There are three voices in our main character's head: Gollum, the vicious paranoid; Smeagol, the wet little meow meow; and Jon, the industrious worker who's very keen to rise through the ranks.
Jon reminds me of that one Futurama episode where Hermes is sent to a forced labor camp but is such a good bureaucrat he manages it 10x better than it was and eventually has it working at maximum efficiency with only 1 Australian man.
Funny, I was thinking of the one where they’re on the Egyptian planet and Bender is giving them pointers right before appointing himself as Pharaoh hahaha
My new best headcanon for LotR is that mordor is the way it is not just because Sauron is evil, but also because it is plagues by an incredibly overcrowded middle management layer
Jons commentary reminds me of Futurama jokes about slave labor. "He made the mines so efficient, all the work is now done by one angry Australian man." "Tell the slaves they're all free-" "Freeloading off of you? I agree!"
Tbf, all the key people from the old point-and-click era were long gone from the Daedalic dev team, they were barely scraping by these days without any real talents left.
I googled it the other day and I'm pretty sure they've developed almost nothing of note. They published significantly more of note, and they're still a publisher. Not a huge loss. (Also, key word there being "almost" nothing. I remember a couple things were good)
@@mushyroom9569 I guarantee anyone with any actual say in that matter is doing just fine on the publishing side and everyone who got laid off had nothing to do with that decision.
I do like how when Jon is recapping the bad execution of the game, at 35:27 a weird thing floats past (Dust? Soot? A cloud?) and then just vanishes. Perfect.
Oh Jon... you don't want to know how much of your sanity it would cost to play this through. This is not nearly the peak of bad that this game has to offer.
Yeah, even "good" games can overstay their welcome and this game is clearly not good. This is one where, yeah, sure, the first hour or so isn't good but it isn't actively unpleasant, but let's see Jon keep going for the whole 10-15 hour campaign where the gameplay never changes and the setting actively gets worse as you progress. Video game reviewers typically play the whole story for a reason...
Not to mention, this is the _post-patch_ Lord of the Rings: Gollum he's playing. Closer to launch, when it garnered most of its negative reputation, it had several game-breaking bugs that could lead one to believe that they just didn't bother playtesting the game at all.
@@StardustWhip Never played it. Was the self moving elevator one such fix? I would not be surprised if that was a common point where whole levels needed to be restarted.
@@torgranael I'm pretty sure _that_ isn't a bug; or if it was, then it was already fixed so early on that when I watched a stream of the game one week after launch, the elevator was already self moving. As for what _was_ a bug: I saw someone else mention a bug with a scene where Gollum has to climb a rotating wheel, and the wheel would sometimes veer off into the walls. There was a video I saw on UA-cam that showed the level just _refusing_ to load no matter how long they waited, as well as Gollum drowning and being sent to a blank white room with the half-loaded level off in the distance; then respawning in that blank white room, still in the dead body pose, the player only able to control the camera. And then there are the constant crashes. Four in that 3-hour stream I watched, and GameSpot reported _over one-hundred-and-twenty_ in their 11 hours of playime. Plus performance so bad that the streamer had to disable their Vtuber just to reach an almost-stable framerate on the lowest graphical settings.
There's more to the backstory of this game's development than meets the eye. People are making excuses for Daedalic as a mid-tier developer failing to deliver a game, but I'm not entirely convinced they were under the illusion they could deliver the game. They made a lot of AAA promises, and gathered a lot of investment money, including government handouts. It strikes me this was very close to one of those permanently almost releasing scam games, where there's some impressive staged game engine footage to draw people in and get investment, but the game never releases. Daedalic should get some kudos for actually releasing the game, although they hyped up the game as a AAA product and attached a AAA price tag, plus some rip-off at-launch DLC. It just feels more like they were contractually obligated to release the game as a pre-requisite to receiving even more investment, and as soon as the game launched and they had their investment money, the bailed on game development. My point is, I'm not convinced this was all done in good faith, although it's impossible to prove. It could be they just bit off more than they could chew, but the tried-but-failed narrative feels more than a little disingenuous.
It gets weirder: They got bought out by another company, Nacon, halfway through production, and most of the 25 staff who were "fired" after Gollum was released were cycled into the wider parent's company. So after getting loads of investment money and government handouts, Daedalic spent a shitload of cash on offices and infrastructure, then were bought about for way under their real price tag by Nacon. Seems like a nice way to slush a bunch money for creative arts into bricks and motor, and make a bunch of money for Daedalic and Nacon without having to deliver anything and without any real consequences for anyone involved apart from a pile of investor and government cash which will never be returned turned into much more tangible real estate. Nacon also has a sketchy af history too, allegedly publishing games on Steam that had been hacked from their partner studio Frogwares' servers after Nacon refused to pay them properly. I think this will all come out as a minor scandal in a few years time when that suit gets settled.
I am so, SO sad that we'll never get another great Point&Click adventure from Daedalice. Edna's Breakout and Harvey's New Eyes were plain *epic* games. In fact, all of their former games were great.
I absolutely love how our gool ol' Jon here does a passive aggresive/sarcastic "review" of absolutely godawful games. He did it with Redfall and now with Gollum and both were so so satisfying to watch specially if you are a long time viewer and have watched this channel for years you know how Jon rlly is and you can feel the passive aggression and sarcasm in his voice =))))
It's the later parts of the game where it abandons any attempt at being a dark narrative about parts of LotR we didn't see. Gollum gets a love interest and is the hero in stopping mordor-aligned guys setting off an ancient superweapon. (Not that most people got to that point due to the large amounts of confusing repetetive sections and softlocks)
It seems like the real issue with the game is that it doesn't commit to anything. Sometimes it's a moral choices game, sometimes it's a platformer, sometimes it's a stealth game. It just doesn't know what it wants to be.
