a game. They were creating a meme. I understand now. Genius!
gollum stranding
Animal Crossing: Gollum
Remember, for every game like this, there was a room full of people that approved it.
Tolkien’s estate approved this. That is a travesty. But we already got the Rings of Power, so no surprise.
A room full of people who aren't game devs xD
They're so out of touch with gamers. I get trying something new I guess.
I'm pretty sure AAA companies will copy from this game the paywall for lore and shit.
It’s really not a bad game concept. It’s all about the execution, and unfortunately they fumbled it. I think the project was too ambitious for the developer, they’re not a large company. They’ve made many smaller games that were quite successful.
Gollum doesn’t escape, he’s set free… they even got that wrong 😂
tOLkiEn eXPeRtS
Ommgg spoilers. How could you do that 😢😂
(Joke)
Did they.... Give him a sock?
Except in the books, he was set free.
@@leadpaintchips9461that's what he is saying. In the game he escapes
Gollum didn't even have to escape from Mordor in the first place. After Sauron got the info about Baggins and the Shire he let Gollum go, because he knew Gollum would inevitably go after the ring and could unwittingly help Sauron in locating it
"Hopefully non canon" is one of the more casually brutal notes I've heard in a review
If Tolkien didnt write it is not canon, thats a FACT
Everything that came after his death are just attempts
to piss off his Spirit enough to rise him from the dead
Corpo scum are always eager to piss on his grave
It is non canon. The Tolkien estate is pretty open about 3rd era media and it all being nonncanon accept the movies
of course is not cannon, the only things that are cannon are the sacred texts, not even the peter jackson movies are cannon, they get as close as you can get in a movie setting but still not cannon.
@@m1x0 *canon
I think they tried really hard to find a point in the story where it could be arguably canon (though what Gollum did between Baradur and catching up to Frodo is not really a thing anyone was wondering). If the game were good, maybe it could've been up for debate.
I think canon Gollum would have just eaten the raw eggs, not hatched a bird companion. 😅
At most he would’ve waited for the bird to hatch, so he would have smg more “crunchy” to eat
devs: nooooo! gollum can go through a redemption arc like everybody else!
everybody else: this game sucks.
@@matguimond92but it's also a pre-redemption arc, the best kind of redemption haha
Also... they hatch cute little birds in Mordor?
In the books it's even vaguely suggested he's been eating human babies lmao. A brief mention of a shadowy creature that's been snatching babies for them never to be seen again. Maybe he just wanted his own human baby companion.
Jk
They don't understand this character, truly "forlorn wretched and ruinous". If you're going to make a game about a character like this, might as well go all the way instead of trying to redeem him or give him a more sympathetic perspective.
They could've given Gollum an arc where he starts more hobbit-like while doing all that stuff but goes through a transformation into the Gollum we know over the course of the game.
But no, that would've made too much sense.
But he was already mostly the Gollum we know when Bilbo stole the ring from him, and that happened before the events of the game. He's maybe a *little* more volatile during The Lord of the Rings, but in The Hobbit he was already a reclusive murderer who talked to himself and ate raw fish that he caught with his bare hands.
@@imperiallarch7610 He probably talking about before The Hobbit, when gollum found the Ring.
I think he's supposed to look less corrupted? he has more hair and his face is fuller, but it just looks really bad and yeah he doesn't change
To be fair, it's a little bit tricky to tell a story that lasts for the necessary duration, which would be several decades. But not impossible.
That would actually take centuries.
I feel like the character animation highlights why they only showed short shots of gollum moving around in the movies, because him crawling over anything flat just looks painful and bizarre.
Almost like why humans are bipedal for a reason.
Whoever convinced the Publisher to send out review copies deserves some kind of medal
They truly are a person lookin out for us.
There's no way book Gollum wouldn't have eaten the bird, instantly. Hell he'd probably have just eaten the egg. Gollum as a video game character probably would've better served as some kind of masochistic survival-horror where by you have to run around gathering worms and lizards to stay alive whilst travelling across middle earth trailing the ring: evading wargs, orcs , giant spiders trying to turn you into a chewy snack.
.... THIS! Take my money!
Absolutely agree bud! Ill fund your Kickstarter👍
shit man gollum canonically stole and ate babies
I honestly thought that's what the game was going to be, a prison escape stealth game with a descend into madness as you look for the ring. This looks like an snl sketch of a game.
