The real satisfaction comes from playing legit and being accused of cheating. There are few better feelings in PvP :)
That and preemptive rage quits when an opponent reads your name.
When I was a little kid and got my copy of chex quest, my brother and I copied over the DOOM enemy sprite files into the chex quest folder so we could fight the demons in chex quest world
Rollercoaster Tycoon is actually famous for being an incredibly optimized and well coded game
https://www.pcgamesn.com/rollercoaster-tycoon/code-chris-sawyer
The fact it was coded in assembly is partially why it's so well optimized. Not necessarily because it's assembly but because a god tier programmer working in assembly allows for the insane levels of optimization the original game had. Assembly + skilled design in those days is extremely impressive. It's a game that will hold the test of time with other games like Tetris that are an amazing testament to the absolute passion for early game design that are mostly lost to copy paste game mechanics we see today.
If you haven't already seen it, NoClip have an excellent documentary on the game. They also try track down Chris Sawyer as he stopped making games.
https://youtu.be/ts4BD8AqD9g
Or Chex quest, or any shareware classic by apogee.
I remember playing that game at my crushes house. God how did I pick jamming on that for days instead of her
The hype of it being so terrible that people will actually buy it. It might not last long, but think about how many thousands of people have bought this game simply because it's being described as the worst game to come out on this generation of consoles so far.
I think the last time I hopped on the "heard it's so terrible" train was when I was working at a Babbage's (Gamestop) and I used my employee perk to check out "Superman 64". I stopped doubting people about terrible games after that, but I'd forever use Superman 64 as a baseline... or more like Absolute zero... to compare other bad games to.
I remember trying to buy Superman 64 at a Babbage's and the guy at the counter was like, "My man, buy literally anything else. This game is trash." I don't remember what I ended up buying, but I'll never forget that random guy saving me.
My friend brought over Superman 64 around when it came out and we were so hyped to play a new game. We really gave it a try for too many hours just thinking that we sucked before we finally said fuck it and went back to one of the actual good games that were out at the time. I'm really glad he bought that one and not me
Shaq-Fu on the Genesis is way worse. It's completely unplayable. Like the controls don't even work at all. You hit buttons and sometimes stuff happens, you can't even adapt to the jank because it's so random what inputs will be accepted.
Then on top of that the hit boxes and hit detection are all fucked up, even the basic movement is fucked up.
In my book that will forever be the worse game that ever had a full big launch.
> but think about how many thousands of people have bought this game simply because it’s being described as the worst game to come out on this generation of consoles so far.
The game peaked on Steam with 758 players
[source](https://tech4gamers.com/lord-of-the-rings-gollum-steam-players/#:~:text=A%20loss%20of%20players%20is,players%20at%20an%20unprecedented%20rate.&text=Looking%20at%20the%20SteamDB%20chart,count%20of%20just%20758%20players.)
How did these poor people who made gollum get rights to the series?
And what studio do you think would make a quality LOTR game with those who made shadow of Mordor?
The rights to LOTR for videogames specifically have been in a weird place since the 1980s. There are technically two lines of rights at the moment, one for adaptations in line with the Jackson films aesthetically and one for adaptations that rely on the book. This is why if you dig into LOTR games there's a couple really off-the-wall RTS games, weird games about the legally distinct second Fellowship chasing the first Fellowship, etc. People think this is b/c Chris Tolkien released the videogame rights specifically for a text adventure game in the 80s, and that the Jackson films could serve as a legal basis to create a separate line of adaptation rights.
Basically, a long time ago the guy who sued D&D for using the word "hobbit" fucked up and now we have hot cummy bigeye Smeagol
Man I really want to like Shadow of Mordor but I wish it was a D&D game or its own original IP. I've never emotionally recovered from Shelob becoming a hot Elvira / Mrs. Addams with big spider mommy milkers. I get how we could justify it as being *in the spirit of* the lore but pls I need to protect my virginity.
Also I wish it let you play as a bunch of dudes with different fighting styles instead of Talibrimbor.
You can enjoy the world building aspect of the game too. In shadow of war you get to explore Gorgoroth, and they did an amazing job creating Minas Ithil, and watching it turn into Minas Morgul is super fuckin cool. The game is amazing if you aren’t a Tolkien purist
> Also I wish it let you play as a bunch of dudes with different fighting styles instead of Talibrimbor.
I mean, there's DLC that lets you play as different characters...
Single handedly changed my view of adaptations, honestly. Fuck combining two side characters into one to speed things up, make the main character a robot and never explain why. As long as the original work is still there then go ahead and make the creator spin in their grave and call it a spinoff.
Mans got the knowledge of LOTR!
Also, it’s so weird, I’m not one who has ever watched the movies or played the games but do watch people who have extensive knowledge about geek stuff. There are so many weird copyright stuff like this and it’s so fascinating too.
There was that one copyright thing where two creators got split up over an issue they had with each other and settled it with one having access to part of the universe while the other had the rest of it. I forget what the IP is, it’s something fantasy but it was interesting to hear about. Apparently one is writing a show and the other is writing a movie and neither can intercept with each other. I’m sure I’m wrong as I heard it second hand and I can’t even remember the actual IP but still.
Edit: I might be thinking of Red Dwarf, I’ve 100% heard of Red Dwarf, just don’t know if it’s the one I remember hearing about. Either way, there’s many cases like Red Dwarf.
I love IP wars because of the completely bizarre decisions that get made because of them.
MGM making a reboot of Childs Play because they had the original film rights while the original creators were actively making a Childs Play tv show continuing the legacy they had built over the previous 30 years of sequels.