@@Taolan8472 Yes. I may be inferring a bit with the love interest part, but he does certainly seem to be very jealous of her boyfriend and there's an option to murder him. As for the superweapon, honestly I'm not sure what it's suposed to be. The game certainly didn't explain anything beyond "It's ancient magic and we shouldn't let Sauron get it"
I feel conceptually it could have been good if they reigned in the action hero aspects of the movement and maybe worked a bit harder to not suffer from obvious grab ledge syndrome. Granted the later stuff just veers off from any semblance of sense but the opening had potential if rather rough >< That said if want goblin stealth actiony game we already have the Styx series which are good
Oh Jon, you did this during Assassin's Creed Week as well. Most games don't give you a proper read on a game just from playing the first few levels. If you want to give a limited review on something, that's fine, but you can't say the hate for something is overexaggerated when you've barely touched it.
Tbh I'm actually just quite disappointed. Jon's right, there are some really clever and interesting ideas at work in this game that are just ruined by extraordinarily poor execution. I would absolutely love a stealth centered sneaking-and-hiding type game. The conversations between Smeagol and Gollum are genuinely an interesting concept that I haven't seen in a game before. It's just, so absolutely horribly done... real shame. I would love an honest and more loved redo of this game.
I would just like to point out that this game since release received a major update or two that fixed a lot of it, it was WAY more broken on release and people were rightfully pissed. There's a part where you have to climb on a rotating wheel and the animation wasn't anchored properly, so it would glitch out and start veering off in to walls and whatnot and either you would have to restart the entire level or you could wait like 10 minutes in the vain hope that it just so happens to rotate back in a position where you can climb it. This could happen several times in a row completely blocking your progress. It blatantly wasn't playtested in the slightest, that or they just didn't realize game breaking bugs like that were there. I do agree that it has some solid ideas but yeah it was so much worse at launch, when the vast majority of people played it.
"Frodo my lad, did I ever tell you the story of how the creature Gollum glitched through walls, platformed all over the place and had to buy the Gollum exclusive emote pack whilst his hair crashed Middle Earth?- Bilbo Baggins
It's not making fun of it though? This is the most honest appraisal I've seen anyone give this game. And I'd even argue it's just dull rather than truly terrible
The thing about “moral dilemmas are solved via arguing with yourself” is, that’s not what this game does. This game has you make a choice about the moral dilemma, and THEN says “lol jk, your choice doesn’t matter and you don’t get to do that cause you lost the shitty minigame”. (Mind you, the moral choices in this game don’t really matter anyway, but that’s a separate problem.) It’s infuriating from a design and storytelling standpoint, and I hope to god I don’t see it anywhere else. The whole point of moral choices is to *let the player make them.*
Yes, that's a feature I hope to see someday in a better-executed game. I think the closest I've seen to a game creating an inner conflict for certain moral choices is the stress mechanic in Crusader Kings III, but this is a lot more interesting.
7:08 Jon, if you want a game like that that's actually good, you should check out the Oddworld series if you haven't. A cursory search says it hasn't been on the channel before, but they're a brilliant example of a puzzle platformer where you can't directly fight enemies and need to run/sneak/manipulate the environment.
@@TheInfamousCloakerI wish he would do a full run, I feel like it's right up his alley. He'd miss a lot of stuff and then perception in game would tell him about it and it'd be humorous
@@JB-xl2jc IIRC he doesn't really like to do games that are extremely heavy on dialogue, because it makes editing pretty tricky as he doesn't always know what's important to keep in etc. as well as having 90% dialogue makes pacing the video well harder too. Also, isometric games just don't really do very well on the channel, similar to Nintendo games. I'd love a series on it but it'll sadly almost definitely never happen.
@@tortoiseoflegends4466 Hmm... perhaps a livestream? No editing needed and it'd be fun to watch him agonize over certain choices in real time. I mean I doubt it'd happen but still.
What's great about Disco Elysium is that multiple skills can be used to achieve the same task but those skills aren't equally as effective. Composure and Perception will tell you if they think someone is lying but Drama will tell you that it knows if someone is lying. I once had Composure tell me someone was lying only for Drama to immediately tell me they were not. Empathy can sometimes detect lies but it's much less reliable. Usually empathy just this person might be lying because the way they're acting is different to the way their feeling.
It would have been received okay if it didn't have a triple A price tag to be honest. Don't get me wrong it wouldn't be groundbreaking and it would have mixed reviews but it wouldn't have done this abysmally. Definitely not bad enough to shut down the studio
@@prossnip42fallout NV came out in 15 years ago and crashed waaay more than this at release, a sizable chunk of players couldn't even get past the intro cutscene (let alone play) until the frantic patching started. It's still a buggy mess vanilla to this day, and it's considered a classic by most. I think their statement stands, honestly! If this game came out in 2010 it would've been considered "Decent, plagued by bugs at release but introduced unique intra-dialogue systems and moral quandaries as well as unreliable narrator tropes in real time".
You mean it's as bland as the various trash that AAA studios have been releasing for the past 15+ years? You're 100% right, and it's a shame that people call it "okay".
@@UnsoberIdiot and you mean beause all generalisations are always complete bullshit from anyone ever, it doesn't even matter. Brain on mode: There have been TONS of GOOD AAA games in the last 15 years. Same as there have been bad games on any A level.. If you buy only Fifa 2008 - 2023 it's your fault. But @JB-xl2jc That can't be right! Obsidian is absolutely brilliant, flawless and infallable. They would never release a unfinished game with an empty world and a faction based story out of an Excel spreadsheet, with completely predictable gameplay template... That is well known gamers canon. (Same as that ALL AAA games are just bad).
Jon not showing the game setup already skips a lot of the jank. Like the framerate tanking in the setup menu, or some graphics options making the game crash.
