The greatest achievement in The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is Gollum himself. He’s a beautifully realised thing. His stance is a nervous, weight-shifting crouch. His run is a giddy, loping scamper. His movements seem shaped by his own poor experience of the world, forever flinching from expected blows. And that head, on top of that short, sinewy body, it’s huge and filled with craftiness and sly wit. The large wet eyes shift constantly, looking for an opportunity, any opportunity. The mouth is a pinched snarl. Gollum, hidden in the dark, swimming in sewage, rattling through a blazing blood-coloured mine, looks like Linus van Pelt on the single worst day of his life. This is not a dig – it’s exactly how Gollum should look.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum reviewPublisher: Daedelic Entertainment, NaconDeveloper: Daedelic EntertainmentPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out today on PC, PS4 and PS5 and Xbox. Switch version to follow.
Gollum’s always been a fascinating splinter of chaos in the Tolkien books. The other characters simply aren’t like this, as broadly sketched on the surface, as openly cartoonish, but with such haunted depths. Other characters don’t argue with themselves bitterly over what to do. Other characters don’t kill people on their birthdays. Other characters don’t seem as strangely modern as Gollum, either. He has a wretched kind of star power that I reckon – don’t hate me – is missing from the other Hobbits and what-have-you. Gollum is unforgettable.
Now he has his own game, a stealth and action adventure with a lot of platforming. It’s set – I’m being loose here – in the gap between the Hobbit and Gollum’s reappearance in Lord of the Rings. Gollum’s lost his precious, but he really wants it back. Ever wonder what he got up to during this time? Now you can find out.
I think that’s a problem, to be honest. Gollum’s a great character in a story but I’m not sure that means he’s a brilliant engine for story in general. Gollum’s wanderings between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were conceivably glossed over by Tolkien because they weren’t very interesting. Gollum was interesting when he met Bilbo, and interesting again when he started following Frodo. What happened in between? Do we need to know that?
Gollum the game doesn’t have any particularly brilliant answers, sadly. Gollum starts in prison in Mordor and spends a long time trying to escape. After that, I shouldn’t really spoil anything. But I should also tell you that there’s nothing much worth spoiling. How could there be? We know how Gollum ends up, because it’s all there in The Lord of the Rings. His interesting adventures were written down years ago, and have been turned into films.