The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (Zero Punctuation)
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- čas přidán 13. 06. 2023
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This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee reviews The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.
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I haven't watched your videos in years and literally laughed out loud IRL watching this.
Idk if this is the best spot for it but the dice are incredible. Thank you for fueling this dice goblins heart
I dont think ive ever heard Yahtzee so aggressively defend a studio and reprimand his audience in a single stroke.
It was genuinely refreshing.
Not of Yahtzee, perse, but in general.
I honestly hope they do better next time. They can only either learn from their mistakes, or they can repeat them.
Resident Evil 5 and Metal Gear Survive come to mind.
i disagree with his take that we need to feel bad for them wanting to sit at the "big boys" table. i guarantee you there were employees who recognized they didn't have the resources required to make such a massive jump, and that they were shut down. so i guess i feel bad for those guys, but the company as a whole? nah
@@hinasakukimi do you think it's impossible that higher ups were just really incompetent? i find that very easy to believe.
@@hinasakukimi absolutely. I think Yahtzee forgets that most people don't get sent free codes for their games, and are actually being asked to shell out $70+ bucks for this garbage. THATS what folks are really angry about
"The most stylish way to celebrate the arbitrary cruelty of fate" is my new go-to term for dice.
This kind of advert definitely felt right up Yahtzee’s alley!
Celebrate? Don't you mean "simulate"?
[flashback to five straight natural 1s at the D&D table during the very first combat encounter of my very first session]
@@jiado6893 it is a perfect fit for Yahtzee! 🤣🤣
I recently lost my level 5 PC to a particularly nasty critical hit so I wholeheartedly agree 🙃
@@Notsogrimreaper98 real
I heard a theory that this was originally supposed to be a point and click adventure, but some idiot decided they had to jam in stealth and platforming, and I honestly think that may be right.
Honestly, if we got a telltale games style game featuring Gollum, I think everyone would have been happier.
Except Gollum, but that's just assumed at this point.
Considering that Daedalic is mostly known for games like the Deponia series or the Edna & Harvey series, that doesn't sound too far-fetched.
@@CoxTHwait they made Edna and Harvey? Damn I love those games. Now I really do pity them.
From the gameplay i seen... I think so too.. a lot of it screams: "This is suppose to be point and click" Especially the escort parts or doing things in the right order parts.
It's like they made a point and click then somebody thought if they made it more of a "real game" it would sell better with the big ip attached to it
I respect the fact that Frodo’s missing finger is accurate to the book here. Literally every other adaptation has gotten the wrong finger, and knowing Yahtzee he had to fight the urge to make a middle finger joke.
Even Peter Jackson’s films?
@@zigslotheon Yup.
@@zigslotheon Speaking as a scholar, the PJ films are *not* as accurate as you think. Far too much glorification of combat, for starters.
Still damn fine films on their own, just, keep in mind they got a fair amount of details off.
@@Marx_D._Soul Different medium requires changes. a 1-1 adaptation would have not worked.
@@yoashbarak373 Much as I love both the books and the films, I also sort of keep them separate because of the differences. A 1-1 adaptation definitely wouldn't have worked too well. Them also putting certain bits in places (songs and such) or having them said/done by someone else works pretty well. I'm not sure how well the whole section with Bombadil would have worked on film.
Gollum is a good character in lord of the rings specifically because his story is a closed loop dark reflection of what frodo could have been if he had fallen to the rings power. Intro, origin, rising conflict through his relationship with frodo and sam twisting and turning, denouement, end. There is nothing else interesting to do with this character. Kudos to the devs for dropping this much scratch to prove it
Yeah, outside of name recognition, even as someone who has still only seen the movies, Gollum seems like *literally* the worst (major) character in the franchise to build a game around. Someone in the comments of Dunkey's coverage of this "game" suggested that maybe Gollum could have worked as the protagonist for a game in the vein of the _Oddworld_ series...but even that would go against Gollum's wretched, intentionally pathetic character to the point where you'd probably make a better _LotR_ game just by building around a completely original character.
@@MusicoftheDamned Yeah, "pathetic" really is the only word to describe Gollum: Frodo and even _Sam_ were actually tempted (however briefly) by the world-changing power of The One Ring, but after Smeagol murdered his own cousin and best friend for the most powerful magical artifact Middle Earth ever saw, all he did with it was go and hide in a cave under the Misty Mountains for hundreds of years, eating fish and brooding over his "Precious". While a pitiable character, he's not someone with an interesting story worth examining.