I think Yahtzee made a pretty good point that people may be being too harsh to this game considering it’s made by a mid-range developer with limited experience and resources while other big budget games slip by scot free while doing way more harm than a bunch of tech nerds who wanted to make a LOTR game.
Entire levels only half codded resulting in people having to glitch their way through them, controls that were borderline broken at launch and a gameplay loop that is little more than generic mini games and broken stealth sections. None of this has to do with the IP but the state of the game and it becomes very clear when you remember that they took millions in funding from the German government not once but twice AND had day 1 DLC that included things like 'in game lore' and 'elves speaking their language' , this was never about trying to make a game and failing it was very obviously a scam for the money, that is why they did a runner the second they got too much attention
@@benjaminfranklin329 No they are not. LOTR and the wider legendarium are not in the public domain. Rights to the Hobbit and LOTR trilogy are held, in part, by a company called Middle-earth Enterprises. They licensed the films and the games along with other products. The Tolkien Estate retain all literary rights and all rights relating to the Silmarillion, History of Middle-Earth and Unfinished Tales, along with miscellaneous other works. It is worth noting that it is not clear exactly how extensive the rights Middle-earth Enterprises (MEE) holds are. They certainly have rights broad enough to use the characters, places and overall story of Hobbit and LOTR. This does not mean they could license someone to put on a stage show or film where an actor just read out the books. It's unclear exactly how much of the text itself you can use as a licensee of MEE. So either way you have to pay someone money. The Tolkien Estate have sued and settled with MEE over infrigement of copyright due to the production of video games in particular. This seems to have been triggered by the use of LOTR themes in gambling machines and games. Strictly speaking all video games before that suit were an infringement because originally Tolkien sold merchandising, film and stage rights. It does not seem this could extend to video games, a medium completely unknown to Tolkien. This was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and agreement. In short, do not start charging people for LOTR fan fic or video games unless you like lawsuits. Do not dare touch anything outside the LOTR in any context unless you really, really like lawsuits. Tolkien's estate, and probably Tolkien himself, have always regretted signing away these rights in such a loose way and for relatively little payment. They are very protective of the rights they still hold.
@2:25 - What's also cocking wierd is how they're insisting on calling Gandalf (who did try to interrogate Gollum after the latter "escaped" Mordor and was captured, as I recall, in the books, but Gollum was nowhere near coherent, being a gibbering wreck) "Wizard" rather than using his name... edit: I think I'll watch "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way" again to wash the taste of this abomination out of my brain.
I'm glad you played this: I truly believed (and was not disappointed) that if anyone could give it a fair shake, it would be you. Your assessment is hard, but fair. Thank you.
That's not the problem with this game and Gollum is a well liked character which could have made for an interesting story following him. It wasn't even that long ago before it came out people were showing a lot of interest in the game so your assessment is pretty off base. The problem is the game itself is just not that good.
@@donovanfaust3227 How would anyone make a good game out of Gollum? He's a wretched, pathetic character who doesn't really do anything besides skulk around.
@@xyzzyxyzzy2 You have FUNDAMENTALLY misunderstood the character. He is the crux of the tale, the centre that all others turn around. 'Doesn't do anything' you say? Go back to school.
The game concept isn't dead on arrival, a stealthy tour across Mordor and some elf lands between each series and maybe a different interpretation of characters besides the movies. But the game is just so buggy and the ideas they went with at the prison are just headscratchingly bad, is what I would say if there weren't three pairs of pants on the head making it difficult to scratch.
Jon nooooooo don't touch this game ever again. As someone who loves seeing you tackle awful games, please, don't ever try to finish it. I have not seen any of this video, but I plead on my knees that you don't suffer through this awful experience.
Wait, a British history expert that doesn't know much about Lord of the Rings? Is that possible? Doesn't Tolkien get an entire required elective class dedicated to his work?
Obviously a very bad game but worth noting that this is how 90% of games were about 20 years ago. This is every stealth game on Xbox and PS2 that wasn’t a Metal Gear title.
Unfortunately it happens too often. Prototype 2 wasn't even a bad game it just underperformed and those developers got mass layoffs for it years ago. And then they shut Radical down if I'm not mistaken
The choice with the beetle is a false one - it doesn't matter which one you pick, the end result is the same... It brings nothing to the game, it's just fluff.
Day 1088 of requesting Zoo Tycoon. There's a lot of dark poetic justice to a game about a cursed being becoming a cursed artifact. It's like The Eye of Argon in game form
So.... I mostly agree with Jon here, this isnt terrible, dull, but i have only the highest standards for bad games. Ride to Hell is badly made from a gameplay and plot perspective, but even then its at least fun to laugh at. This, just doesn't summon up much positive or negative emotion. It is blah, the videogame equivalent of saltine crackers. Arguably dull is a far worse label than bad, but I dont see anything here that truly justifies either the bandwagon, nor the developers pulling up stakes and leaving the industry
100% agree. It's not worth shutting down their game development for. In fact I think a lot could have been learned and improved on from this game. And definitely not warranting harassment to the devs
Even with the best of intentions and very good faith, with everything polished up and absolutely no bugs I think Daedalic Entertainment forgot to put any game in this video game. I would've settled for a telltale game rather than what we got
@@UnsoberIdiot You confidantly say this, as Tears of the Kingdom, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Pikmin 4 literally released this year, along with Starfield on the way. Something tells me you don't actually pay that much attention to what AAA companies have put out recently.
Poor Jon, he's only played up to the semi-polished beginning. He has no idea how bad it gets later on, like it gets really bad. Parkour wheels, magically spinning off into space, whole chunks of a map never loading in(letting you and enemies fall into a void with no kill zone), npcs missing from cutscenes while they talk, even more magnetic parkour, the choice mechanic gradually does less and less to impact the game or story(yes less then it already does). Jon you got lucky, cause it gets so bad later on, so mind numbingly bad....