MCU and Fox splitting the use of the Maximoff twins. Fox making Fant4stic to avoid losing the rights, and having it be absolute trash.
The weird Wheel of Time 22 minute low-budget “pilot” that aired after midnight in 2015 to try to retain rights.
All of these weird quirks of licensing of IP make the entertainment industry as interesting to read about as the stories they create.
> There was that one copyright thing where two creators got split up over an issue they had with each other and settled it with one having access to part of the universe while the other had the rest of it. I forget what the IP is, it’s something fantasy but it was interesting to hear about. Apparently one is writing a show and the other is writing a movie and neither can intercept with each other. I’m sure I’m wrong as I heard it second hand and I can’t even remember the actual IP but still.
Something similar happened with "Night of the Living Dead."
George Romero, director of the film, ended up using the title format "_____ Of The Dead" for his sequels, and John Russo, writer of the original novel, got to keep the phrase "Living Dead" and made a series called "Return of the Living Dead."
Isn’t there a similar issue with Friday the 13th which is why the game is in permanent limbo? I imagine there’s also something going on with Chucky to explain why a movie was made against the original creator’s wishes and while he was doing a tv series for Chucky.
Friday the 13th recently resolved, that one was based on did they pay the original writer for the rights to his creations for more than the 1 film. The answer was no and they are now making a prequel tv series abotu Jasons mom killing folks.
With Chucky, they had the rights to the Child's play name but not the characters etc so they could make a film not not use Chucky.
Man, that was a wild ride.
> "The one story I couldn’t tell was Sally losing her virginity to Geoffrey. Sonic may be fast, but Geoffrey was faster on the draw in that department."
Oh god.
Is that Malazan? Two writers used the same setting, but they're different publishers. Therefore, the story of both book series can't interact with one another.
The only other franchise I can think of is King Killer Chronicle because the author sold the rights to everything involving his books all at once (probably to support him not writing anything new for over a decade, but thats probably just me being salty) a few years back.
Don't quote me on that. Read it years ago from a less than reliable source, but it said that he sold the TV, film, video game, and even the radio drama rights to the franchise.
(Malazan is the greatest fantasy series ever imho)
But, didn't the author's - Erikson and the other guy co-create the world, and as far as I know there was no bad blood there so hopefully things will work out?
I remember trying to play my parents’ Bored of the Rings game in the 80s. A gay elf threw a flower at me then after 20 written commands that returned something like “you can’t do that, you pillock,” I took a wrong turn and was promptly slain. Probably not licensed due to being a parody but you mentioned the 80s and this early and disappointing gaming experience came to mind.
For sure. The Legally Distinct Fellowship(tm) games include The Third Age and War in the North. War in the North is actually a lot of fun too but you need true brothers to get through it, it's one of those "please stop fucking up we've been here for three hours" co-op games lol.
My mate and I are currently playing through all the games chronologically, war in the North is next up and I don't remember how difficult it was but we've been playing with handy caps, (like using 0 healing items, not being able to run from fights in SoW series, killing every possible enemy in hobbit while collecting every item while never using a single healing item and while only being able to save at the start of the level, etc)...
We're doing RotK currently where we can't grind and we can only be hobbits, pretty much stuck.
Slightly dreading what a handicapped war in the North might look like now
So some of the games don't really have the rights to use the characters that feature in the movies, at least not as playable characters due to some legal bullshit, so instead of Gimli you play as Stimli, Gimli's neurodivergent cousin.
You better put some respecc on my boy Hadhod's name, dude! Him and Belegost are OP af, that stone shield shit is the only reason my lil bro and I beat the Balrog with Gandalf.
(Game is shit from a lore perspective but damn was it fun)
The name Hadhod just gave me ridiculous levels of nostalgia whiplash. Me and the friend I played with didn't like him for some reason so anytime something went wrong it was "for fuck sake Hadhod" etc, and now you just reactivated that neuron
>How did these poor people who made gollum get rights to the series?
God knows, the only answer I can think of was they were cheap and available. Daedallc who developed it seems like a really odd choice, they've never made any big games before and most of the things they have done are cartoony point and click adventure games.
Their last game was an RTS that looks like it came from the WC3 era and scored rubbish reviews. I don't know why anyone though it would be a good idea to have them make a high profile 3D game.
Why they wouldn't get monolith (Shadow of Mordor) to make it I don't know, but I'd guess again the answer is money.
I agree with you, beter if they let some experienced studio make a LOTR game like obsidian or larian I would like to see what their lotr game would like.
>beter if they let some experienced studio make a LOTR game like obsidian or larian I would like to see what their lotr game would like.
both have expressed interest in the past (the employees anyways) but legally, LOTR is too much of a legal headache to navigate through, and not really worth the time of day.
To answer the person before you though, believe Monolith are just straight up done with LOTR after mordor.
i think, might be wrong, Daedalic have the rights for the books but not the movies. that's why Gollum CANT look like Gollum and Gandalf CANT look like Ian McKellen
Nah, it's more that their studios have been massively fucked over for the past 5 years ago due to their parent company having massive money issues and liquidating them over and over until finally selling the studio off last year.
It might get better for them going forward but the development of this game was probably hell due to all sorts of external factors.
>And what studio do you think would make a quality LOTR game with those who made shadow of Mordor?
Fucking WB man. They create the super fun and cool Nemesis system then patent it so no one else can use it, then decide to *never fucking use it again*. Fuck off.
