The Lord of the Rings: Gollum received low scores from both players and the media

The current year’s array of games teems with fresh releases, including outstanding remakes such as ‘Resident Evil 4’. Capcom has demonstrated that reheated content can still be appetizing. However, many eagerly anticipated games have been met with a torrent of negative reviews upon release. The most recent of these is ‘Lord of the Rings: Gollum,’ whose poor quality has prompted an apology from the developers.

On the rating website Metacritic, ‘Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ has a dismal player rating of 2.8 for the PC version. Unlike games that polarize critics and players, ‘Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ also received a lowly aggregate media score of 41. This clearly indicates the game’s poor quality, not merely bugs or performance issues leading to player dissatisfaction due to an inability to play the game smoothly.

Such ratings and reviews are disastrous for a game that bears the mantle of the classic ‘Lord of the Rings’ franchise. Consequently, the developers issued a recent announcement apologizing for the mediocre gameplay experience which fell short of players’ expectations. They pledged to take player criticism and feedback seriously, promising improvements in subsequent updates.

‘Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ is not an isolated instance this year. Previously, big-name PC port ‘The Last of Us Part 1‘ also suffered from numerous bugs during its initial release, forcing developer Naughty Dog to issue a public apology. A similar situation occurred with ‘Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.’ Despite the respectable content quality, its poor performance optimization led to a slew of negative reviews from players.