The hate Gollum gets... is weird. The game seems to have decent ideas, just really shitty execution, tech problems etc. Yeah, it's bad, whatever. I checked the steam price, and It's obviously high (35$ i think?), but it's nowhere close to AAA bullshit we've gotten used to through years. Quick reminder, that: -Bethesda keeps selling flour and expecting modders to make bread out of it, while somehow actively making it hard to mod their games (Fallout 76 fiasco, Skyrim being unplayable without mods, but having like 20 different versions that change nothing outside of breaking mods, TESO and Redfall apparently being a disaster) -Nintendo actively persecutes anyone who mods their games, while intentionally locking players out from legit options to play legacy games (Several Pokemon romhacks for 20+ year old games being taken down, the mario 3d collection on Switch being worse than emulators, recent PointCrow drama) -Blizzard exists (I don't think i need to say anything else with their recent history) -Bioware keeps making bad action games and selling them as RPGs (Dragon Age 2, ME3 endings, Andromeda, and just a personal bias, since I recently played Dragon Age Inquisition and It's a barely playable, horribly written busywork) -Ubisoft has single handedly changed the definition of a video game to their own definition of madness (honestly, any game they made since FarCry 3, they're the same game anyway) -EA sells halfs of games and asks for literal hundreds of dollars to make them even barely completish -Riot just copies other games to fund the Chinese Government etc etc etc Give me a middle-sized studio that tried making something fun, but failed over this shit any day of the week. If they didn't go for LOTR license it would just be considered "fine" and forgotten in a week.
I played Skyrim 7 times through without mods on Playstation and PC. It absolutely can be played without mods. The number of mods there are for Bethesda games doesn't indicate to me it's overly difficult to mod them. And how many developers make it as easy to mod their games, if you can at all?
There are three voices in our main character's head: Gollum, the vicious paranoid; Smeagol, the wet little meow meow; and Jon, the industrious worker who's very keen to rise through the ranks.
Imagine explaining to Tolkien what a “wet little meow meow” is to describe one of his characters
@@seanmcloughlin5983Tolkien served on the Western Front. I'm sure he saw more than his share of wet meow meows.
Jon reminds me of that one Futurama episode where Hermes is sent to a forced labor camp but is such a good bureaucrat he manages it 10x better than it was and eventually has it working at maximum efficiency with only 1 Australian man.
This is exactly what this made my mind jump to!
SEANNA
🎵When push comes to shove you gotta do what you love, even if its not a good idea🎵
Funny, I was thinking of the one where they’re on the Egyptian planet and Bender is giving them pointers right before appointing himself as Pharaoh hahaha
"My Hermes got that hellhole running so efficiently, all the physical labor is done by one Australian man" 😂😂😂
My new best headcanon for LotR is that mordor is the way it is not just because Sauron is evil, but also because it is plagues by an incredibly overcrowded middle management layer
Given the actual friendship between the two authors, I would have loved to see a LotR/Screwtape Letters crossover with this exact premise
Jon complaining about easily-distracted Gollum with a straight face…
Jons commentary reminds me of Futurama jokes about slave labor.
"He made the mines so efficient, all the work is now done by one angry Australian man."
"Tell the slaves they're all free-" "Freeloading off of you? I agree!"
It’s kind of a shame about Daedalic. They actually have a decent track record with indie games, but they clearly bit off more than they could chew.
To be fair they're still going to be a publisher, which is honestly where most of their indie success lived anyway.
Tbf, all the key people from the old point-and-click era were long gone from the Daedalic dev team, they were barely scraping by these days without any real talents left.
Serves them right for participating in Amazon’s continuing defilement of Tolkien’s corpse.
I googled it the other day and I'm pretty sure they've developed almost nothing of note. They published significantly more of note, and they're still a publisher. Not a huge loss. (Also, key word there being "almost" nothing. I remember a couple things were good)
@@mushyroom9569 I guarantee anyone with any actual say in that matter is doing just fine on the publishing side and everyone who got laid off had nothing to do with that decision.
Whenever Jon does videos on games like these, the thumbnail is always amazing
I do like how when Jon is recapping the bad execution of the game, at 35:27 a weird thing floats past (Dust? Soot? A cloud?) and then just vanishes. Perfect.
I think it's a piece of ash
Oh Jon... you don't want to know how much of your sanity it would cost to play this through. This is not nearly the peak of bad that this game has to offer.
Now he must continue. Everyone needs to vote for this for Livestream Day.
Yeah, even "good" games can overstay their welcome and this game is clearly not good. This is one where, yeah, sure, the first hour or so isn't good but it isn't actively unpleasant, but let's see Jon keep going for the whole 10-15 hour campaign where the gameplay never changes and the setting actively gets worse as you progress. Video game reviewers typically play the whole story for a reason...
Not to mention, this is the _post-patch_ Lord of the Rings: Gollum he's playing. Closer to launch, when it garnered most of its negative reputation, it had several game-breaking bugs that could lead one to believe that they just didn't bother playtesting the game at all.
@@StardustWhip Never played it. Was the self moving elevator one such fix? I would not be surprised if that was a common point where whole levels needed to be restarted.
@@torgranael I'm pretty sure _that_ isn't a bug; or if it was, then it was already fixed so early on that when I watched a stream of the game one week after launch, the elevator was already self moving.
As for what _was_ a bug: I saw someone else mention a bug with a scene where Gollum has to climb a rotating wheel, and the wheel would sometimes veer off into the walls. There was a video I saw on UA-cam that showed the level just _refusing_ to load no matter how long they waited, as well as Gollum drowning and being sent to a blank white room with the half-loaded level off in the distance; then respawning in that blank white room, still in the dead body pose, the player only able to control the camera.