This is legit what I thought this game was gonna be. I can’t imagine gollum working in any other game genre- at least not as the protagonist
Those mine tasks could have easily been used for gollum to passively gain information he uses against other prisoners for favors or grabbing and hiding items away to use later for his escape, using smegul to make himself seem meek and none threatening to tougher sorts and gollum to manhandle the weaker ones into doing what he wants until he practically starts a riot and blows up a load of tunnels to slip away in the confusion
That would’ve been a thousand times more interesting, and it would’ve fit with Gollum’s character a lot better. When I saw the previews for this game, I imagined that Gollum would be using his cunning to eliminate his enemies. Hell, in the trailer we see Gollum pour a cauldron of hot lava on a group of enemies and kill them! I’d hope that kind of thing would be in the game. Instead, Gollum can only kill a handful of enemies by using the stealth takedown animation, and nothing else. So much missed potential.
Why weren’t you on the dev team? That would’ve made the story more bearable
I think it's important to note that they sold the game as a stealth platformer where you escape Mordor, end up in murkwood where you escape again and do other adventures. They hid the fact that the front half of the game is overloaded with shite mini games in prison. They never mentioned that the majority of the game would take place in the exact same location.
I give it a solid "You couldn't pay me to play this" out of 10.
They would need to offer me a fortune
$100 an hour seems fair for all the mental anguish this game will cause anyone playing it.
Seeing Gollum do chores absolutely baffles me. I don’t even think he’d remember what chores are, let alone being adept at completing them.
What's choreses Precious??
Maybe at one point this started as a Dobby game.
Looks like chores are back on the menu boys
It's like they realized at some point in making it that being Gollum means for the most part you can't fight, no one wants to talk or interact with you, and you don't have any armor or gear to go after, so what you left with? Chores, I guess.. lol
This reviewer needs to do chores instead of playing games all day.
Gollum himself is in this weird spot of having early 2000's textures and lighting on a 2010-2015 polycount while looking like 90's movie CGI, meanwhile the environments look great and it all just clashes in such an uncanny way.
I was gonna say I feel bad for the environment artists because they're clearly passionate, talented, and the only ones who gave a rip. They didn't deserve working for a team making this diarrhea.
The enviroment is made using the already existing resources from the engine itself, those realistic terrain are all generated
While Character animation that is not like stock generated human requires actual skill to make
Which clearly the developers lacks by huge margin
@@ArariaKAgelessTraveller Epic's texture and asset libraries do not automatically create good art direction and environment design.
I was utterly convinced that someone had warped the face and made a meme out of it when I first saw it. The fact someone gave that face the green light is insane
Except the environments don't really look great either. At least not when you compare the environments in this game to other similarly priced games. I don't care how small your budget or your studio is, if you are going to charge triple A prices for your game like these devs did, then I expect triple A graphics to come with it.
They may have created an accidental masterpiece with this one, it gives me 90s adventure game energy for some reason. Can't wait for Mandalore to review this in 10 years
This is inspiring. We should all aspire to have this level of confidence in our lives to actually release something like this as a paid product.
At AAA game price even.
Well, if it’s good enough for Bethesda…
That's one way to put it :v
@@mad_max21 The fact that this game was "made" and the money was not donated to cancer research, should be counted as fraud. 😢😢😢😢
@@mingyuhuang8944 I understand that the game is terrible and that you like cancer research, but you don't have to tell about it under every comment here lmao
The part where Gollum stared directly at the screen and told me the exact date and time of my death was wild. 10/10
I think that the DLC was part of the base game, but ripped from it and sold as DLC to make it cheaper because they hoped that making it 10 dollar cheaper would make people buy it
That actually sounds plausible once they saw the turd volcano starting to approach eruption.
You know you gotta give this game credit it makes you feel what it is like to be gollum in a prison boring, tedious, and you rather do anything else so in that area it really succeeds.
Not only did Gollum live on a lake in a cave for a few hundred years, but *Smeagol* spent his entire previous life as a river folk hobbit!
Dude should be hitting the pool on his days off.
I just don’t understand how things like this happen? How did this idea even make it out of the idea phase?
Cash grab. developers that really dont care about any sort of player base and design games by going through the steps laid out for them and nothing more.
