The Lord of the Rings Gollum is currently sitting at a phat 38 on Metacritic

We haven't seen a notable release crash and burn like this for awhile.

By contrast Werewolf: The Apocalypse Earthblood, legitimately one of the worst modern games I have ever played, got a 54. Balan Wonderworld got a 51, at least on PS5. That Smurfs Game that you probably don't remember came out is in the mid 60s.

Paradoxically this makes me kind of interested to play Gollum because it's such a trainwreck. Not at full price, of course, or even half price, but if it ever drops into that $10 range I could be tempted...

I have some nostalgia for the era of cruddy licensed games that tried to be real games but failed, and I wouldn't mind playing a new one. 38 is pretty rough though. Pretttty rough.

Maybe it will rise as more reviews are added and I'll update for this post, but ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary buds, we may be seeing the birth of the consensus worst 'big' game of 2023! EXCITING TIMES!

ETA: On PC it is at 43, so that's officially the good version!

This makes me wish Alex Navarro was still at Gamespot so he can review it, in the spirit of Big Rigs. Hopefully, they'll play it on a Nextlander stream so I can watch their reaction to it.

At least Redfall now has company.

I had no memory of this game existing and did not know it had come out. I guess the publisher had a good idea of the quality of the product long before release.

It's weirdly exciting to see a "big" game come out that isn't just bland, but actively kinda failing at trying to do things. Not since Left Alive have we seen a stealth game smash its face into a wall like this!

@cozmicaztaway: I agree. Though stealth is a bad genre for interesting bad games because bad stealth games tend to be pure torture to play. You can have fun with bad games in a lot of genres with the right mindset, but in bad stealth games you just fail over and over and over and start screaming at the TV. Unless it's bad in the way that it's so broken it's a cakewalk, in which case it's as boring as mud. Either way terrible stealth games are rarely so bad they're good.

@bigsocrates: I agree, but it seems to be that the really bad games are bad because they try to do stealth poorly, probably BECAUSE that just makes them frustrating.

Anyway, GameSpot's reviewer had the game crash on him around every 5 minutes, that's... Whew. We might be in Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor territory of unplayable here

(I should launch that demo some day, it's been sitting on my 360 forever)

Watching the Skillup review was thoroughly entertaining, the game is awful but not only that it seems the entire concept was deeply flawed.

@cozmicaztaway: Unstable frequent crashing is definitely not the 'fun' kind of bad.

I mean... even if the gameplay was OK, who are the fans who have been begging for a Gollum game? I don't think anybody asked for this.

We hates it! We hates it forever!

@wollywoo: you'd be surprised how fanatical some LOTR fans can be. Those were the people they hoped would buy this game. And truth be told, some of them still will.

Hopefully Abby will be there.

Truly incredible that in a month in which two Lord of the Rings games launched, the shitty one isn't the mobile game.

Hey, at least we have Mines or Moria later this year!

I can't believe they made Gollum look fucked up in the wrong way.

Oh, I mean, I'm one of those fanatical fans too. I'm just mostly fanatical about the books, not about all LOTR-related media.

Geez... I cant believe someone made a bad Lord of the Rings product.

@isomeri said:

I vaguely remember them announcing this, but I feel like I haven't heard anything about it until it was suddenly here. So I can totally believe that they knew that it was shit.

I forgot where I read it but someone said that it may have been pushed out the door to ensure that the publisher could keep a hold of the LOTR license.

I remember when this was announced, seeing comments excited for "Styx...with a budget!" And now that the game is out, I see a lot of comments like "Styx...with a budget..." and I remain in that meditative plain of the meme "I'm happy for u tho or sorry that happened".

I'm far from a Tolkien scholar but even my cursory understanding of Gollum made him seem like a terrifying sun to orbit a game around.