And then there are the constant crashes. Four in that 3-hour stream I watched, and GameSpot reported _over one-hundred-and-twenty_ in their 11 hours of playime. Plus performance so bad that the streamer had to disable their Vtuber just to reach an almost-stable framerate on the lowest graphical settings.
Jon got Mordor running so efficiently that all the physical labor is done by a single orc.
A single overseer ork.
@@tehweh8202 a single angry australian overseer ork
Gollum scratching his head while Jon pondered if he should have been in the lift was pure gold.
There's more to the backstory of this game's development than meets the eye. People are making excuses for Daedalic as a mid-tier developer failing to deliver a game, but I'm not entirely convinced they were under the illusion they could deliver the game. They made a lot of AAA promises, and gathered a lot of investment money, including government handouts. It strikes me this was very close to one of those permanently almost releasing scam games, where there's some impressive staged game engine footage to draw people in and get investment, but the game never releases. Daedalic should get some kudos for actually releasing the game, although they hyped up the game as a AAA product and attached a AAA price tag, plus some rip-off at-launch DLC. It just feels more like they were contractually obligated to release the game as a pre-requisite to receiving even more investment, and as soon as the game launched and they had their investment money, the bailed on game development. My point is, I'm not convinced this was all done in good faith, although it's impossible to prove. It could be they just bit off more than they could chew, but the tried-but-failed narrative feels more than a little disingenuous.
yep, its almost certain that is what happened considering they got funding to make a second game and then did a runner
It gets weirder: They got bought out by another company, Nacon, halfway through production, and most of the 25 staff who were "fired" after Gollum was released were cycled into the wider parent's company. So after getting loads of investment money and government handouts, Daedalic spent a shitload of cash on offices and infrastructure, then were bought about for way under their real price tag by Nacon. Seems like a nice way to slush a bunch money for creative arts into bricks and motor, and make a bunch of money for Daedalic and Nacon without having to deliver anything and without any real consequences for anyone involved apart from a pile of investor and government cash which will never be returned turned into much more tangible real estate.
Nacon also has a sketchy af history too, allegedly publishing games on Steam that had been hacked from their partner studio Frogwares' servers after Nacon refused to pay them properly.
I think this will all come out as a minor scandal in a few years time when that suit gets settled.
So, The Producers, but for video games?
Jon immediately telling the slavers how to run the place 😂 Next he'll become pharaoh and shout "remember me"
I am so, SO sad that we'll never get another great Point&Click adventure from Daedalice. Edna's Breakout and Harvey's New Eyes were plain *epic* games. In fact, all of their former games were great.
I'd love to see you complete this game in a livestream or two and see if you maintain your semi-positive outlook.
But also download it without any updates and see why people were complaining
I absolutely love how our gool ol' Jon here does a passive aggresive/sarcastic "review" of absolutely godawful games. He did it with Redfall and now with Gollum and both were so so satisfying to watch specially if you are a long time viewer and have watched this channel for years you know how Jon rlly is and you can feel the passive aggression and sarcasm in his voice =))))
It's the later parts of the game where it abandons any attempt at being a dark narrative about parts of LotR we didn't see.
Gollum gets a love interest and is the hero in stopping mordor-aligned guys setting off an ancient superweapon.
(Not that most people got to that point due to the large amounts of confusing repetetive sections and softlocks)
... wait is that legit?
...Gollum gets a love interest? Jesus Christ...
It seems like the real issue with the game is that it doesn't commit to anything. Sometimes it's a moral choices game, sometimes it's a platformer, sometimes it's a stealth game. It just doesn't know what it wants to be.
@@Taolan8472 Yes. I may be inferring a bit with the love interest part, but he does certainly seem to be very jealous of her boyfriend and there's an option to murder him.
As for the superweapon, honestly I'm not sure what it's suposed to be. The game certainly didn't explain anything beyond "It's ancient magic and we shouldn't let Sauron get it"
You're making that up, right?
I feel conceptually it could have been good if they reigned in the action hero aspects of the movement and maybe worked a bit harder to not suffer from obvious grab ledge syndrome.
Granted the later stuff just veers off from any semblance of sense but the opening had potential if rather rough ><
That said if want goblin stealth actiony game we already have the Styx series which are good
Oh Jon, you did this during Assassin's Creed Week as well. Most games don't give you a proper read on a game just from playing the first few levels. If you want to give a limited review on something, that's fine, but you can't say the hate for something is overexaggerated when you've barely touched it.
Tbh I'm actually just quite disappointed. Jon's right, there are some really clever and interesting ideas at work in this game that are just ruined by extraordinarily poor execution. I would absolutely love a stealth centered sneaking-and-hiding type game. The conversations between Smeagol and Gollum are genuinely an interesting concept that I haven't seen in a game before. It's just, so absolutely horribly done... real shame. I would love an honest and more loved redo of this game.
I would just like to point out that this game since release received a major update or two that fixed a lot of it, it was WAY more broken on release and people were rightfully pissed.
There's a part where you have to climb on a rotating wheel and the animation wasn't anchored properly, so it would glitch out and start veering off in to walls and whatnot and either you would have to restart the entire level or you could wait like 10 minutes in the vain hope that it just so happens to rotate back in a position where you can climb it. This could happen several times in a row completely blocking your progress.
It blatantly wasn't playtested in the slightest, that or they just didn't realize game breaking bugs like that were there.
I do agree that it has some solid ideas but yeah it was so much worse at launch, when the vast majority of people played it.
"Frodo my lad, did I ever tell you the story of how the creature Gollum glitched through walls, platformed all over the place and had to buy the Gollum exclusive emote pack whilst his hair crashed Middle Earth?- Bilbo Baggins
Always a rare treat when Jon makes fun of bad games.