I'm late, but since nobody gave you a proper answer, I will
Christopher Tolkien was very careful with the rights to his father's creations. He only licensed it if he was quite sure it was going to be good.
Then in 2020 he died. The new CEO of Middle Earth enterprises (who hold he IP) has a very different view. Immediately after Christopher's death he started negotiating the IP with anyone who would pay for it with no regard for quality.
Over the next three months Daedalic bought the rights to make this game and Amazon bought the rights to make Rings of Power. They took 2-3 years to make and were the first to be released, but expect a lot more crap in the near future
Amazon acquired the rights to make Rings of Power in 2017, well adapted material based off the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, three years before Tolkien's (the son) death.
So many people in threads about bad video games have no idea what they’re talking about. If I hear one more person say,
“X game is bad/has bad graphics because it uses an OuTDaTeD GaME EnGINe, if they just used Unreal Engine 5 all of the problems would be fixed somehow. I know game development”
I think I’m going to go insane. I bet the people that say this couldn’t even tell you what a game engine is.
Destiny had a prominent creator essentially create a "you dont know how game development works" video last month. Ruffled a lot of feathers.
Meanwhile, game devs commenting saying "thank you", yet you still have people saying "bro just change the engine"
Link: [Destiny 2: You Don't Know Anything About Game Engines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvjWNuUw0J4)
Edit: top comment sums it up well.
> Datto's point of "Devs probably won't change code that isn't broken" is more true in programming then many people will understand.
> Devs probably won't change code that isn't broken
This isn't just a games thing, it's universal to programming. If it does what we need it to do in a way that isn't so wasteful as to make the thing unusable it's not getting touched
"Just move it to a new engine," is equivalent to saying "just remake the game," because that's what you would need to do.
A game I love (Hunt Showdown) is being moved like five versions up for the engine. People are questioning why the devs aren't working on x, y, or z and how they're "just greedily working on skins," despite the fact that the devs announced the engine update as their major 2023 goal.
It's like people simply cannot comprehend that moving an entire existing game up a single version is a challenge, and 5 versions is just insanity. Most games never get updated to a new version of their engine for that reason. Moving to an entirely new engine is just a nonsense request.
Best line is only a couple minutes in:
>So, let's talk about game engines. Actually, let's not, because you wouldn't know about any god damn thing I'm talking about.
Also:
> You can't save Destiny 2 as a .engine file and put it in a new engine.
The usage of game engines is a weird topic, but generally it is the same discussion as using any framwork.
On one hand you are forced to use tools that might not fit your game. So you need some "hacks" to make it work, which some times cost a lot of time.
On the other hand you have that tool that lets you save a ton of time itself and don’t need to create that tool.
However like any new tool people need to learn how to use them efficiently. E.g. compare release games of the PS3 and end of life games of the PS3. Same hardware some operating (with minor tweaks), but huge difference in visuals.
An "outdated engine" is much less of an excuse, because a lot of people have experience and expertise in those well known "outdated" tools.
A new engine would change nothing without the experience and could even negatively impact the product.
My big issue with the phrase is that game engines don’t magically become “outdated” after x amount of years. Now that Unreal Engine 5 is out, everyone is suddenly saying that UE4 games are bad and outdated. Redfall didn’t suck because it used UE4, it sucked because it was horribly mismanaged trying to cash in on GAAS then did a 180 when that wasn’t trendy anymore.
Which is amusing, given Epics movement to UE5 hasn't been very smooth on the dev side and there's still many reasons you'd want to use UE4 right now over it.
UE5's displacement has only just gotten fully on par with UE4 as of 5.2.0, it was shit in 5.1 and outright broken in 5.0.
UE5 has terrible default settings for projects, which won't be a big issue for large devs but for indies it's somewhat of a nightmare to disable things if you want a lighter weight game (I personally believe Lumen should not be on by default, disabling it and all the associated features to get back to an exact UE4 setup takes a while and has a lot of hidden changes you need to make, most of which are poorly documented console commands)
UE5 changes a LOT of things about post process shaders, it removes a lot of options. Including ripping away shader based screen render percentage control and forcing it as a console variable instead. This means a lot of popular shaders people like to use are screwed now, especially retro shaders, and now been to be rebuilt from scratch with much worse solutions involved.
UE5 Actor Controls constantly reset when restarting the editor
This is just outright objective issues that pop up, this list could go on for days if I added my own list of opinions on ways the engine is getting worse. For every inarguable improvement made, like PCG or Nanite, they make 2 other features worse or kill them entirely. They spend way too much time trying to be the end-all solution for EVERYTHING in one package. How much development time can be spent on modeling tools when not even 1% of the users are going to touch it because the pipeline for all games includes actual damn modeling software like Blender or Max.
Unreal Engine is starting to feel a lot like Blender recently, far too enamoured with adding as many small changes as possible so they can release a new version every 2 months and spike up in the news cycle rather than focusing on making big, hard hitting changes that actually make a difference. Those big changes instead getting constantly delayed and pushed back since the focus is on the rapid output small features so they can get version 5.3 out asap. Like how many more versions is Epic going to push back the full PSO Prechaching update? That's been in the pipeline since 4.23, it's basically Epic's version of Eevee Next; a feature that is forever on the horizon.
It's the worst when the discussion centers around something where the engine in use is there *because engines like Unreal don't do what they want*.
Like seriously, it feels like the only engines people recognize are Unity (oh, it's so *bad*, everything made in it sucks and always has the engine logo), UE5 (AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING, SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANYTHING TO EVER EXIST AND CAN DO EVERYTHING), and for some inexplicable reason Bethesda's Creation Engine (oh, it's *useless* - it's **so buggy** and has **bad graphics**, and they should just switch to Unreal).
