The Lord of the Rings: Gollum - (PC) Steam EUROPE Digital Key
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum for PC is a third-person action-adventure game
that follows the character of everyone’s favourite split-personality villain,
Gollum. The game is set before the events depicted in the Lords of the Rings
trilogy – and can be seen as Gollum/ Smeagol’s origin story, if you will.
ABOUT THE GAME
You will play as Gollum, enjoying yourself as you pick up skills that he has
mastered and honed over the last 500 years or so. There are plenty of favourite
Middle-Earth locations to explore, each playing an important part in the shaping
of Gollum into the crazed being who half creeps us out, half captures our
sympathies. Play through Mirkwood; Cirith Ungol and Barad-Dur Tower – see more
about these below.
Gandalf and the elven king of the time, Thranduil (who just happens to be
Legolas’s future dad) make appearances, as do both sides of Gollum’s split
personality. And, just in case blood-thirsty orcs aren’t scary enough for you,
Shelob, the immense and terrifyingly hungry spider, appears in the game too.
Gollum – and his kinder Hobbit side, Smeagol – have fabulous climbing and
parkouring skills, but the character doesn’t start out like the Gollum we all
know and love – he starts out as a normal Hobbit and it is, in part, your
decisions that cause the Gollum mutations away from the Smeagol norm. You could
always make the morally correct choices: but this isn’t always wise as you will
see below.
THE NITTY GRITTY
Gollum’s skills include stealth, with Gollum creeping about, using the shadows
to his advantage. The game’s narrative arc is not completely spent in the
darkness, protecting his precious from all and sundry – Gollum’s time as a slave
under the dark tower is covered as is his time as a captive with the elves of
Mirkwood.
As Gollum is small and frail, he must use guile and cunning along with stealth
and his superb climbing skills to best his enemies, rather than facing them with
a swinging sword. The section of the game based in Mordor includes the tutorial,
so you will always start there, seeing and avoiding Orcs and learning your way
around Gollum’s controls and seeing the dual options when the Smeagol and Gollum
sides battle one another.
Gollum can lure unwary travellers to a quiet place to dispatch them, but this
drains his stamina metre, so keep an eye on it, and – where possible – do your
killing with stealth and distraction instead. There is no skill tree to master:
Gollum has been waiting for you for 500 years and already has all the fully
mastered skills he needs to win: it is you who must quickly learn to keep up!
LOCATIONS IN THE GAME
The game developers are obviously fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The
Hobbit before it, as they have included plenty of Tolkienesque locations in
Middle Earth:
Barad-Dur Tower: Being ‘soft’ or weak in Sauron’s home base, a place oozing with
evil: also known as the Dark Tower with good reason, could get you killed so
playing up the evil Gollum side might be to your advantage here, no matter how
much you want to resist the lure of the Ring
Mirkwood: Populated by elves, Mirkwood is the opposite of Barad-Dur Tower, and
responds better to ‘good’ choices by Gollum’s softer side so you will get to
experience both sides of Gollum’s psyche. Mirkwood is a kinder place, with far
fewer enemies to strike down and much more of a puzzle platformer vibe to it
Cirith Ungol: the dark orc-populated path through the mountains of Mordor which
also plays home to the giant arachnid, Shelob, is the place where Frodo comes
across Gollum in later years