It's not making fun of it though? This is the most honest appraisal I've seen anyone give this game. And I'd even argue it's just dull rather than truly terrible
@@Kaarl_Mills Commented at the start of the video. The start of the game isn't that bad compared to the end, too.
12:26 Jon - I’m not wearing a robe I’m wearing a loincloth
When Jon accidentally reveals RL situations whilst recording a video.
but i guarantee it's a linenloincloth.
I don't know about Sauron, but Saruman has eyes among the birds and beasts and uses them to spy on the Fellowship, so I imagine Sauron can
Gollum: Prison Chore Simulator
It's probably bad when the most entertaining part of the game is attempting to provide management consulting to mordor.
The thing about “moral dilemmas are solved via arguing with yourself” is, that’s not what this game does. This game has you make a choice about the moral dilemma, and THEN says “lol jk, your choice doesn’t matter and you don’t get to do that cause you lost the shitty minigame”. (Mind you, the moral choices in this game don’t really matter anyway, but that’s a separate problem.) It’s infuriating from a design and storytelling standpoint, and I hope to god I don’t see it anywhere else. The whole point of moral choices is to *let the player make them.*
jon you haven't run into the level when the ground doesn't load and the guards fall endlessly into the void when patroling
man never even got to the bird breeding minigame
Gollum v Smeagol internal struggle is genuinely interesting
Yes, that's a feature I hope to see someday in a better-executed game. I think the closest I've seen to a game creating an inner conflict for certain moral choices is the stress mechanic in Crusader Kings III, but this is a lot more interesting.
@@erickpoorbaugh6728Hellblade kind of touches on this internal conflict/voices thing, although it's not exactly the same
It's so good, you can read a whole three books featuring it!
Yes, really interesting idea. Just very poor execution.
7:08 Jon, if you want a game like that that's actually good, you should check out the Oddworld series if you haven't. A cursory search says it hasn't been on the channel before, but they're a brilliant example of a puzzle platformer where you can't directly fight enemies and need to run/sneak/manipulate the environment.
Jon is surprisingly positive and optimistic about being a slave in Mordor.
"Game where moral dilemmas are solved by arguing with yourself sound fun!"
So are we ignoring Disco Elysium on purpose today?
He has been ignoring it since doing that one singular video on it years ago
@@TheInfamousCloakerI wish he would do a full run, I feel like it's right up his alley. He'd miss a lot of stuff and then perception in game would tell him about it and it'd be humorous
@@JB-xl2jc IIRC he doesn't really like to do games that are extremely heavy on dialogue, because it makes editing pretty tricky as he doesn't always know what's important to keep in etc. as well as having 90% dialogue makes pacing the video well harder too. Also, isometric games just don't really do very well on the channel, similar to Nintendo games.
I'd love a series on it but it'll sadly almost definitely never happen.
@@tortoiseoflegends4466 Hmm... perhaps a livestream? No editing needed and it'd be fun to watch him agonize over certain choices in real time. I mean I doubt it'd happen but still.
What's great about Disco Elysium is that multiple skills can be used to achieve the same task but those skills aren't equally as effective. Composure and Perception will tell you if they think someone is lying but Drama will tell you that it knows if someone is lying. I once had Composure tell me someone was lying only for Drama to immediately tell me they were not. Empathy can sometimes detect lies but it's much less reliable. Usually empathy just this person might be lying because the way they're acting is different to the way their feeling.
This game would have been 'okay' had it been released 15 years ago.
No it wouldn't, that would be 2008. Fallout 3 came out in 2008
It would have been received okay if it didn't have a triple A price tag to be honest. Don't get me wrong it wouldn't be groundbreaking and it would have mixed reviews but it wouldn't have done this abysmally. Definitely not bad enough to shut down the studio
@@prossnip42fallout NV came out in 15 years ago and crashed waaay more than this at release, a sizable chunk of players couldn't even get past the intro cutscene (let alone play) until the frantic patching started. It's still a buggy mess vanilla to this day, and it's considered a classic by most. I think their statement stands, honestly! If this game came out in 2010 it would've been considered "Decent, plagued by bugs at release but introduced unique intra-dialogue systems and moral quandaries as well as unreliable narrator tropes in real time".
You mean it's as bland as the various trash that AAA studios have been releasing for the past 15+ years?
You're 100% right, and it's a shame that people call it "okay".
@@UnsoberIdiot and you mean beause all generalisations are always complete bullshit from anyone ever, it doesn't even matter.
Brain on mode: There have been TONS of GOOD AAA games in the last 15 years. Same as there have been bad games on any A level.. If you buy only Fifa 2008 - 2023 it's your fault.
But @JB-xl2jc That can't be right! Obsidian is absolutely brilliant, flawless and infallable. They would never release a unfinished game with an empty world and a faction based story out of an Excel spreadsheet, with completely predictable gameplay template... That is well known gamers canon. (Same as that ALL AAA games are just bad).
Jon not showing the game setup already skips a lot of the jank. Like the framerate tanking in the setup menu, or some graphics options making the game crash.
If there's one place I really need a nice, high frame rate, it's the setup menu. That's a red flag, right there
@@LikelyToBeEatenByAGrue Yeah, when the menus don't even operate smoothly a player has to question whether or not the game was even playtested.
Jon doesn't know about bird spies?! Jon has never watched the Lord of The Rings movies = confirmed
What the hell I am so ready for this
I think Yahtzee made a pretty good point that people may be being too harsh to this game considering it’s made by a mid-range developer with limited experience and resources while other big budget games slip by scot free while doing way more harm than a bunch of tech nerds who wanted to make a LOTR game.