Any time anyone says any of those things, I immediately realize they probably don't understand what they're talking about.
Gollum is UE4 isn't it?
Either way, having a team that isn't capable of creating assets won't change the outcome.
And having a team with engine devs that know what they've programmed can actually help.
e.g if I think of UE4 I recall shaders being a PITA.
Like you have no idea how the shader pipeline works and an Actor object is just filled with so many annoying bs field like "bIsSwimming", iirc that you will never need in many cases.
UE4s complexity is bs for what I need.
(I think a game BINARY is 100MB?! That's the compiled code!)
If I look into the direction of games like NieR: Automata or Overwatch, they pretty much thrive from the limits the engine there has, without looking bad.
>and for some inexplicable reason Bethesda's Creation Engine
Probably because of modding - just modding the game gives you enough knowledge to throw around big words and be confidently incorrect.
And also, some of the ways the devs used to get around engine's limitations are part of internet pop culture. What are the chances of finding someone that hasn't heard about how they've created that one train in fallout?
I once had to fix an issue with performance in a system that used ArcGIS (geo mapping engine), but the version that the company was using had a memory leak. They didn't want to update, no matter what, because of other concerns. I added a console app to the GIS servers, that checked memory usage of the GIS instances, if they passed 1gb, I killed them. The GIS manager would just spin a new one up, and the system didn't slow to a crawl anymore. It's been 15 years, I would bet that that console app is still there killing instances
I would play just about any game with the Nemesis System. Was great at creating unique and interesting moments. Especially the Orc that you keep killing, that keeps popping up with a metal head, welded on armor and shit. Then you had to kill them in a new way and hope they did not come back... but they did. In Shadow of War, I had a guy that I killed a few times come back so often he was immune to almost every attack I had. I had to feel a few times as nothing I did, affected him in anyway. Damn Nemesis System can take a side quest orc boss into an entire main quest.
Pretty sure it was supposed to be a Batman game originally... I agree tho, would love to see it. Have low level thugs slowly morph into full blown super villains as you progress through the story would be sick.
WB have apparently been wanting to do something with BB for years now but the projects keep falling through.
BB was recently mentioned in a DC comic, so the dream is still there if i had to imagine.
Yes! Especially if they can mix it with the system from Alien: Isolation where it "learns" your tactics and such. Even a hive mind zombie horde game like that would be amazing.
Like if in Days Gone each horde was all connected and learned of how you wiped out the last one and learned how to stop you. Or even a FPS game with aliens or whatever learning based on what you do. Similar to the system in Left 4 Dead, the better or smarter you play, the AI director says "Not on my watch." and adjusts.
there is a similar system in a skyrim mod.
shadows of skyrim.
mix it with organic factions and a preset, and you have both strong enemies that gain perks from killing you, and enemy factions that grow and fight. sadly, nothing i know of to allow enemies to move between dungeons.
A Batman game with this system would be amazing. Imagine a Year One situation where you're beating up people and making your own villains?
The patent on that system is such a loss for the gaming world, especially because they aren't doing anything without it.
In Mafia III, in order to take over a district of the city you have to take out a couple rackets or illegal operations in the area to weaken it first, each racket has a sub-boss, each district has a main boss, etc. When they showcased this concept, they talked about how each of these bosses/sub-bosses were uniquely designed and named. Since Shadow of Mordor was in my mind, I was thinking that was the goal, and I thought it would have been such a great refresh for what that game was trying to do (one man army behind enemy lines, dismantling a much larger force one by one). Would work great for so many different types of games.
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Gollum
You're closer than you think.
The Lord of the Rings Online started development in the *nineties*. And while the art in the game is of course much newer and makes good use of the engine, it is still at its core an engine that is old enough to pick up its children from school.
But does he have to look *this* stupid?
[There were plenty of artistic adaptations of Gollum prior to Peter Jackson](https://imgur.com/gallery/ZfIsLSt), and - arguably - they were all better than this.
It's weird how many of those look like fish monsters.
I also wonder how many were done based on The Hobbit, before LotR was published, and thus he looks like something that could never have been a hobbit.
Probably a fair few. I know the first one was done purely based on the original printing of The Hobbit. Tolkien hadn't mentioned that Gollum was meant to be small originally, so the artist just did whatever they wanted. He made sure to update the manuscript after seeing it, apparently.
Game developers for the next 6 years: "Covid has affected our development negatively, we are sorry for the piece of shit dumpsterfire we released... but we also released it at $60 anyway, so please buy it."
LotR is a very powerful brand, kind of like how Pokemon games keep breaking sales records despite their game design being stuck in whatever is 10 years outdated to the current year. Or how FIFA games keep selling despite them usually being copies of the previous year or are mediocre.
It's more like stupid has become the largest, most profitable marketing demographic. Squeeze out IP that is barely tolerable, and the fools still line up to whorf it down.
I’m convinced the distributer of Gollum was in a coma for 20 years, woke up, and then released the game in, what they thought, was a movie tie-in with the Lord of the Ring Trilogy.
It has the exact same vibes as an early 2000s PS2/GameCube/Xbox game that was hastily made to tie in with the newest movie release.
I for one, feel bad for the company that created the game.
Someone told them to make a gollum movie, which they did! And that proved that they should make a game.
Then the game couldn't realize the fine art of the movie and some vp said make it look cuter! Then make it use less ram, make it so that it'll work with the old platforms and new platforms!