@@ArcaneAzmadi Yeah, even from the movies and what they changed, it's pretty clear that being tempted by The One Ring (and rings like it?) and even (briefly) succumbing to its potential power can occur to basically *anyone* as seen with Galadriel's brief freak out. Otherwise I imagine that she or someone like Gandalf or pre-fall Saruman would have destroyed it long ago.
The issue is more, as you said, that Gollum does *nothing* with it beyond hoard it and obsess over it outside of killing a few people and literal tons of fish over apparently actual centuries while losing all sense of himself and his hygiene. Outside of the pesceterian and super long-lived parts of that, that's basically just...the most basic aspect of succumbing to The One Ring in general. So I have no idea how anyone looked that and, if not doing it to try to make money off of name recognition, decided that using the wretch of a character whose most interesting aspect is that he manages to get enslaved repeatedly was a good idea, especially for a (bad) platforming game.
What they should have done, is have gollum seek out perhaps a lesser ring of power somewhere within mordor, or hear of such a rumor, and then guide him along the shadows and underbelly of Baradur and the dark lands, hearing the grander schemes of Sauron's generals from afar, observing their movements; he should be a playable *witness* of plans greater than himself, and the moral choice system should just affect whether the ending has a "Gollum" tone or a "Smeagol" tone (irredeemable vs slightly hopeful). Short alliances and inevitable betrayals were Gollum's bread n butter with Sam and Frodo, and this game implements them in the most bizarre way I've ever seen.
Also, Gollum is supposed to be at least as intelligent as Bilbo, capable of making riddles and wordplay even after hundreds of years in a cave. He doesn't get much chance to show this in the Jackson films, but they could've made him a semi-personable protagonist if the visual presentation wasn't so abysmally poor and uncanny. I'd love to play as a coyer Gollum who is written by someone smart, closer to his Hobbit self than his Serkis self, and could be properly smug, resourceful, and verbally playful. The only quality they show for him in the game is that he is distrusting and pitiful.
The reason they chose Gollum as the MC is because he is the only morally grey character whose actions in Mordor had a period of ambiguity (between escaping and finding Frodo). They probably wanted a game showing the lesser known inner workings of Sauron's armies and his generals like the Candle Man. But there was clearly some major setback or maybe a full mid-production reboot because it turned out unfinished and the lore is conveyed to Gollum directly by the generals who treat him like a pet dog or something.
The problem is they knew it was this shit and still charged $70 on release for it.
Don’t hate the line devs, hate the studio and publisher management teams, who ignored all the warning signs and willfully pushed a broken shitty product on us for full price
They thought they could be EA! (release games they know are crap and still charge $70-300 for them). But this didn't have the FIFA license.
They deserve no sympathy. The DLC is particularly pathetic.
I blame the people that bought the game. They are rewarding this behavior.
The same as in Cyberpunk 2077, Gotham Knights and Forspoken (to name a few) but people became white knights of many of those because they were fans of the franchise or the studios that made em.
This is Yahtzee's point if people are gona dog pile em then they should do the same for the other bad games no exceptions.
An example many Sonic fans aren't known for taking well if a Sonic game is poorly reviewed because of game breaking bugs or uninteresting boring gameplay, because the fandom blinds them.
@@eduardofrances Thank you for pointing out that Sonic is utter shit and deserves to die.
This Gollum game is FAR better made, plays better, and has a better story than any of that Sonic Frontiers bullshit that had a fucking 70 dollar price tag attached to it, but literally crashed on the opening screen.
I think the only interesting way to do gollum is to go back to when he found the ring and he is mostly a sad little guy and have him make worse and worse choices until living in a cave eating raw fish makes narrative sense. The decline of Sméagol into gollum seems to be what they wanted to cover but I can’t help and wonder if there was a reason why the game had to take place during the lord of the rings.
Just make a stealth survival horror game with some verticality,like styx but you cant fight.
Very little people have the guts to make a depressing game like that
Which is exactly why it would be such a good idea
Most likely yes. I don't know for sure what licensing agreement Daedalic had, but pretty much any Middle Earth adaptation nowadays has to take place during the War of the Rings because that is specifically what Warner Bros. is able to sublicense after they bought the exclusive film and game rights to LotR and The Hobbit. The Tolkien estate has since been extremely tight-fisted with signing any other deals because they hate what Peter Jackson and Warner Bros. did with the IP.
Because that’s what Marketing says will sell.
@@waffles7858 only problem is when it’s mishandled (not if), it’ll be a catastrophic failure, and we won’t see another attempt at that kind of game for like 15years.