Devs don't set the prices... low IQ take lol
@@Mojavekight17 some games are independently published tho, but publishers do set prices and the devs do work with them to set that price
I honestly would like a developers releasing this garbage getting punished of some sort. A game like this, with once again terrible optimization, should NEVER be released to the public. Maybe you think about making a game centered around Gollum when you are drunk, but only then.
There's probably some kind of development hell that happened.
What seems to be the most weird thing about this game is that Gollum should be a miserable character in a dark and miserable world, having a miserable experience doing horrible things to survive.. eating raw fish, killing them with rocks, swimming on mud and shit, in the dark.. avoiding rocks.. like.. I feel more like Gollum when I'm walking on the wastelands of death stranding or when I'm playing a game from fromsoftware.. Elden Ring is more gollum than gollum with this ridiculous pokemon bird..
What you just described is the Gollum game I would have wanted to play. You know, a gritty, miserable survival horror game set in Middle Earth, with a protagonist who is pathetic and crazy. That's one hell of a good premise. (Don't include player choice for Gollum's actions though - you shouldn't have the option to make Gollum into a "good person.")
@@thesardonicpig3835 exactly.. although... I would absolutely LOVE and laugh as a maniac if I had a "smeagol" moment if I had a single moment do to a choice to be a "smeagol" good guy.. just like when gollum chose to be a good guy and helped frodo and sam.. but in the end it backfired and didn't made any difference and drove him even further into madness like it did in the movies.. like a easter egg making fun of such games and at the same time being just like it had happened with gollum in the books and the movie.
@@wildguardian Remember, with Frodo and Sam he is forced to help them, he does not do it willingly.
Ancestors the gollumkind oddysey
It’s really sad this game is as bad as it is because the idea of wrestling with his split personalities and forcing one to convince the other to make a particular decision as a gameplay mechanic is actually a really unique and interesting concept
DID YOU PLAYED IT ?? IT IS GREAT AND UNIQUE
This feels like the type of game I'd pick up as a kid, and only play 30 minutes of after getting annoyed over the controls or getting stuck
Alone in the dark vibes.
That’s how I kinda was with the oddworld series, however, those are actually good games I just sucked at back then lmao
For real
It really looks like one of those old cheap PS2 3D Platformer (or maybe Beat Them Up in a rarer occasions) licensed games
Everyone who experienced one of THOSE things know exactly the feeling. The cutscene at the beginning alone brought back some memories and sensations I thought were lost in time
It definitely looks like one of those movie tie-in games that like your mom buys you for the wii because she saw you liked the movie
Feels like one of those movie tie-in PS2 games that my mom bought randomly because she recognized the title.
Nice to see that PS2 games are still being developed.
Hi-Fi Rush to this is the biggest flirting versus harassment difference of all time
Only this time they require 24GB of vram somehow
@@igaovieira with DLSS activated
That's not fair PS2 games were well optimized.
It was great era, I will always pick up PS2 game
Truly one of the games of all time. The story was, the characters were, the gameplay was, the level design was, the progression system was, and the graphics were
I loved it when Gollum said "It's Golling Time!" and golled over everyone.
That meme died ages ago
@@doccerdewm6039 memes never die, they can only be forgotten
@@doccerdewm6039 This game should have died before release, just like Morbious should have. Shovelware, absolute shovelware.
The development history behind this is going to be a fascinating read
What happened?
It’s. Just. Bad.
I can already see mcmuscles covering it xD
Tbh, I have no idea who would want to play a game as Gollum in the first place
@@DomitriCervantes i honestly cant wait for a What Happened episode of this
This actually feels like a £2 indie game you'd find on a Wicked Wizard video and never hear about again
Nice to see a mention of Wicked Wiz!
NGL I am kinda obsessed with the idea of Gollum raising chickens. Just in general. Imagine watching LOTR and the entire time Gollum just has a whole ass chicken under one arm and sometimes he gets it to go knock a bottle off a shelf. Maybe they should just make a game where Gollum makes friends and raises birds.
Villain Redemption Simulator 2023.
And he named the chicken "Baggins", so every time he orders it around Frodo feels awkward as hell
LOTR; Gollum’s Farm, Parallel Universe 27 expansion!
Mordor Valley!
$70 for Gollum with a lore archive, or $70 for Tears of the Kingdom. Tough decision.
Or 60 for Diablo 4, farming 5 classes over months and slaying bosses with some friends 😴
But nah, g l o l l U m G a a m e
I love how the stealth in this game combined with the enemy patrol pathing makes the entire stealth system a game of red light green light.