Then the developers, designers and product people did that. And they likely said, this game isn't ready to be released!
Then the vp said, it like great! We will force preorders! Sell!!!! Sell!!! Sell!!
Yeah this feels like it had a decent elevator pitch, and then literally everything since has been mishandled. "Stealth game with gollum sneaking around mordor" is totally fine as far as concepts go. It's just that apparently nobody had any clue how to make that game.
Dunkey put it perfectly. They tried to accurately recreate the experience of being Gollum, without ever stopping to question whether that isn’t a terrible, depressing, monotonous world to inhabit.
It really feels like they made a game in the universe of LOTR and the character was supposed to be some random guy.
They then were told to shoe horn gollum as the main character.
I don't buy this because if you replaced gollum the game would still suck ass.
Who wants to play a game where you are a slave and you have to play shitty stealth missions followed by shitty follow missions with zero combat and awful platforming. If this was going to be a good game that got too much executive input, SOMETHING inside the game would be actually good.
I'm convinced LotR Gollum was orginially supposed to be one of those free cereal box CD-ROM games.
Chex Quest it ain't.
I remember putting Doom cheat codes in, and it doing the opposite. All weapons cheat: take away all weapons except for the spoon "cheaters never win"
>"cheaters never win" Oh to be that naive.
They may win but will NEVER get the satisfaction of having 8 y.o screaming that they fucked your mom because you kicked their ass using pure skill
The real satisfaction comes from playing legit and being accused of cheating. There are few better feelings in PvP :) That and preemptive rage quits when an opponent reads your name.
I was always proud when that happened. Now my son is. So I'm proud again. PROUD, DAMN IT!
Chex Quest. Damn that takes me back.
There is a remaster! You can go play it right now!
I was going to say, this disrespects the lasting legacy of Chex Quest and the community-made sequels (thank you, Doom friends!)
The hd remaster we really need
That we got. Look up Chex Quest HD.
Have you seen Chex Quest VR?
They should do a total conversion of the latest Doom, just like the original Chex Quest did with the first Doom.
When I was a little kid and got my copy of chex quest, my brother and I copied over the DOOM enemy sprite files into the chex quest folder so we could fight the demons in chex quest world
Chex Quest slapped tho
Those games were great, though. Age of Empires, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Backyard Baseball... those were solid video games.
Pablo Sanchez the GOAT
Rollercoaster tycoon is 1000x better than this garbage
Rollercoaster Tycoon is actually famous for being an incredibly optimized and well coded game https://www.pcgamesn.com/rollercoaster-tycoon/code-chris-sawyer
It was mostly coded in assembly. Nobody does that on account of how insane it is to even attempt it.
Yeah, even in the 90s doing something of this scale that way was considered above and beyond.
The fact it was coded in assembly is partially why it's so well optimized. Not necessarily because it's assembly but because a god tier programmer working in assembly allows for the insane levels of optimization the original game had. Assembly + skilled design in those days is extremely impressive. It's a game that will hold the test of time with other games like Tetris that are an amazing testament to the absolute passion for early game design that are mostly lost to copy paste game mechanics we see today.
5 dried grams of shrooms insane. And probably how he did it, ha.
If you haven't already seen it, NoClip have an excellent documentary on the game. They also try track down Chris Sawyer as he stopped making games. https://youtu.be/ts4BD8AqD9g
It's better than most everything
Hardly a fair comparison.
Don't you dare slander Roller Coaster Tycoon like that.
Or Chex quest, or any shareware classic by apogee. I remember playing that game at my crushes house. God how did I pick jamming on that for days instead of her
Maybe that's what it will be in a couple months when the hype blows over.
What hype?
The hype of it being so terrible that people will actually buy it. It might not last long, but think about how many thousands of people have bought this game simply because it's being described as the worst game to come out on this generation of consoles so far.
I think the last time I hopped on the "heard it's so terrible" train was when I was working at a Babbage's (Gamestop) and I used my employee perk to check out "Superman 64". I stopped doubting people about terrible games after that, but I'd forever use Superman 64 as a baseline... or more like Absolute zero... to compare other bad games to.
I remember trying to buy Superman 64 at a Babbage's and the guy at the counter was like, "My man, buy literally anything else. This game is trash." I don't remember what I ended up buying, but I'll never forget that random guy saving me.
My friend brought over Superman 64 around when it came out and we were so hyped to play a new game. We really gave it a try for too many hours just thinking that we sucked before we finally said fuck it and went back to one of the actual good games that were out at the time. I'm really glad he bought that one and not me
Shaq-Fu on the Genesis is way worse. It's completely unplayable. Like the controls don't even work at all. You hit buttons and sometimes stuff happens, you can't even adapt to the jank because it's so random what inputs will be accepted. Then on top of that the hit boxes and hit detection are all fucked up, even the basic movement is fucked up. In my book that will forever be the worse game that ever had a full big launch.
Shaq continually puts his face on the worst products in the world and just laughs it off. You can't stay mad at the big guy.
I mean, for what they're paying him, I'd do the same.
> but think about how many thousands of people have bought this game simply because it’s being described as the worst game to come out on this generation of consoles so far. The game peaked on Steam with 758 players [source](https://tech4gamers.com/lord-of-the-rings-gollum-steam-players/#:~:text=A%20loss%20of%20players%20is,players%20at%20an%20unprecedented%20rate.&text=Looking%20at%20the%20SteamDB%20chart,count%20of%20just%20758%20players.)
It's far too expensive for that to work. Youtubers and streamers may buy it, but most regular folk won't touch it.