The only other time I've heard Yahtzee say to pity the dev of a bad game was in his ZP of Anthem.
I was just thinking the same thing.
I don't mock them for how poorly the game turned out. I mock them for the blatant money grab in the form of removing key features (and emotes -- in a single player game for some reason) and then trying to sell it back at exorbitant prices.
A dev trying something new might stumble, and that's fine, but they (or whoever made them do so if it was the publisher instead) absolutely deserve mockery and vitriol for the "DLC." No excuse is good enough.
I’m genuinely baffled here. I saw the non-zero marketing push, I saw the AAA price, I saw the in-addition-to-the-AAA-price bullshit and I assumed that one of the, you know, AAA publishers had taken a punt on a small studio, possibly as a result of a drunken bet. But Nacon? Seriously? Behind Focus Home Interactive, they’re about the middest-tier mid-tier publisher left. What were they thinking planning to charge full whack for a game _this_ outside the comfort zone of one of their small studios?
It would have made more sense for that Spiders game with the clockwork robots and that _still_ would have made frig all sense.
@@Pineappolis Nacon seems to be scummy publisher. For Sinking City: After they were constantly late on payments and sometimes refusing to pay devs till last min, they literally pirated Sinking City and modified the gamefiles and are selling it on multiple platforms without agreement from devs.
I wouldnt be shocked they will do same for gollum or refused to budget proper and were part of DLC choices.
@@SurrealLeaf Oh, yes, you’re absolutely right - it was Nacon and Frogwares in that case. I got them mixed up with FHI in that instance, for some reason.
@@SurrealLeaf Nacon also published a game with equally as greedy if not more DLC in the form of Blood Bowl 3 so considering Nacon and Daedalic's respective track records I would be more inclined to place the blame for Gollum's dlcs on Nacon.
The Gollum game is just the tip of the iceberg for the next decade of terrible money grubbing LOTR adaptations as LOTR and the Hobbit are going to enter the US public domain in 2033. Basically the license holders of LOTR IP are starting to full on scramble to make money while they still can and/or make copyrightable depictions of LOTR/Hobbit characters (e.g. Winnie the Pooh is public domain, but the Disney depiction of him is under the Disney copyright).
Just like the comments in your livestream said; the moment the devs asked a AAA €70(+10) price, people started judging the game for that value. If they asked 20-30 bucks, I'd think the backlash would've been minor.
Being made in a franchise like LotR obviously brought on hardcore fans too though
That's not something that typically gets set by the devs though, that's something that's set by the producers.
why do Gamers always say its the devs that do things like this? they do not!! the devs just want to make a fun game! the producers and moneymen are the shitheads making shitty decisions!
@@benwaffleironI never mentioned anything about devs. People review the whole package that's presented to them. Doesn't matter who contributed what, we still end up experiencing it all
@@benwaffleiron Then they failed even at that.
@@BlazeStorm Wat ? You literally wrote „the devs asked for the 70 price“
As a response to the video... I think the general hate surrounding this game is mainly related to the price tag and the fact that the content that was included in the "Special" edition should either be included in the base game (like the glossary) or isn't worth it (like the emotes). Skill Up even said in his review that if the game was cheaper, he would have been more lenient considering it was made by a small studio. I think that is a fair argument.
Agreed. I think if the game had come out and been $40 with everything included reviews would have been kinder to it. For full price with additional DLC there is a certain level of expectation and Gollum definitely doesn't reach it even if I think there are some pretty good ideas in the game.
@@robwood1987 Most likely he would have been harder on it if Gollum wasn't being called the "Worst game of 2023" after that title was previously given to Redfall only a few weeks ago, Atomic Hearts before that, and Forspoken before that. I'm also sure within the next month or two we'll have a new game that takes that title, and probably one after that too. Unfortunately, with how sensationalized media has become everything that isn't considered "best ever" or "worst ever" tends to get ignored 5 minutes after it comes out.
I think it's a case of "If you wanna hang with the big kids, you're gonna be judged like the big kids".
It's the naked greed on top of a really bad game that makes it reprehensible.
And you won't catch me giving EA, aka Mammon Incarnate, any sort of easy ride either.
I don’t really think that’s a good criticism either because triple A devs like Nintendo and rockstar are pulling similar bullshit with their ports of old games.
Rockstar for example has recently released a red dead redemption port for modern consoles that’s:
1: full price despite nothing new being added to warrant that
2: is actually missing dlc outfits that are on the game of the year edition for the older consoles, so they’re not only charging full price for the same 10 year old game, but it’s also missing content.
