The Lord of the Rings: Gollum has become the worst-rated game of 2023, according to review aggregation sites Metacritic and OpenCritic.
Despite several delays, the game, co-published by Nacon and Daedalic Entertainment, has been launched for PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles, with a Nintendo Switch version planned for later this year. The developers expressed their deep regret at having offered a disappointing experience, and pledged to improve the game in the future.
The PC version of the game has a Metascore of 43, putting it at 295, just behind “Clive ‘N’ Wrench”, which has a Metascore of 50. The PS5 version of “Gollum” did even worse, coming in at the bottom of the list with a Metascore of 38. On OpenCritic, the game also ranks at the bottom of the list of games released this year, with a score of 40.
Set in parallel with the events of “The Fellowship of the Ring”, “Gollum” is an action-adventure fantasy game where players set out on a quest to recover the One Ring. The game features an original story that takes players through different regions of Middle-earth and includes characters familiar from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books. However, the game received harsh criticism from The Guardian, which described it as a “derivative, uninteresting and fundamentally broken stealth action adventure” that fails to capture the essence of Tolkien’s fiction.
Similarly, Push Square called “The Lord of the Rings: Gollum” “a mess” and “a broken game”, citing outrageously dated level design, clumsy controls, a lack of polish, unimpressive graphics and a dull story. PCGamesN also criticized the game, advising against exploring this piece of Middle-earth due to its exhausting, repetitive gameplay and poorly constructed narrative.