They tried to recreate the systems from A Plague Tale but did not even come close.
@@pursueme5986 when I heard about this game my immediate thought was "oh so it'll be like A Plague Tale but as Gollum." Guess that was too much to ask
Still better stealth than the past 2 assassins creed games
@@Deivid-bn6yw AC games still have stealth? Could've fooled me
After half an hour, I could hear Tolkien banging on his coffin lid wanting to come out and punch someone. It was a vivid experience.
💀💀💀
It's really sad to see such a lore-full IP like LotR being wasted like this.
This guy was a literal genius, it's a fcking shame that they did this to him
It really does feel like a throwback to like, that era of cheap PS2 tie in games you'd see on the lower shelves of a gamestop or tucked away unassumingly in a modern day used game store. It just so happens to have a more modern technological budget.
Have to love the explanation when it says game over. (Gollum falls from super high)
Game over
“Oh gee I wonder why?”
You died
“WHEW, thanks game, wasn’t sure what happened there.”
19:53 They're asking for $60 DOLLARS MINIMUM, and that's the death animation??? I can't think of a more fitting example of "Something being funny that's not supposed to be". That's hilarious, no exaggeration I actually laughed out loud
Same the death animations had me dying
LMAO! I clicked on the timestamp and didn't expect that at all. I laughed so loud i woke mu girlfriend up. Wtf was that!?
@@Infamousbob24 Were you also floating awkwardly as you died?
same, the one where he fell and it sounded like someone dropped a wooden plank also had me giggle heavy
I didn’t laugh and this game deserves no semblance of a positive reaction, even at its expense. It’s disappointing and exploitative. That’s it.
Gollum is one of the most complex and nuanced characters in the story. His lack of redemption is what saved everyone, in the end. We saw Gollum's anger and spite and guile in the movies. If this game showed more of the grief and torment and self-hatred that had become his only companion after claiming the ring, it could have added such a new angle to the overall story. We never saw Gollum really cry except for trying to avoid being beaten, and when losing the ring, but the books eluded to the inner pain he carried with him. Imagine if this story started with that. It would have made him a far more sympathetic protagonist for this game.
Exactly. I see people mocking the choice of character, but I find Gollum such an interesting and deep character. It's a shame they didn't take the opportunity seriously. It could've been a brilliant game with so much to tell. It's really a shame.
Imagine if you started as him when he was a hobbit, that would have been fire
I mean, TWO DIFFERENT HOBBITS who found him deeply repulsive and evil both wavered on the precipice of killing him, but ultimately took pity on his wretchedness and his self-loathing. He is, metaphorically, every negative pitiable human trait - and yet that is what gives him his humanity. He is not redeemed bc that element of humanity is irredeemable, but even the wretchedness of humanity plays an important role in the end. And yet the game somehow missed that this is all the ENTIRE POINT OF HIS CHARACTER
Exactly. You could even have some nightmare/flashback scenes of the horrible things he did as he was transforming from Sméagol to Gollum only for him to wake up to daily torture whilst in the captivity of Sauron. Almost like he has PTSD from all the things his addiction to the ring made him do but it’s too late to undo those things.
Well apparently the story was written by "experts" so they seem to have a different perspective on Gollum from most other people
When you said "technicals" I imagined gollum escaping mordor on the back of a pickup truck with a machine gun
The controls were made that way to make you understand how it feels to be controlled by the One Ring.
Gollum is such a weird choice for a protagonist. The reason he worked so well in the books and the movies is precisely because he has a support role, and all that shatters when you put him in the forefront and make him do ridiculous bullshit to justify his role. It would be the same if a Star Wars game came out about R2-D2, where he breeds banthas and engages in conversations.
Yeah but let’s be fair. The problem with this game is that it’s devoid of artistic and technical talent. A great studio could make that R2D2 idea work brilliantly.
Or a Star Wars game making you play as Jar Jar
I think with good devs the idea they were going for could have been executed miles better than this
Based on the sht Chopper does, Id kill for a game as a chaotic astromech
@@Eli_Guy let us play through that one comic where r2d2 basically solos an army inside of an imperial ship to rescue c3p0
You know what would have been cool? In the books Aragorn actually tracks Gollum with Gandalf for years to try to find him. His journey takes him from the lonely mountain right to the very walls of mordor. Finally he manages to capture Gollum and bring him back to Gandalf for questioning. THAT should have been the game they made. How cool would it have been to play as Aragorn traveling middle earth and facing who knows how many dangers and amazing set pieces along the way? Hell in the expanded lore it's mentioned that he actually served in the Gondor army as a commander against the Corsairs of Umbar before receiving the call from Gandalf. All of that could have been an amazing game.