I think the point of the opening statement is that it’s ridiculous to give the gollum devs this amount of shit while the big boys are doing the same shit and even worse at a more frequent rate.
This game will be forgotten about by the end of the year. Earlier even.
Some of your best jokes in a while
Very nice
Good site
Good
Nice
good
I appreciate he takes a minute to point out the devs actually tried with this game. It doesn't take away from how bad it is but maybe they can try again with something better in the future.
It doesn't excuse the price though. It doesn't excuse the lack of support either. Putting out "an apology letter" and buggering off to the next game is not a developer behaiviour you want to support. Don't buy The Lord of Ring: Gollum.
@@vespenegas261 Oh I haven't and I don't plan to, but there's a difference between something like this and the other games he mentions.
It wouldn't receive this much criticism if it had been sold at $10. People would understand. Indie dev, cheap movie game. Most people would only be questioning and pointing fingers at whoever gave Daedelic the LotR license.
@@IronFishChannel
It *is* good to draw a distinction between games that are shit because the devs couldn't pull it off and games that are shit because of profit-maximizing corporate monstrousness
@@IronFishChannel Yeah... Watching Arkane drowning in the mire of *modern gaming* is painful... With this one I was like "Whatever. Rings of Power already took the biscuit"
Sounds ironic that elves of all beings are nice to Gollum considering in the books, he’s kept in jail by the Mirkwood elves for about a year or 2 before LOTR starts up and escaping and before that; Aragorn himself admitted to have roughed the gremlin up when he captured him outside of Mordor and had to spend months hiking back to said Mirkwood elves realm with him so that he and Gandalf could interrogate him.
Unlike Frodo and Sam, ol Aragorn didn’t have a shiny ring to keep ‘em civil (or at least civil or a crack-addict hobbit)
he was imprisoned in mirkwood yes, but the elves didn't actually treat him that badly. If I recall correctly, half the reason he escaped Mirkwood in the first place was because the elves would let him roam about in the forest every so often. Under close guard, granted, but that's still a kinder treatment then Thorin & Company was given in the Hobbit. So the elves being nice is ultimately accurate.
@@Catasros Indeed, they would take him out for walks in the woods and let him climb the trees. They were kind in ways that no other character can claim to have been.
They could have punched him in the face once a day and it was nicer than orcs. The Elves are freedom loving people and were loathe to cage anyone. But they had to. And Aragorn never did any orc shit to our guy. But Gollum probably hated the elves more than the orcs for their pity and charity.
What you just related was exactly what I thought the game was going to be about. I was very disappointed when I heard it wasn't. =/
I love that Gollum is just represented by a regular minion with Andy Serkis' face slapped on top.
ok
“It’s the only way to get proxy revenge on your school bully who saw your Toy Story underpants and asked you every sodding week till end of term if you got a ‘woody’ today”
LOOLLLLL
Seeing as I do not actually follow gaming news and just try and let myself be pleasantly surprised when nice things come out, this one came out of left field for me. Gollum? That dude who murders his best friend and then lives as a hated recluse until he flees to a cave for like 60 years? That's the guy we want to make a game about? What the hell would you even do?
More than 60 years, more like 480 years (c. 2463 when he finds the Ring to 2941 when he meets Bilbo). Yes, I went and looked up Appendix B. [/nerd]
the fact that they sell you a DLC taunt animation (... in a singleplayer game...) where he does "my precious", pretty sure the pitch was just capitalizing on a meme from the 90s for ez nostalgia money
@@ckorp666They did what??? H-how? Who approved this? Is this harbinging of the end times when ET rises from its New Mexico landfill grace to once more haunt the games industry until it crashes?
There is this very neat underlying theme of mistrust, the conflict between the desire for friendship and the inherent inacpability of allowing it due to the prolonged effect of the ring. From what I've heard more well read Tolkiens fans explain on CZcams, this Golum-Smeagol dynamic only came up once Frodo and Sam met Golum, with Frodo showing kindness. In this game they kinda have Golum experience a precursor of all that with other characters. Yahtzee glosses over that a little bit but I believe it had some potential for an interesting story. Not executed well, but the concept was good.
unsurprisingly little, you mostly are just haplessly held captive by orcs. presumably the tolkein state only allowed the story to take place strictly between the hobbit and fellowship of the ring, i don't see why else would you radically limit the entire tolkein universe to this
Thing is, Daedalic is really quite good at point and click adventure games! I really like the deponia series. It has a unique humor, the writing is good and the puzzles and minigames make sense and are fun to solve. I hope they try again to sit at the big boys table, but with a game where the things they are good at have a better chance to shine!
