I get it. This is a mid-to-low-tier, bargain bin PS2 game released on the 9th generation of consoles with a severe lack of technological polish and about two decades too late to cash in on the craze of the Peter Jackson trilogy. All stuff that is deeply unacceptable in this day and age. Yet, between the budget-caliber Prince of Persia​ knockoff platforming and surprisingly compelling moral decision-making, I remained invested enough to see the journey through to one of its possible conclusions and even have some fun with it despite the bugs, occasional infuriatingly designed segments, and at times remarkably unfinished graphics.

The real star of the show, though? Undoubtedly developer Daedelic Entertainment's rendition of Middle-earth. It carries just the right mix of the mature, dark tone and look of the Jackson films paired alongside hints of the more fantastical, whimsical nature found in the Rankin/Bass animated adaptations. It did a better job of recapturing the magic of this world that I've missed for me than the live-action Hobbit movies. They also got the titular character himself very right. Really encapsulating what a sad, tragic, pitiful, and strangely sympathetic creature he is. The tale itself, outside of getting a little outlandish even for this fantasy universe in its final act, is a neat little prequel expansion on the protagonist’s history prior to the books. Choosing between which of his two warring split personalities to side with at critical junctures doesn't radically alter where the adventure ends by the time the credits roll due to canonical lore reasons, but still adds some cool little personalized wrinkles to the path up to that point regardless that I really enjoyed seeing.

Having said all that, it nonetheless remains hard to recommend that people look past its incredibly negative reception and try it out for themselves, as only an extremely small portion of players of whom I just so happen to be able to count myself among will be able to look past the significant number of aspects that don't work like they should or were intended to, and find the traces of good buried underneath. One takeaway everyone will receive however, is that we need more Lord of the Rings games. We need more that explore unique characters or corners of the novels, and feature different gameplay styles than that of your usual hack 'n' slash or RTS efforts the way this tried to do. You see, the biggest disappointment of Gollum is that it exhibits truly good, intriguing ideas, but fails to capitalize on them in ways that are fully satisfying or completely functional.

6.5/10

After playing this I really need Tenet adapted into a game helmed by Remedy. Pretty unique stuff here for a video game. It's got some of the best world building potential I've seen in a game. Gameplay is a bit clunky and it's another abysmal pc port but the story kept me engaged throughout, like yeah the tv show could've used better writing and depth, even then it maintains a solid ambiguity throughout. Also like how you're in a weird dilemma at the end of each Act playing as the antagonist making choices, it's like you ponder if you wanna make a choice that's favourable to the current character that you're controlling (Antagonist) or screw him over since he's the antagonist and since you mostly see yourself playing the protagonist and support his actions. Act 4 is amazing, like it barely had anything to offer gameplay wise and Jack/Beth were too dumb to let Amaral change the coordinates like that, but everything post that, those bits in 2010 were amazing. The combat system is innovative but because the gunplay is so trash, the combat at times doesn't feel satisfying. The story when I completed felt like a decent time travel fiction that deserved to be experienced, but after I watched this one YT video that puts all the events in a chronological order, I was amazed at the detail the story had outside the cutscenes, like the story we saw in the form of cutscenes, dialogues and tv episodes were just a fragment, cuz there was so many hidden details in the form of intel and documents that you could optionally find. My jibe here is they could have integrated all that story, mystery about Shifters, Martin Hatch, Kim, the end of time into the main game content instead of dispersing it into collectibles even more so when they had the luxury of playing a tv episode after every Act. When I played the game I skimmed through all these docs without paying much attention and this YouTube video by "YourFavouriteSon" caught me up with brief details about those content. This game definitely deserves a sequel and is a really interesting one. I feel like Remedy has made amazing games so far, with no misses yet as I'm still due to play Control and Alan Wake 2. Also yeah the boss fight at the end was abysmal. Who knew Xbox had one of the best exclusives. Massively underrated game. I also recommend on watching that YT video by "YourFavouriteSon" once you're done with the playthrough.

I want to love this game because I think that there is so much potential to but omg as going through the slog that is this game I can’t for the life of me would recommend this game to anyone because the combat and general gameplay sucks ass as it more or less plays like a MMORPG games like FF14 and WoW that honestly makes this game so unfair at times especially the combat because it doesn’t rely on hit detection at all and you can die in conversations because the status and even potion effects continue when you’re in dialog with other characters and I played this game twice in both Iorveth and Roche routes and for the life of me even if the story is good and intriguing do not play this game and watch a video about it instead because it is not worth going through countless pains and turmoil that it has caused me