Because they knew no player would survive the escort mission of bringing Gollum to Thranduil.
There's a whole fan film about that. And it is good material indeed!
Never knew that. Actually would’ve been pretty cool
Is that how Gandalf found out about Gollum telling mordor about baggins and shire?
Dude, this is a German studio. They just don't have the skills to serve the modern market in the 3D action genre.
A wise man once said “if a developer can’t be bothered to finish their game, why should I?” This looks like a nightmare.
The candle man's character design is SOOOO bad. He doesn't fit in his helmet. The entertainment industry is shitting out so many bad products out these days and expect my money for it.
Those lore bits are 100% AI generated
I believe AI can write 10x better than this
You misspelled "leftists"
@@lamikal2515 What is wrong with you
@@lamikal2515 Judging by how many failed actors, comedians, and writers on the far right I highly doubt that
@@lamikal2515 when you’ve consumed so much rage-bait that you instantly blame anything bad on your one and only scapegoat:
That intro clip of him doing the absolutely worst "Gollum, Gollum" possible has me in fucking tears. Who greenlit that?!
Genuinely surprised this is the first comment I've seen criticizing the VA work, I know so many people who can do a better 'Gollum' than whoever it is they've got
Oh my god you're so right. It sounds forced in the most artificial way possible. Andy Serkis' "Gollum Gollum" had so much force and vitriol thrown in it and this meanwhile sounds like a guy nervously showing his friends his half-baked gollum impression
@@celestialdancer6293 It really sounds like the kind of impression you'd do as a joke when referencing the Jackson films at a party or social gathering, complete with stifling the laughter that bubbles up because you're so drunk that every dumb little thing seems funny.
Sounded like a Pokémon
also whats with this weird accent Gollum got sometimes in this video? Gollum speaks way too normal in most scenes lmao. There was one scene in this video where he was like "got some food ,eh?" i mean.. what the fuck is this Gollum supposed to be??
Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again: in a universe with so many characters, who in the hell ever actually wanted to play as Gollum's creepy ass?
It would be really great if this was treated as a horror game with Gollum as the horror villain and the orcs as the guilt free slaughter victims.
You COULD have a really neat game playing as Gollum, it's just that this game utterly failed in every regard to make it
Plenty of ways to make playing gollum interesting, not every game needs to be about heroes. Playing as a vile creature sneaking through the shadows that is willing to do anything and backstab everybody to get to his addiction can be cool if exectued right. Just because you play as Gollum doesn't mean the main story foucs needs to be on him, make him follow and spie on other parties as means for him to find what he wants and tell middle earth stories through that. He never escaped Barad-Dûr himself anyway, he was set free after he had nothing new to tell (and where is the torture in game? Like... why is, so instead Sauron counted on his obsession to make him seek out the new ringbearer and thus make it easier for Sauron's men to find the ring. There is nothing wrong with the premise, just everything else is just terrible, starting with completely ignoring lore and character traits. This is the year of badly written Tolkien spinoffs that make you miss when they refused to give out licenses at all.
@@Wolfsschamane I think Gollum is an extremely playable character. He's morally bankrupt and great at parkour, what more do you need? Little Nightmares nailed the "frail, starved amoral protagonist traverses hostile world" premise, so it shouldn't be that hard.
Call me optimistic, but I think Gollum might be the E.T. of our time for the AAA industry. And I think that's hilarious.
This truly looks like some weird licensed b side game from the mid 2000s. What’s astounding is people in a room played this, nodded their heads at each other, and green lit this.
They probably thought it would be like thief
Yes and supposedly the devs said if they make it right nobody will be able to make a Gollum game again, that's almost a direct quote.
Also Middle Earth Enterprises OK'd this project, apparently they were thrilled in 2019.
Bets on wrong horses comes to mind.
what probably happened is that it was never QA tested in the first place, only some devs checking it out in their spare time, and any feedback they gave was ignored. The devs likely tried to push it back because they all knew it was bad, but management said no because daddy publisher needs their paycheck once the game goes live.