If anything, they should be taming notes from tell tale games since THAT would be a more natural next step for them
I still hate them for not giving Rufus a satisfying end.
Deponia was a good series. Morepoint and click players should give them ago at least once
@@Zeon081 Really? I though Rufus had a pretty satisfying ending. It certainly wasn't a happy ending, but it did feel pretty conclusive.
Out of curiosity, have you played the fourth game? It came out 3 years after the third game so you might have missed it if you thought the third game was the end. Depending on if you played it, the conclusiveness of the ending changes.
Also, apparently they are making a Deponia survival game. I don't know what I think about that.
I hated Deeponia. It was good as far as point and click adventures go, but the humor was so dumb it was insulting. There was not an ounce of wit in that game, unfortunately, compared for example to Lucas Arts hits.
My initial thought when hearing about this game was "who thought it was a good idea to make a game around a character whose defining characteristic is that he's in a toxic relationship with a piece of jewelry?" This was doomed from the start, and seriously there's so much good stuff in Middle Earth you *could* do as a game. The First Age is rife with cool stories to tell.
Okay, okay. THAT was hilarious. I feel like you can tell when Yahtzee is passionate about particular reviews and this one had a lot of clever innuendos and allusions I love about his style. Plus the "I think a feel a journalism coming on" line at the very end killed me. 10 Gollums out of 10 Andy Serkii
Gonna have to remember, “He leaps like a frog mistaking a barbecue pit for a bidet.” I’m sure that metaphor will come in handy at least one more time in my life.
Kind of shocked there was no mention of the $60 pricetag and singleplayer emotes DLC.
2:51 "Sewer sidle" may just be the best piece of wordplay Yahtzee has ever come up with
maybe that will fool the algorithm to avoid getting demonetized for mentioning unaliving
@@AgentAnderson01self-delete is the go to term nowadays
@@akmal94ibrahim aliven't
@@umlautabuser2769 Decide to let your subscription to life expire early.
@@AgentAnderson01 Algorithm: noun. Former vice presidents' attempt at playing music-genre games, such as Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. (See also: Al-Gore-rhythm.)
That Toy Story underwear thing is so niche and terrifying because that LITERALLY happened to me unironically. Specifically Toy Story. And now I'm forever swinging free.
My god that line had me dying laughing
So you lost your woody? ;)
A bit less charitable to the developer/publisher considering even with not being a AAA publisher they tried to peddle a $70 edition of this with lame emotes and a lore compendium on par with a C-tier highschool book report, and in their apology JPEG they cared so little they *couldn’t even spell the name of the game right.*
you are mad at the developers because the publisher put the game for AAA price. thats kinda dumb don't you think?
@@pureexile1702 Publisher then. The publisher actively made everything worse for the developer despite not being an EA or Activision or what have you
@@pureexile1702if they didn't think they had a product worth 70$, they should've made it clear to the publishers.
That's really the kicker that got the hate train rolling on this one. A failed but ambitious attempt at a game wouldn't have made much of a splash if it was sold as the $10-$20 indie one-off that it is, but selling it for full AAA price and then locking incredibly basic features as "Extras" behind a $10 day-one DLC will get tongues wagging.
@@Mernom that's not exactly how publisher-developer relations often work afaik
This game feels like the definition of "don't assume malice, for what can be attributed to incompetence"
I haven't watched your reviews in about six or seven years, Yahtzee, but damn, your writing hasn't missed a beat.
I'm an early fan and I think your Minecraft review was the latest when I discovered you. It's hilarious to think that your fast-paced and reference-heavy content was basically my introduction to English-speaking game journalism because my knowledge of the language was in early development at the time.
Very pleased to see that your work is very much alive and well to this day!
the fact that the game was $80 (canadian) and they had the gull to charge extra for language DLC is where most of my hate comes frome
THEY didn't do that. The publisher and distributor decide the price, not them. The publisher also is often the one calling the shots on decisions like that DLC. Given we have decades of Daedalic NEVER doing anything like that, then suddenly doing it with a new publisher, tells us it is very unlikely to have been their decision.
Gollum describes the game in the book!
"It burns!" (The sensation of paying $70 for a sandwich bag of dogshit)
"It bites!" (Overall quality)
"It freezes!" (Crashes at the drop of a hat)
We all thought he was just allergic to Sam's rope.