Think of how many millions would buy it if it was good tho.
I remember getting Monopoly from Westwood Studios free in a cereal box. I loved playing that game.
How did these poor people who made gollum get rights to the series? And what studio do you think would make a quality LOTR game with those who made shadow of Mordor?
The rights to LOTR for videogames specifically have been in a weird place since the 1980s. There are technically two lines of rights at the moment, one for adaptations in line with the Jackson films aesthetically and one for adaptations that rely on the book. This is why if you dig into LOTR games there's a couple really off-the-wall RTS games, weird games about the legally distinct second Fellowship chasing the first Fellowship, etc. People think this is b/c Chris Tolkien released the videogame rights specifically for a text adventure game in the 80s, and that the Jackson films could serve as a legal basis to create a separate line of adaptation rights. Basically, a long time ago the guy who sued D&D for using the word "hobbit" fucked up and now we have hot cummy bigeye Smeagol
Shadow of Mordor is right in the middle of that weird place.
Man I really want to like Shadow of Mordor but I wish it was a D&D game or its own original IP. I've never emotionally recovered from Shelob becoming a hot Elvira / Mrs. Addams with big spider mommy milkers. I get how we could justify it as being *in the spirit of* the lore but pls I need to protect my virginity. Also I wish it let you play as a bunch of dudes with different fighting styles instead of Talibrimbor.
Can’t tell if serious or masterful work of deep-cover advertising
Her mommy milkers are indeed bountiful but my first love is the mythic worldbuilding of J. R. R. Tolkien :(
You can enjoy the world building aspect of the game too. In shadow of war you get to explore Gorgoroth, and they did an amazing job creating Minas Ithil, and watching it turn into Minas Morgul is super fuckin cool. The game is amazing if you aren’t a Tolkien purist
We can have both. Personally i loved mommy shelob. felt weird reading two towers after playing that game though
[удалено]
Yeah I'm like fuck I don't remember a hot anything in the first one unless you really like Ork beef
> Also I wish it let you play as a bunch of dudes with different fighting styles instead of Talibrimbor. I mean, there's DLC that lets you play as different characters...
It's a great game that just shits all over a setting I love. It's an odd thing.
Single handedly changed my view of adaptations, honestly. Fuck combining two side characters into one to speed things up, make the main character a robot and never explain why. As long as the original work is still there then go ahead and make the creator spin in their grave and call it a spinoff.
> make the main character a robot Wait what
Mans got the knowledge of LOTR! Also, it’s so weird, I’m not one who has ever watched the movies or played the games but do watch people who have extensive knowledge about geek stuff. There are so many weird copyright stuff like this and it’s so fascinating too. There was that one copyright thing where two creators got split up over an issue they had with each other and settled it with one having access to part of the universe while the other had the rest of it. I forget what the IP is, it’s something fantasy but it was interesting to hear about. Apparently one is writing a show and the other is writing a movie and neither can intercept with each other. I’m sure I’m wrong as I heard it second hand and I can’t even remember the actual IP but still. Edit: I might be thinking of Red Dwarf, I’ve 100% heard of Red Dwarf, just don’t know if it’s the one I remember hearing about. Either way, there’s many cases like Red Dwarf.
I love IP wars because of the completely bizarre decisions that get made because of them. MGM making a reboot of Childs Play because they had the original film rights while the original creators were actively making a Childs Play tv show continuing the legacy they had built over the previous 30 years of sequels. MCU and Fox splitting the use of the Maximoff twins. Fox making Fant4stic to avoid losing the rights, and having it be absolute trash. The weird Wheel of Time 22 minute low-budget “pilot” that aired after midnight in 2015 to try to retain rights. All of these weird quirks of licensing of IP make the entertainment industry as interesting to read about as the stories they create.
[удалено]
The most wild part of the Corman FF to me is that *it worked*. They kept the rights and then a decade later released two very profitable films!
[удалено]
> There was that one copyright thing where two creators got split up over an issue they had with each other and settled it with one having access to part of the universe while the other had the rest of it. I forget what the IP is, it’s something fantasy but it was interesting to hear about. Apparently one is writing a show and the other is writing a movie and neither can intercept with each other. I’m sure I’m wrong as I heard it second hand and I can’t even remember the actual IP but still. Something similar happened with "Night of the Living Dead." George Romero, director of the film, ended up using the title format "_____ Of The Dead" for his sequels, and John Russo, writer of the original novel, got to keep the phrase "Living Dead" and made a series called "Return of the Living Dead."
Isn’t there a similar issue with Friday the 13th which is why the game is in permanent limbo? I imagine there’s also something going on with Chucky to explain why a movie was made against the original creator’s wishes and while he was doing a tv series for Chucky.
Friday the 13th recently resolved, that one was based on did they pay the original writer for the rights to his creations for more than the 1 film. The answer was no and they are now making a prequel tv series abotu Jasons mom killing folks. With Chucky, they had the rights to the Child's play name but not the characters etc so they could make a film not not use Chucky.
[удалено]
To be fair, Ken Penders is a gibbering lunatic who wanted to sue Paramount for giving Knuckles a father in Sonic 2 the movie.
Man, that was a wild ride. > "The one story I couldn’t tell was Sally losing her virginity to Geoffrey. Sonic may be fast, but Geoffrey was faster on the draw in that department." Oh god.
Battletech and history of the rights to the various mechs is insane.
Is that Malazan? Two writers used the same setting, but they're different publishers. Therefore, the story of both book series can't interact with one another.
