‘Gollum,’ A Game That Exists, Is The Worst-Reviewed Of The Year By Far

If you’re ready for a game that makes Redfall look like Tears of the Kingdom, you may want to check out Gollum. Actually no, no one should check out Gollum, it seems, judging by what are literally the worst review scores for any game on PC and PS5, this entire year.

It is hard to understate just how poorly Gollum is reviewing. The game currently has a 38 on Metacritic on PS5, and a 43 on PC. That makes it the worst-reviewed game on either platform in 2023, 18 points lower than Redfall on PC (56), 26 points lower than Forspoken on PS5 (64). This is an industry where a 60 is considered a disaster and it’s got a thirty-eight.

While normally, there may be some amount of leeway provided to a smaller developer like Daedalic, given a lower budget than AAA games, a main problem here is that Gollum is charging a full $60, $70 for a special edition that paywalls things like emotes and elvish voiceovers. Not that a lower price would have made the game better, but it certainly compounds the problems the game already has.

These are some of the worst reviews I’ve read in a long time:

Gamespot (2/10) – “Much like Gollum's quest for the One Ring, my quest to complete The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was full of endless setbacks, impossible odds, and ever-increasing levels of madness. And, like Gollum, my journey was doomed from the start. So if the developers' main goal was to really put you in the shoes of such a pitiful, unloveable character faced with constant pain and suffering at every turn, they were at least successful at that.”

Inverse (3/10) – “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a messy and frustrating action platformer set in Middle-earth. ... Most of the gameplay involves platforming and stealth, though neither works very well. Gollum is full of technical problems that make an otherwise unpleasant experience even worse, and the game’s boring story makes it hard to recommend, even to the most hardcore Lord of the Rings fans.”

IGN Spain (4/10) – “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is a stealth, action and platform adventure that has some interesting ideas, but lacks cooking. A video game of classic structure whose gaps are evident both in the narrative, as in the playable, technical and aesthetic.”

The highest review that exists is a 7/10 from IGN Adria, which calls it a “surprising competent 3D platformer.” They seem to be the only one who believes that.

Not that you were thinking about playing this game in the first place, one that I genuinely forgot existed until today, but it seems like you could make much better use of your $60 doing…literally anything else with it. Stay away.

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