To be fair, if a bully of mine saw my toystory underwear and came up with a taunt as clever as "you've gotten a woody today?" I would be giving them a high five each day...
This is a great episode for those who love Yahtzee's insane similies
I had the same feelings when i found out it was made by Daedalic. They are behind some of the best post-golden age Point and Clicks but the transition away was never going to be easy. Even Tim Schaffer's Psychonauts was filled with problems due to inexperience in the format.
I honestly hope this project doesn't totally tank them. PnC games just aren't money makers and they have made some of my favorite games. They really deserve another chance to get a modern game right.
From what I heard the team behind those point and click games is mostly gone and it's new people that developed Gollum.
@@perfilov4 ahhh...that's so unfortunate, I hope their is a spiritual successor studio.
Sadly it seems that the OGs left deadalic and what’s left are higher ups with unreasonable demands and inexperienced newcomers that aren’t given any direction. I even heard of an intern who had to stay longer during crunch time
Wow that ending parallel to golem himself is brutal in a whole new way
Gollum
Man. Not many instances of Yatzhee going "maybe you all should chill out" in regards to how a bad game is being treated.
I don’t buy it, he was nice to Balan Wonderworld and then at the end of the year,BAM, he blasts it to worst game of the year.
Some of those analogies were incredible, but I also found it curious that he was oddly supportive at the end and I kinda agree. It's an Icarus flight kind of game as opposed to a corporate conveyor belt.
I like how he has Andy Serkis as Gollum😂
who was the shark's face in the credits?
Note for members. Our custom dice at DICE ENVY go on sale next Wednesday (June 14th) so the link will be available then. Thanks!
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The stealth analogy comparing a five second pull-off behind the bike sheds for half a bag of Chipsticks to a high-class escort service is just brilliant. Also feels like I shouldn't understand it as well as I do.
Here I lay again, unrelentingly absorbed by the unheard scoffs of a mind bent towards the sordid torture of his craft; the weight of his observation at odds with the never-ending accumulation of tired clichés stacked against his attempts to have fun.
It did make me question, immediately after seeing the ad on my X-blurb, what could one possibly make in a video game about a shriveled gremlin with a broken brain whose life was spent almost entirely alone in a cave...that would be fun to play?
This takes me back to the stellar advice Yahtzee was given long ago about storytelling:
"Is this the most interesting period in your character's life? And, if not, why aren't we finding out about that instead?"
Stop trying to do extra things with LotR. We've already read/seen the most interesting parts of this entire idea. And Peter Jackson was very skilled, with people who were really skilled, struck at just the right time, *AND* got lucky.
The only adaptation of anything else in Tolkien's work worth making could only come from the Undying Lands.
Show me Melkor leading Ungoliant to eat the Tree of Valar or go back and make a short film _"The Scouring of the Shire."_
Otherwise, fuckin give it up mate, you can only embarass yourself from here.
This is from the same company that made Night of the Rabbit, a criminally underrated point and click adventure game
I think a Gollum game could have work if Nacon had let Deadalic do their thing, and make a point and click.
No it wouldn't have. Because the devs that made point-n-clicks left Daedalic Entertainment a long time ago.
They are Daedalic in name only, like the BioWare that made Anthem.
@@NathanCassidy721 Ah, didn't know that, thats sad to hear.
I think the criticism is fair since they're asking $70 for this garbage. They're also charging extra for lore accurate voice overs and a lore compendium
The fun thing about Star Wars is that it managed to build a universe that stuck together remarkably well--and most of the background characters in the Mos Eisley Cantina were given short stories, not full fledged video games or movies, where they died to stupidity, or happened to be Greedo, dying to stupidity. Most of the movie/game making material for The Lord of the Rings is in the Silmarillion, although the appendices do have nice little family trees, but for whatever reason, The Lord of the Rings games that were produced prior to Middle-Earth stubbornly remain on the PS2, Xbox 360, and Apple II. I'm betting the old LotR Online game will be shut down to make room for the new one they have planned.
The thing is I find it very easy to envision how this game came about. I picture a conversation between the developer and publisher, the publisher has somehow gotten maybe-access to this IP but only certain parts of it. "Could we make a game about Gollum?" they ask.
As the developer this is a big opportunity. Highly, highly visible IP and a project that will maybe let your studio move up to bigger higher-money projects. But Gollum isn't really what you'd pick for a main character... but still here's the opportunity. Deliver something and they'll put real marketing behind it.
