PETER HOSKIN: Precious? No, the new Gollum game is a fatally clumsy mess… trends now
The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £49.99)
Verdict: Go back to the shadow!
'Be gentle to this game, preciousss. It is trying…'
'No! Nasty little game! Gnash it and bite it and crush it to the ground!'
That's how my inner Smeagol and Gollum — two sides of a split personality — have wrestled with each other in recent days, as I've been playing The Lord Of The Rings: Gollum.
Smeagol, the kinder voice, has a point. This game has a tremendous premise: it follows the pitiable creature Gollum, slave to Tolkien's One Ring, as he snuffles around for his lost property in between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.
In brief moments — the colour of a moody Mordor sky, say, or the way its oily protagonist slinks over a rock — it even lives up to that premise.
This game has a tremendous premise: it follows the pitiable creature Gollum, slave to Tolkien's One Ring, as he snuffles around for his lost property in between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings
This game looks as though it's from the PlayStation 3 era... 15 years ago, if not earlier
Gnash it, bite it, crush it. Just don't play this game
But I think it's Gollum, the nastier voice, who swayed me in the end. This game looks as though it's from the PlayStation 3 era... 15 years ago, if not earlier.
It sounds as though it's being performed by Not Andy Serkis and Not Ian McKellen, demeaning themselves — and us — in a cheap knock-off of Peter Jackson's Rings movies.
And it plays like… gosh, the gameplay is more dreadful than the Dark Lord Sauron himself. It takes the creepy-crawly stealth mechanics from superior games — games that offer much more besides — and makes them fatally clumsy.
Imagine falling blamelessly into the same damn pit again and again. Or