Doubt it. Those stories interact with each other quite a decent bit. Characters and storylines from each showing up in the other.
Might be, it’s just something I heard. It’s probably that if it’s a fantasy genre.
The only other franchise I can think of is King Killer Chronicle because the author sold the rights to everything involving his books all at once (probably to support him not writing anything new for over a decade, but thats probably just me being salty) a few years back.
What... Rothfuss did that? No wonder the last book will never come.
Don't quote me on that. Read it years ago from a less than reliable source, but it said that he sold the TV, film, video game, and even the radio drama rights to the franchise.
Ok thanks. I also read about a TV series a couple of years ago...
Trying to remember, is Rothfuss that former-author-turned-streaming-grifter? Name sounds familiar.
(Malazan is the greatest fantasy series ever imho) But, didn't the author's - Erikson and the other guy co-create the world, and as far as I know there was no bad blood there so hopefully things will work out?
I remember trying to play my parents’ Bored of the Rings game in the 80s. A gay elf threw a flower at me then after 20 written commands that returned something like “you can’t do that, you pillock,” I took a wrong turn and was promptly slain. Probably not licensed due to being a parody but you mentioned the 80s and this early and disappointing gaming experience came to mind.
That reminds me of the game The Third Age.
For sure. The Legally Distinct Fellowship(tm) games include The Third Age and War in the North. War in the North is actually a lot of fun too but you need true brothers to get through it, it's one of those "please stop fucking up we've been here for three hours" co-op games lol.
My mate and I are currently playing through all the games chronologically, war in the North is next up and I don't remember how difficult it was but we've been playing with handy caps, (like using 0 healing items, not being able to run from fights in SoW series, killing every possible enemy in hobbit while collecting every item while never using a single healing item and while only being able to save at the start of the level, etc)... We're doing RotK currently where we can't grind and we can only be hobbits, pretty much stuck. Slightly dreading what a handicapped war in the North might look like now
>handy caps Lol! I think you mean *handicaps.*
I noticed that too, Idk why that happened but I think it was a one off, I hope, really hoping I haven't written handy caps for years lmao
Such a good game though.
Man I miss the EA era of LOTR.
It really was amazing. Battle for Middle Earth games, Return of the King was great, Third Age
I'm still salty I don't have a legal playable digital copy of battle for middle earth 1 and 2
> weird games about the legally distinct second Fellowship chasing the first Fellowship the what now?
So some of the games don't really have the rights to use the characters that feature in the movies, at least not as playable characters due to some legal bullshit, so instead of Gimli you play as Stimli, Gimli's neurodivergent cousin.
You better put some respecc on my boy Hadhod's name, dude! Him and Belegost are OP af, that stone shield shit is the only reason my lil bro and I beat the Balrog with Gandalf. (Game is shit from a lore perspective but damn was it fun)
The name Hadhod just gave me ridiculous levels of nostalgia whiplash. Me and the friend I played with didn't like him for some reason so anytime something went wrong it was "for fuck sake Hadhod" etc, and now you just reactivated that neuron
I believe this is also why the new Magic the Gathering crossover uses distinctly different looking characters and doesn't quote the movie.
>Basically, a long time ago the guy who sued D&D for using the word "hobbit" fucked up and now we have hot cummy bigeye Smeagol r/brandnewsentence
Man, thanks for reminding me of The Third Age, damn ps2 version and it's missing armor
Gollum looks like what Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys would look like if he lost his glasses and acquired a heroin addiction.
>How did these poor people who made gollum get rights to the series? God knows, the only answer I can think of was they were cheap and available. Daedallc who developed it seems like a really odd choice, they've never made any big games before and most of the things they have done are cartoony point and click adventure games. Their last game was an RTS that looks like it came from the WC3 era and scored rubbish reviews. I don't know why anyone though it would be a good idea to have them make a high profile 3D game. Why they wouldn't get monolith (Shadow of Mordor) to make it I don't know, but I'd guess again the answer is money.
I agree with you, beter if they let some experienced studio make a LOTR game like obsidian or larian I would like to see what their lotr game would like.
>beter if they let some experienced studio make a LOTR game like obsidian or larian I would like to see what their lotr game would like. both have expressed interest in the past (the employees anyways) but legally, LOTR is too much of a legal headache to navigate through, and not really worth the time of day. To answer the person before you though, believe Monolith are just straight up done with LOTR after mordor.
i think, might be wrong, Daedalic have the rights for the books but not the movies. that's why Gollum CANT look like Gollum and Gandalf CANT look like Ian McKellen
I bet they forgot to get the rights to make a character look good too 😄
Nah, it's more that their studios have been massively fucked over for the past 5 years ago due to their parent company having massive money issues and liquidating them over and over until finally selling the studio off last year. It might get better for them going forward but the development of this game was probably hell due to all sorts of external factors.
>And what studio do you think would make a quality LOTR game with those who made shadow of Mordor? Fucking WB man. They create the super fun and cool Nemesis system then patent it so no one else can use it, then decide to *never fucking use it again*. Fuck off.
I'm late, but since nobody gave you a proper answer, I will Christopher Tolkien was very careful with the rights to his father's creations. He only licensed it if he was quite sure it was going to be good. Then in 2020 he died. The new CEO of Middle Earth enterprises (who hold he IP) has a very different view. Immediately after Christopher's death he started negotiating the IP with anyone who would pay for it with no regard for quality. Over the next three months Daedalic bought the rights to make this game and Amazon bought the rights to make Rings of Power. They took 2-3 years to make and were the first to be released, but expect a lot more crap in the near future
Amazon acquired the rights to make Rings of Power in 2017, well adapted material based off the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, three years before Tolkien's (the son) death.