Gollum is sneaky and climby and that's something you can work with. Shadow of Mordor made Mordor into a playable place and that wasn't too bad. Maybe you can do that too, it's clearly not impossible. But man Gollum really isn't what you'd normally want to build around. But maybe this can work. Maybe you can make it kind of funny, in that being-a-mean-jerk kind of way, but you're jerking around orcs and stuff so it's okay? You might never get an opportunity to work on something so recognizable again.
"Yeah, we could do that."
I wonder if you could do a meta-narrative thing with the One Ring giving the player their objectives. It doesn't matter what you know to be the right thing, you are going to follow the quest objectives to your doom.
i unironically think the reason this game was made was because "goblin mode" was the oxford word of the year
literally the only reason i knew, or cared, about the escapist
Yellow Paint: "You could not live with your own failure, and where did that bring you? Back to me."
Absolutely spot on! I felt these exact sentiments. The way they treated that studio was apalling! Is appalling!
It's almost wholesome in a way that for as harsh Yahtzee was on this game, his take was much like doomer. The game was bad because the studio makinf it didnt have the talent or edperience to make a good project out of their ideas. This stuff happens. Maybe the decelopers will try their crack at another AAA in the coming years, maybe theyll pull a Wayforward and find a comfort zone in peddling Faux anime series to serve as a pay raise for patreon artists
Its priced as a triple A game with innovative day one DLC such as: "A codex" and "Iconic Emotes in a single player game". They rightfully deserve to be shit on.
@@shaheedk.3386 not saying the game doesn't deserve scorn. But Yahtzee took a more humble approach of simply leaving it marked as a bad game made by people not ready to create what they aimed to
@@shaheedk.3386 And missipple the name of their own game in the "apology" letter, that's a special kind of sloppy, no wonder the game is this awful XD
I think Yahtzee missed some of the "extra" content Daedalic was selling for it, though. You had to buy an emote pack just to hear Gollum say "my Precious" and they also charged for Elvish "DLC" just to hear the Elves occasionally say lines in Sindarin. Oh, and they also charged extra for the lore. If you want more details about the game lore, you have to pay for the "lore compendium."
Those things should have been standard in the game and there was no reason to make them separate and charge extra for them aside from greed.
"Oooo, I think I feel a games-journalism coming on!" Priceless. 😆
Some of your best jokes in a while, Yahtzee. Well done
Man, Yahtzee’s really matured. 2008 yahtzee would have dragged this game’s face through the mud and set fire to the dev’s logo for good measure
The consistent popping up of sudden and gian spiders really plays hell on my Arachnophobia.
5:09 - that's not a wombat, that's a quokka! XD
Can't wait to see if this one ends up on the end of year list. It's got some stiff competition this year
Tolkien fans asks for a lord of the rings game based on one of their characters with 2022 graphics. The game devs tells them curb your enthusiasm. I dont feel too much anger towards Daedelic im sure they did what they could, which amounted to very little. I would be more angry if it were a bigger company.
Yeah, this screams of publisher morons picking the wrong guy for the job and the job itself being a bad idea from the get-go. That or devs were making the game on their style, then publisher assholes said "no, we want this" mid development
Why does that matter? In fact these “small guys” make you pay to look at the lore compendium AND sell fucking emotes for a single player fully triple A priced game in what world that’s ok for them to do it?
@@arturzinurov4781 Pricing schemes like that are usually up to the publisher rather than the developer. And given that the publisher here is Nacon, who are known for publishing shovelware and screwing over small developers, that shouldn't be a surprise.
it was solely seeing this game's Gollum being compared to 2014's Shadow of Mordor that made me try and its surprisingly good being an almost 10 year old game
oh hell yeah, here we go!!!!
So to summarise Yahtzee's review in one sentence: "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed."
Welp, we found our game of the year. Pack it in folks.
I just realized Yahtzee was the first PNGtuber
have fun with that information
Lol I live a short distance from that Interstate sign at 3:20(Milwaukee, WI). See it almost every day.
Dammit, the one time me and Yahtzee can agree on a game being bad, and it's NOW that he decides to show pity
Haven't watched your videos in years, yet the algorithm still knew I couldn't miss this one.
Between the loss of staff, the loss of studios, the buyout and new ownership, and now the reception to Gollum (a game I'm convinced was foisted upon the devs), I feel Daedalic as we used to know it isn't long for this world.
I can't remember who said this, but I share a sentiment of "if you price your games at 70$ I think you are fair game and should be compared to the other games in that price point". This does feel like the product of a dev who has stretched a little bit too far, and there is nothing really wrong with that, but it should be priced accordingly.