And the reality is that it's more profitable to push out a shit game than it is to fix an already shit game. Like if they kept working on this over the next year, compared to releasing it when they did, they would have made so much less money. So from a business point of view it's better to just ship it and cash out on all the suckers who preordered, and then cut your losses and move on.
For that, I blame consumers, Stop preordering
@@MyNameIsSalo Bugginess is the least of this game's problem. The problems are:
1. Nobody wants to play as Gollum. Nobody asked for this. Why not a spin off game about a beloved character like Legolas, Aragorn or Gandalf? Why Gollum?
2. The gameplay is atrocious.
People will put up with bugginess and unfinished games if they the devs nailed the concept and the core gameplay was good, because they know eventually it will be a good experience. See Skyrim, or Cyberpunk. Even if this Gollum game came out extremely bug-free, it would still flop since they failed to capture people's interest and the core gameplay is shit. There first mistake was making a product nobody wants. There second mistake was half-assing it.
modern game development! just people working a job like any other 9-5.
Jesus christ this is insane. I get that Tolkien fans can be a little nuts about lore and characterization (myself included) but I think my mom who half-watched the Ranklin & Bass Hobbit and Return of The King movies with me as a kid would be like "I don't think Gollum would hang out with that chicken". Actually, I think Gollum's second most famous trait is that he loves to kill and eat cute animals while they're still ~raw and wriggling~.
I'm glad this is the first time I'm hearing about this game, because I'm such a lifelong Gollum fan that I might have been tempted to buy this just to support, but these people clearly don't give a shit about my little guy.
We're nuts about lore and such because it's all been written by Tolkien, which means there is no excuse for getting it wrong. I think that's perfectly fair. It's like being handed the answers to a test and still getting things wrong.
I haven’t even finished the video. I scrolled until I saw this comment and I’m sorry did you say “I don’t think Gollum would hang out with that chicken”???? Wtf????? 😂😂😂😂😂
Dude the bird flying around stiff as a board with that goofy look on it‘s face is insanely funny
The Emote-DLC should be the default idle animation for when gollum stands still for some time
The Precious Edition is probably the greatest name for a deluxe version of a game 😂
And ironically there's nothing precious about it at all.
Meta 😂
If they knew what they were doing, it would have been called the Preciousss Edition.
If the game was any good, that would have been actually cool.
So Sauron's true evil was forcing his prisoners to endure daily radiant quests until the sweet embrace of death takes them.
Sounds like real life... hold up
I didn't see Preston Garvey as Sauron coming ngl. They got me
@@Tangence_ The fact that this game was "made" and the money was not donated to cancer research, should be counted as fraud. 😂😂😂😂
@@mingyuhuang8944 why do you keep spamming this comment? go touch some grass
Imagine creating one of the greatest literary works of fiction and then having a bunch of greaseballs milk your life’s work for every penny it has. Sad.
The bird breeding thing reminds me so much of doing the old cod zombies easter eggs with the many convoluted steps XD
Gollum/Smeagol talks so weirdly in this game. It's just someone making a weird voice. It sounds like at some points he ends up with a slight accent like he wants to speak a foreign human language. When I look up my beard points upwards magically as well, so this is valid part of the game.
My favorite part was when Gollum told the Greshneg, "I'm institutionalized." A moment that will live forever in memory. What the hell were they thinking.
I was waiting for a Shawshank reference in the comments.
You are joking right? I could see this game would be garbage from the get go but damn.
I laughed at this harder than I should have
@@K4inan When you're right you're right!
All he wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi
If Gandalf saw this game, he’d have hurled himself off the bridge before the Balrog even appeared.
Bruh.... Lmao
Bonus bug: Gollum puts on fullbody blackface when in shaded areas like at 19:45 and 20:45. Unless that's actually an intended visual effect to denote him being in 'stealth', which would be a million times funnier if so.
First time I saw anything about this game was in a best of from Vinesauce. First I thought it was some indie game where someone wanted to make a gollum game, but the best part was Vinny basically breaking the game immediately by going into the menu.
If you realise that the developers are known for making point and click adventures, so many things start to make sense. The publisher is Nacon, the guys that pirated a copy of a game of a developer they lost the rights to and published it on steam, just to get sued for it and had to take it down.
Edit: spelling.
No fucking way 😂
what game was that?