I think the problem with that logic is that it was priced the same as a AAA game. At least Redfall was on Gamepass.
thing is that the lotr license is probably quite expensive. So you can't really afford a flop.
Only if you take content from the movies, the books are all past the copyright period
Entire levels only half codded resulting in people having to glitch their way through them, controls that were borderline broken at launch and a gameplay loop that is little more than generic mini games and broken stealth sections. None of this has to do with the IP but the state of the game and it becomes very clear when you remember that they took millions in funding from the German government not once but twice AND had day 1 DLC that included things like 'in game lore' and 'elves speaking their language' , this was never about trying to make a game and failing it was very obviously a scam for the money, that is why they did a runner the second they got too much attention
@@benjaminfranklin329 No they are not. LOTR and the wider legendarium are not in the public domain. Rights to the Hobbit and LOTR trilogy are held, in part, by a company called Middle-earth Enterprises. They licensed the films and the games along with other products. The Tolkien Estate retain all literary rights and all rights relating to the Silmarillion, History of Middle-Earth and Unfinished Tales, along with miscellaneous other works.
It is worth noting that it is not clear exactly how extensive the rights Middle-earth Enterprises (MEE) holds are. They certainly have rights broad enough to use the characters, places and overall story of Hobbit and LOTR. This does not mean they could license someone to put on a stage show or film where an actor just read out the books. It's unclear exactly how much of the text itself you can use as a licensee of MEE.
So either way you have to pay someone money. The Tolkien Estate have sued and settled with MEE over infrigement of copyright due to the production of video games in particular. This seems to have been triggered by the use of LOTR themes in gambling machines and games. Strictly speaking all video games before that suit were an infringement because originally Tolkien sold merchandising, film and stage rights. It does not seem this could extend to video games, a medium completely unknown to Tolkien. This was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and agreement.
In short, do not start charging people for LOTR fan fic or video games unless you like lawsuits. Do not dare touch anything outside the LOTR in any context unless you really, really like lawsuits. Tolkien's estate, and probably Tolkien himself, have always regretted signing away these rights in such a loose way and for relatively little payment. They are very protective of the rights they still hold.
11 min in and I don’t hate this yet.
Over 2:30 Jon turning into Many A True Real Estate Agent. I've certainly heard worse pitches when looking at apartments in NYC.
@2:25 - What's also cocking wierd is how they're insisting on calling Gandalf (who did try to interrogate Gollum after the latter "escaped" Mordor and was captured, as I recall, in the books, but Gollum was nowhere near coherent, being a gibbering wreck) "Wizard" rather than using his name...
edit: I think I'll watch "Where There's a Whip, There's a Way" again to wash the taste of this abomination out of my brain.
23:57 "Ohhh! I'm swimming in worms!" That's a good one to take out of context.
I'm glad you played this: I truly believed (and was not disappointed) that if anyone could give it a fair shake, it would be you. Your assessment is hard, but fair. Thank you.
Ahh yes, Gollum, the character from the series we all wanted the most to be made into a game....
Actually he was the most interesting of all the character. Not so one dimensional as the others.
That's not the problem with this game and Gollum is a well liked character which could have made for an interesting story following him. It wasn't even that long ago before it came out people were showing a lot of interest in the game so your assessment is pretty off base. The problem is the game itself is just not that good.
@@donovanfaust3227 How would anyone make a good game out of Gollum? He's a wretched, pathetic character who doesn't really do anything besides skulk around.
@@xyzzyxyzzy2 You have FUNDAMENTALLY misunderstood the character. He is the crux of the tale, the centre that all others turn around. 'Doesn't do anything' you say? Go back to school.
@@sprink88 I tried going back to school, but there were no courses in Gollum.
Please play more of it. I beg you. I love it
2:36 House Flipper Mordor edition
“The bloody frail man who’s presumably important if you’ve like read Lord of the Rings etc. etc.”
Nope.
Did Jon ever play Prince of Persia: Sands of Time? Because that is what that movement is, the Jedi games only ripped it off
I so love the title. So thematic, so relevant. Perfect.
The fact that Andy Serkis didn't want his voice anywhere near this is... telling.
Hey! It got an outro from Jon, so that's something.
The game concept isn't dead on arrival, a stealthy tour across Mordor and some elf lands between each series and maybe a different interpretation of characters besides the movies. But the game is just so buggy and the ideas they went with at the prison are just headscratchingly bad, is what I would say if there weren't three pairs of pants on the head making it difficult to scratch.
The most frustrating part is that there are clearly seeds of a solid game in here. It just... did not work, at all, in any way.
Maybe they should release a Netflix series as well then people will probably like it more.
"One does not simply walk out of Mordor."
Jon nooooooo don't touch this game ever again. As someone who loves seeing you tackle awful games, please, don't ever try to finish it. I have not seen any of this video, but I plead on my knees that you don't suffer through this awful experience.
Instant +1 for the title. (I wish it was a pun...)
We need to know if Gollum gets his promotion to junior overseer.
Probably a horrible job when your twice gollums size and can’t see in the dark
11:00
I think Disco Elysium does something similar to this regard.
There is also some DLCs like elvish language and Gollum gestures which added even more reason to hate the game
The rant ending at 16:28 could totally be an end card
Oh my...this is going to be good :D
0:46 Unusual?
The exact same thing happened to *Forspoken*
Ooh, I wondered if Jon would venture into Mordor for us! Cast it into the fire, indeed.
I enjoyed this LP of Mordor Slave Labor Efficiency Consultant Simulator
His eyes haunt me.
Having watched AngryJoe play this all the way through it does in fact get much worse.
Wait, a British history expert that doesn't know much about Lord of the Rings? Is that possible? Doesn't Tolkien get an entire required elective class dedicated to his work?
Reminds me a bit of Abe's odd world
Mordor is full of middle managers, that tracks.