I felt that "games journalism."
“I’ve been looking forward to this.” -Count Dooku
😂
This is gonna be good...
ah yes, a perfect Review of a Slave Simulator by my favorite Australian Game Reviewer
Erm, pretty sure he's a Brit?
@@hitotsudaketsukinoko Well he's a Brit if we go by birth, an US-American if we go by where he's currently living, and an Australian among others if we count every country he used to live in as part of his identity.
glad to see yahtzee weigh in on this
For those wondering, it's Daniel Day Lewis's head plastered on the shark on the last credit slide.
"You are the ones who demand games like this! So don't blame the incompetence of their execution!"
I was shocked to see that Daedelic is the name behind this project. I quite enjoyed the Deponia series, and they published other nice niche small games, like "Witch-it". Who decided they were a good fit for this project and decided to shoot for a AAA scope? I'm sure they could have pulled off a more stylized experience, maybe similar to the 2D cutscenes in the game. But this?! A broken game from the premise up? I will say, I think the "AAA Polish" is completely over-rated, so I'm glad they're getting flak for conforming to that ideal. The game doesn't even look more buggier than some of the major releases over the past few years by big names.
From what I heard the team behind those point and click games is mostly gone and it's new people that developed Gollum.
@@perfilov4 Maybe Daedelic got tired of being an idie studio and wanted to compete with the tripe A scene and failed???
The thing is even if the game was polished and was mainly bug free the game would still be shit. The core gameplay is shit, there is no fixing.
5:16 Onward reminded me of his Anthem review. More people need to understand that not every bad thing is a result of active malice. Sometimes it’s just a failure to stick the landing in a new territory.
I never knew how much I needed Wombat Underpants until now.
Yahtzee is such a great and insightful writer I feel so lucky to have this content
Yahtze it’s 50 bloody dollars and the lore in a middle earth game is locked behind DLC. I would be alright with everything you said but they charge about 20 times as much as it’s worth with essential features locked behind day one Dlc
Damn, Yahtzee was particularly ON-FIRE today! Closed Captioning made it even funnier.
Nice to see yahtzees contrarian self still up and running
I’m glad after meeting rich evans , Yahtzee has mellowed out. Rich had such a calming effect.
They charged $60 for this game though, or $70 if you want the various animations. That's AAA games territory, so I don't feel so bad for being so harsh
As always, a perfectly fair and genuine review.
Considering Daedelic is the one company that actually knows how to make a good puzzle point and click adventure game, I really hope they don't try to move away from that niche. Deponia of course, but The Whispered World was also beautifully made, as was Night of the Rabbit and Chains of Satinav. I'd be perfectly happy getting more releases like that for the rest of time.
So I actually recognized one of the games Daedalic made before as I recently played 3/4 of the Deponia games on switch. The main character of the Deponia games is a horrible prick who lives in the garbage is constantly awful to everyone around him and doesn't really get any better. So honestly yeah a Gollum game by them makes the most sense.
(Jokes aside Deponia's a fairly good well written point and click, I just can't stand Rufus)
A Tom Bombadil movie? Don't give them ideas...
"I've never missed the ministrations of the Yellow Spray Paint Brigade more." Jesus, you know it's a mess when Yahtzee actually defends the existence of the Follow the Yellow mechanic in other games.
The Toy Story underpants comment had me bellowing! 🤣
Good job Escapist letting go of your one talent that brought an audience.
Fair review and treatment, Yahtzee
Also that final joke on the credits, holy shit. Baggins, Gamgee...lol
I wish he mentioned the micro transaction lol. They charged you for better voice actors it’s crazy
Was surprised to find that a game i was playing was made by Daedactic. AER: Memories of Old. Not much gameplay, just flying around reading world building. It was alright and super peaceful, thoughthe ending offered no closure
y'know, if they're giving random characters spinoffs, giving Bombadil a Harvest Moon/Stardew clone might be kinda interesting.
We're not hating on Daedalic for making an utter abomination of a game. We're hating on them for making an utter abomination of a game and then charging a princely sum for it.
Lay down a tarp: this one is going to get messy!
That ending. I cracked😂
Oh come on, Atomic heart isn't THAT bad. At the very least it doesn't deserve to be lumped in with the other three
Anyone else think Yahtzee must know someone working within Derelict Entertainment in order to jump to their defense this hard?
I suppose it's possible considering Daedalic Entertainment made some fantastic Point and Click adventure games, which Yahtzee has experience in making.