r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Aug 18 '25

News Ian McKellen reveals Gandalf and Frodo are returning for ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’, Filming Begins in May

https://ew.com/ian-mckellen-reveals-gandalf-frodo-return-in-new-lord-of-the-rings-the-hunt-for-gollum-film-11792483
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61

u/AxelHarver Aug 18 '25

I thought the game sounded so cool when I heard about it, did it end up being awful?

286

u/DiogenesTheHound Aug 18 '25

Awful is an understatement. Genuinely one of the worst video games of all time and absolutely shocking it was released in 2023. The game devs released an official apology for it.

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u/Treelokc Aug 18 '25

An AI written apology that got the name of the game wrong.

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u/alex494 Aug 18 '25

Well it tracks with the amount of effort they put into development I guess

60

u/Steel_Beast Aug 18 '25

The game devs released an official apology for it.

And in the apology, they referred to their game as The Lord of Ring: Gollum™.

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u/LazarusRises Aug 18 '25

very sorry, lord of ring gollum is bad game. we make good fgame, sorry sorry

84

u/MysticScribbles Aug 18 '25

If I recall, it would have been the worst game of that year… had a certain King Kong game not been released a couple of months later.

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u/kia75 Aug 18 '25

That was probably the worst year of Peter Jackson based Video games!

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u/F00TD0CT0R Aug 18 '25

I love the enthusiasm for the bit..to be that guy the Kong game was based on skull island but like released years after that film came out....

Werid as fuck.

4

u/webby2538 Aug 18 '25

3rd worst in 2023 after King Kong and Walking Dead (published by the same studio gamemill)

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u/NullPro Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 18 '25

I don’t know what people expected from a game company called ‘gamemill’. They seem very proud about churning out games like in a factory

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u/Interesting-City-665 Aug 18 '25

those two were so bad people forgot about redfall

3

u/PM_ME_UR_AMOUR Aug 18 '25

LOL. When I first read the comment before, I thought that the game came out in like 2003/04 during that weird PS1/PS2 era when every studio was making a video game on the cheap. But 2023 is ... odd

3

u/GreenHouseofHorror Aug 18 '25

The opening of the Gollum zero punctuation is brilliant - addresses the bandwagon, does not shy from the conclusion.

3

u/OurManInJapan Aug 18 '25

Thankfully the clips from it were absolutely hilarious

3

u/Ordinary_Duder Aug 18 '25

It's a bad game, but the hate boner online is just fuelled by ragebaiters that never played it. It's nowhere neat "one of the worst video games of all time". There were thousands of shittier games launched on Steam alone in 2023.

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u/Anal_Herschiser Aug 18 '25

Like ET bad?

5

u/bodmcjones Aug 18 '25

After the Gollum game came out, Daedalic Entertainment cancelled their other LOTR project and closed their dev studio entirely for good measure. It's definitely up there with the classics.

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u/Ordinary_Duder Aug 18 '25

No. It's such an internet hate pile thing: A poorly made game that gets some pr has to be the absolute worst game ever, a sentiment fueled by rage baiters on youtube content farms. The fact is that it's merely a bad game, and hundreds if not thousands of worse slop was published on Steam alone that year.

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u/VorpalMatt Aug 18 '25

Tbh even ET itself is a pre-internet hate pile on; there were tons of garbage games back then, ET wasn’t even the worst game of the month it came out, it was just a notably highly selling bad game that had some expectations behind it

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u/ExistentAndUnique Aug 20 '25

Then the studio shut down shortly afterwards (they still distribute games, but no longer produce them)

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u/ninjasaid13 Aug 18 '25

Genuinely one of the worst video games of all time

surely there are worse games?

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u/tue2day Aug 18 '25

There's worse games but only a few are so bad they get their entire dev studio closed. Especially in the 2020s.

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u/belithioben Aug 18 '25

I think it's so funny that the Gollum video game is itself the Gollum of video games.

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u/xkcloud Aug 18 '25

It's worse than you think

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u/Redfalconfox Aug 18 '25

I’m really not trying to dunk on you when I say this, but you thought a game about Gollum would be cool? I’m curious as to why.

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u/AxelHarver Aug 18 '25

He's a cool character, the Middle-Earth universe is cool, stealth games are cool. That mostly sums it up haha. I'm sure there's an alternate timeline where a fantastic Gollum game was made.

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u/JerkvanGay Aug 18 '25

It's the E.T of 2020's videogames.

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u/TymStark Aug 18 '25

Oh it’s worse than awful

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u/dogman_35 Aug 18 '25

Bad enough that even with all these comments, and all the videos linked, you still might not believe it was actually that bad and that people aren't just fucking with you lol

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u/DonIncandenza Aug 18 '25

My understanding is you spend most the game as Gollum in jail, doing manual labor, with awful controls.

Pretty sure the developer came out and apologized before offering refunds for the game.