So Daedalic tried and failed to be Lucasarts by breaking into console action games Nacon should stick to make shitty gaming accessories cos good God they sound like absolute scumbags
@@SirButtface3000 "The Sinking City" by Frogwares
Why would Warner hire those guys there not the right people for the job
It really reminds me of those PS2 movie adaptation games where the game just creates arbitrary challenges and levels just so you can call it a 'game'
We played that shit as soon as it came out too even tho we knew
It sure has some uncanny PS1 Harry Potter vibe going here..
Only those games, were for KIDS!!
the last one of those i played was Peter Jackson's King Kong on Xbox 360
@@NF_Redux And what a game that was, I remember the fire mechanics blowing my mind as a kid
And ironically I remember the LotR movie games being actually kinda decent.
The environment artists really were the only ones who gave a single rip.
It pisses me off to no end that game companies play test the game and think “yep that’s fine, ship it” when it’s clearly broken.
This feels like a game that would come out in the PS2 and you’d find at a pawn shop 10 years later for 8.00 bucks
Nah, only for a pound.
Nah. 2.99 at most.
$8?
More like 2 months
This is the kind of ps2 game that would get you 50 cents of store credit at gamestop XD
I am actually crying at candle man. He's not big enough for his armor, he's craning his neck so his mouth sticks out of his helmet, his lil dangly beads are smackin him in the forehead😂😂
I saw that and I had to stop the video and go back and look again. I have no idea who designed things for this game, but I am not sure they even knew what game is it for...
Its like they build the outfit seperate from his body
Previous candle man was bigger, and Sauron dont want to buy a new armor. And just force him to wear that armor because Sauron is Totalitarian.
I'm with you as far as the level of judgement/expectation based on the game's starting price point. If their expectation of us is to spend the full sixty bucks, we should have expectations of them.
I love how properly confounded you are with the bird-hatching puzzle. Like, actually WHAT were they doing with that? I don't know what kind of game that WOULD work in, but they did that for GOLLUM???
It's a real shame this game turned out the way it did, because Daedalic Studios have made some really great games in the past. They focus on 2D point-and-click adventures and they've been really good at this genre. If you're into that sort of stuff, I can definitely recommend Chains of Satinav and Memoria. Great story, beautiful hand-painted visuals, costs only a few bucks. Daedalic probably bit off more than they could chew by setting out to make Gollum. They're a small German indie game devoloper, not a major AAA studio.
their Edna & Harvey and Deponia series are also great, though I've heard the English translation isn't that great, sadly
I'm glad someone else is saying this, a lot of people are treating this like another example of a big corporate dev trying to screw the gaming community, but that's not the case here. Daedalic is a small german studio that has made some real niche cult classics in the past like Edna & Harvey: the great escape. They're not activision or EA, these are just devs that had a great opportunity to pull off something big but then found themselves extremely out of their element, completely lacking the expertise to pull off the vision they had in mind. It's sad more than anything.
Those lore entries were written by an AI 100%
holy shit, its depressing that that might actually be true...
AI would have managed better I tell you.
the co author of this game has a phd in tolkien
@@Allorius999 No. It has proven your weak defense incorrect many times.
AI made the whole game 🧐
Gollum really makes you FEEL like a 500 year old degenerate
The exaggerated swagger of a shriveled up hobbit.
😂 😂😂
Wow. Finally I can feel like Joe Biden!
@@bigboydancannon4325trump as well, truly a president simulator
@@MissBeloved__no you’re thinking of the grab em by the pussy simulator
This game is like if you made a videogame about harry potter where you exclusively get to play as Argus Filch
"...literally a menu of lore entries, like every other game just, * has *, without charging you for it!"
Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak sweating nervously in the corner
I wasnt even aware that this was a real game, the initial render straight up looked AI generated.
I will say though, its nice to get a Classic Bad game, not some boring live service battle royale that has literally no functionality and gets shut down in 6 months -- this is a classic spot #8 on the Top 10 Worst Games of 2012 type of game, and it almost feels nostalgic to see this type come back.
All facts
Yeah! I hadn't really thought of it but you're absolutely right. It's really refreshing to get a straight up laughably bad game. This is 100% the type of game you'd see in those classic ScrewAttack's "top 10 worst games" lists
Yeah people always complain like "why does every game get a 7/10" and it's because really bad games just don't make it to release anymore, but this one is the exception. Straight 2/10
@@1sonicthehavent seen garbage this blatant since The Quiet Man a few years back
@@Greenleaf_ This is too true, and it's kinda been this slop of mediocrity. It also makes what people critique as "a bad game" feel wrong because a lot of the stuff that people end up hating on is very passable and okay at worst. it's shifted a lot of our perspectives. So when something actually awful comes out it's almost endearing? like wow this is more memorable than a dozen hero shooters and crafting games I've seen that I'll never remember the name of. I'll at least say it stands out.