Obviously a very bad game but worth noting that this is how 90% of games were about 20 years ago. This is every stealth game on Xbox and PS2 that wasn’t a Metal Gear title.
Ah yes developers losing their jobs after just one of their games fails or even underperforms, an unprecedented occurrence in this industry.
Unfortunately it happens too often. Prototype 2 wasn't even a bad game it just underperformed and those developers got mass layoffs for it years ago. And then they shut Radical down if I'm not mistaken
@@irecordwithaphone1856 Prototype 2 was a massive letdown.
@@UnsoberIdiot To each their own. I loved it. Definitely not warranting the staff being fired and the studio shutting down at the very least
@@irecordwithaphone1856That was my ironic point thank you mate.
They said this game is terrible but it actually looks half decent here
Bards will sing about the studio which was burnt to the ground and the soil was salted so that nothing ever grows from such a place.
The choice with the beetle is a false one - it doesn't matter which one you pick, the end result is the same... It brings nothing to the game, it's just fluff.
Gollum's ADD is the equivalent to Jon's Fallout ADD syndrome XD
Styx master of shadows and Styx shards of darkness might be up your alley if this is the type of stealth you enjoy
Please play more of these bad games. It's too hilarious.
"Everybody likes high ceilings."
Me over here with a phobia of high buildings, ceilings and whatever else.
Lovely return of Why not Wednesdays!
Love the video as always. Indie game recommendation - Call Hating (released today on Steam)
You know, i think this would make a really great stream game
Not finished yet with video but it is surely no Superman on the N64...
It's so cool seeing you play PS2 games!!! I have a few favorites from the.. I hope you do some ps2 a d X360 game.. that's very much my childhood
I immediately clicked to respect you for taking this on yourself so I dont have to!
Day 1088 of requesting Zoo Tycoon. There's a lot of dark poetic justice to a game about a cursed being becoming a cursed artifact. It's like The Eye of Argon in game form
Yeah, "Gollum" isn't good, but it isn't that bad either. "Redfall" was that bad. This was more "okay, but could have been so much more" imo
So....
I mostly agree with Jon here, this isnt terrible, dull, but i have only the highest standards for bad games. Ride to Hell is badly made from a gameplay and plot perspective, but even then its at least fun to laugh at.
This, just doesn't summon up much positive or negative emotion. It is blah, the videogame equivalent of saltine crackers. Arguably dull is a far worse label than bad, but I dont see anything here that truly justifies either the bandwagon, nor the developers pulling up stakes and leaving the industry
100% agree. It's not worth shutting down their game development for. In fact I think a lot could have been learned and improved on from this game. And definitely not warranting harassment to the devs
The Lord of the Rings: Ride to Hell: Gollum
this is a good video that showed what all the fuss was about.
Jon... *I've seen entire levels not loading and doors leading into the void.*
Even with the best of intentions and very good faith, with everything polished up and absolutely no bugs I think Daedalic Entertainment forgot to put any game in this video game. I would've settled for a telltale game rather than what we got
How is that much different than what the big studios are doing?
@@UnsoberIdiot You confidantly say this, as Tears of the Kingdom, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Pikmin 4 literally released this year, along with Starfield on the way. Something tells me you don't actually pay that much attention to what AAA companies have put out recently.
You should play the third age total war mod for medieval 2 as a palate cleanser for this lol
Poor Jon, he's only played up to the semi-polished beginning. He has no idea how bad it gets later on, like it gets really bad. Parkour wheels, magically spinning off into space, whole chunks of a map never loading in(letting you and enemies fall into a void with no kill zone), npcs missing from cutscenes while they talk, even more magnetic parkour, the choice mechanic gradually does less and less to impact the game or story(yes less then it already does). Jon you got lucky, cause it gets so bad later on, so mind numbingly bad....
One does not simply escape from Mordor.
Well this is either going to be fun or painful. Maybe both.
Golem sounds like a warhammer skaven
The hate Gollum gets... is weird. The game seems to have decent ideas, just really shitty execution, tech problems etc. Yeah, it's bad, whatever. I checked the steam price, and It's obviously high (35$ i think?), but it's nowhere close to AAA bullshit we've gotten used to through years. Quick reminder, that:
-Bethesda keeps selling flour and expecting modders to make bread out of it, while somehow actively making it hard to mod their games (Fallout 76 fiasco, Skyrim being unplayable without mods, but having like 20 different versions that change nothing outside of breaking mods, TESO and Redfall apparently being a disaster)
-Nintendo actively persecutes anyone who mods their games, while intentionally locking players out from legit options to play legacy games (Several Pokemon romhacks for 20+ year old games being taken down, the mario 3d collection on Switch being worse than emulators, recent PointCrow drama)
-Blizzard exists (I don't think i need to say anything else with their recent history)
-Bioware keeps making bad action games and selling them as RPGs (Dragon Age 2, ME3 endings, Andromeda, and just a personal bias, since I recently played Dragon Age Inquisition and It's a barely playable, horribly written busywork)
-Ubisoft has single handedly changed the definition of a video game to their own definition of madness (honestly, any game they made since FarCry 3, they're the same game anyway)
-EA sells halfs of games and asks for literal hundreds of dollars to make them even barely completish
-Riot just copies other games to fund the Chinese Government
etc
etc
etc
Give me a middle-sized studio that tried making something fun, but failed over this shit any day of the week. If they didn't go for LOTR license it would just be considered "fine" and forgotten in a week.
I played Skyrim 7 times through without mods on Playstation and PC. It absolutely can be played without mods. The number of mods there are for Bethesda games doesn't indicate to me it's overly difficult to mod them. And how many developers make it as easy to mod their games, if you can at all?
Bethesda didn't develop redfall
Thief: The Dark Project did stealth so much better than this game decades earlier.