Gollum: a game _one guy_ was looking forward to, *AND THEY STILL FUCKED IT ALL UP.*
one guy is one man too many for this game.
😂
Hey. That one guy has pasty, loose skin, is always in pain which makes him antisocial, and his only posession is a plastic spider ring the first girl who didn't scream on sight gave him.
Feel good about yourself now?
He deserved a good game.
Poor dude.
That guy was Jerma lol. No joke, he said it in a recent stream, I forgot which.
True LOL, honestly who the fuck wanted a Gollum game💀
Thinking they can make an original story from JRR Tolkien's works was the first red flag. Dude wrote a storied history of fantasy cultures spanning hundreds of years and AA/AAA game devs think "the ringwraiths killed my wife" will hook people interested in lotr.
"Someone called the Mouth of Sauron" my poor dude has been watching the theatrical editions... smh
His swing animation is to show off his mad core strength, hence his nickname "Swollum".
Ok you got me with this one 😆
@@DeadheadYates The fact that this game was "made" and the money was not donated to cancer research, should be counted as fraud. 😂😂😂😂
Dude can you shut up and stop spamming your joke that isn't even that funny
@@mingyuhuang8944 spammer
Fun fact: Sauron was the lead producer and director - making this the most immersive Middle Earth experience ever released - as you relish in the pain and misery of channeling Gollum.
I think the problem was they had alot of the game done before realizing NOBODY WANTS TO PLAY AS FCKING GOLLUM
It's crazy that this game costs that and is so bad. I recently bought 3 games for 20 each, albeit early access, yet they are absolutely amazing and I would have happily paid more for each
I'm really interested in the autopsy of this game. How on earth did this ever see release? Who kept pumping money into it? What drove the studio to even go down this road in the first place?
Guess they thought they could pull an EA and release a broken piece of trash...
The studio is a very small, un-noteworthy studio in Germany that somehow got bought out for a heck of a lot of money to make this game. Just an all round bizarre situation.
Even worse, the German games fund has given them more money (2 million) to work on their next LOTR game. This has got to be the worst thing that the German government's ever done...
GOLLUM! GOLLUM!
Higher ups. We have to release this game for earnings report.
I can’t believe Gollum of all characters ended up with his own game.
Lmao. I wouldn't want to play as that gay ass character anyways
Exactly!
Actually in concept this all seems great, but terribly implemented. Playing a game like Styx but as Gollum, and being a grimy slimy little jerk sneaking around middle earth could be fun.
@@JackFromAbove look up the 1st and 2nd age and tell me any of characters from there wouldnt be better
It could be a cool concept i wont lie but whan there are 100times better characters too play as it fucking sucks
@@JackFromAbove Sneaking around, killing orcs by biting their necks or pushing a large boulder to crush them and eating random birds and fish you to restore HP while avoiding patrols and wild warg packs. I can see the potential, how could they screw it up that bad?
I'm trying to figure out why they left this audio in 0:30
Update they shutdown
I will say, Gollum being a more "talky" character isn't really far-fetched. He did challenge Bilbo to a game of riddles, after all.
If they had just hired Andy Serkis instead of wasting so much money on marketing, at least you could offer that as a selling point. Serkis IS Gollum, after all, he could probably do way better mocap work for them too. Sad to see this game end up being just a paper-jammed idea that eventually got spat out of the copier all crumpled up.
A box that has neither hinge, nor key, nor lid; yet inside golden treasure hid…
@@trevorbye6965A game that has neither graphics nor gameplay.. And inside, a golden shower
@@Hugsloth you see, this wouldn't work because that version of the character is owned by Warner and Warner no longer owns the LOTR games but they still can't use that particular version of the character.
that was such a fun part of the Hobbit book
If I was a developer for this game I would genuinely get my named removed from the credits
Or just get your name legally changed after the game releases.
@@phattjohnson Funnily enough the creative director and co-founder of the developer left three years ago and took the name of his wife.
Alan Smithee
They just shut down the studio