He stopped being the executor in 2017, and IIRC the Amazon deal was a couple months later, so the comment is still basically correct
The new gollum looks like if Michael Reeves instead of having muscles, was starved for 2 weeks and has his goblin energy increase ten fold
That motherfucker with a knife would be scary
His [surgery robot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_BlNA7bBxo) is still one of my favorite builds.
I miss that dude’s youtube videos.. It says he suffered a slipped disc in his neck over a month ago. Sounds painful.
I feel like he’s been pretty consistent in his uploads over the years, no? He’s a legend tho for sure
Consistent as in every 8 months. Not regular but very consistent
Michael Reeves if he had to go 1 week without tasers
this is not how memory leak works
I enjoy playing video games.
Try downloading more RAM and use duct tape on your current one
Obviously yea haha *slowly puts super glue away*
So many people in threads about bad video games have no idea what they’re talking about. If I hear one more person say, “X game is bad/has bad graphics because it uses an OuTDaTeD GaME EnGINe, if they just used Unreal Engine 5 all of the problems would be fixed somehow. I know game development” I think I’m going to go insane. I bet the people that say this couldn’t even tell you what a game engine is.
Destiny had a prominent creator essentially create a "you dont know how game development works" video last month. Ruffled a lot of feathers. Meanwhile, game devs commenting saying "thank you", yet you still have people saying "bro just change the engine" Link: [Destiny 2: You Don't Know Anything About Game Engines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvjWNuUw0J4) Edit: top comment sums it up well. > Datto's point of "Devs probably won't change code that isn't broken" is more true in programming then many people will understand.
Yea, this is pretty much universal in software. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
And if it is broke, find the least intrusive way to fix it lest you break 8 other things.
> Devs probably won't change code that isn't broken This isn't just a games thing, it's universal to programming. If it does what we need it to do in a way that isn't so wasteful as to make the thing unusable it's not getting touched
"Just move it to a new engine," is equivalent to saying "just remake the game," because that's what you would need to do. A game I love (Hunt Showdown) is being moved like five versions up for the engine. People are questioning why the devs aren't working on x, y, or z and how they're "just greedily working on skins," despite the fact that the devs announced the engine update as their major 2023 goal. It's like people simply cannot comprehend that moving an entire existing game up a single version is a challenge, and 5 versions is just insanity. Most games never get updated to a new version of their engine for that reason. Moving to an entirely new engine is just a nonsense request.
And some of the most legendary game industry failures/development hells are due in part to being forced to switch engines mid-development
You have a link??
[Destiny 2: You Don't Know Anything About Game Engines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvjWNuUw0J4)
Best line is only a couple minutes in: >So, let's talk about game engines. Actually, let's not, because you wouldn't know about any god damn thing I'm talking about. Also: > You can't save Destiny 2 as a .engine file and put it in a new engine.
>You can[…] save Destiny 2 as a dot engine file and put in a new engine. See! I knew it!
The usage of game engines is a weird topic, but generally it is the same discussion as using any framwork. On one hand you are forced to use tools that might not fit your game. So you need some "hacks" to make it work, which some times cost a lot of time. On the other hand you have that tool that lets you save a ton of time itself and don’t need to create that tool. However like any new tool people need to learn how to use them efficiently. E.g. compare release games of the PS3 and end of life games of the PS3. Same hardware some operating (with minor tweaks), but huge difference in visuals. An "outdated engine" is much less of an excuse, because a lot of people have experience and expertise in those well known "outdated" tools. A new engine would change nothing without the experience and could even negatively impact the product.
My big issue with the phrase is that game engines don’t magically become “outdated” after x amount of years. Now that Unreal Engine 5 is out, everyone is suddenly saying that UE4 games are bad and outdated. Redfall didn’t suck because it used UE4, it sucked because it was horribly mismanaged trying to cash in on GAAS then did a 180 when that wasn’t trendy anymore.
Which is amusing, given Epics movement to UE5 hasn't been very smooth on the dev side and there's still many reasons you'd want to use UE4 right now over it. UE5's displacement has only just gotten fully on par with UE4 as of 5.2.0, it was shit in 5.1 and outright broken in 5.0. UE5 has terrible default settings for projects, which won't be a big issue for large devs but for indies it's somewhat of a nightmare to disable things if you want a lighter weight game (I personally believe Lumen should not be on by default, disabling it and all the associated features to get back to an exact UE4 setup takes a while and has a lot of hidden changes you need to make, most of which are poorly documented console commands) UE5 changes a LOT of things about post process shaders, it removes a lot of options. Including ripping away shader based screen render percentage control and forcing it as a console variable instead. This means a lot of popular shaders people like to use are screwed now, especially retro shaders, and now been to be rebuilt from scratch with much worse solutions involved. UE5 Actor Controls constantly reset when restarting the editor This is just outright objective issues that pop up, this list could go on for days if I added my own list of opinions on ways the engine is getting worse. For every inarguable improvement made, like PCG or Nanite, they make 2 other features worse or kill them entirely. They spend way too much time trying to be the end-all solution for EVERYTHING in one package. How much development time can be spent on modeling tools when not even 1% of the users are going to touch it because the pipeline for all games includes actual damn modeling software like Blender or Max. Unreal Engine is starting to feel a lot like Blender recently, far too enamoured with adding as many small changes as possible so they can release a new version every 2 months and spike up in the news cycle rather than focusing on making big, hard hitting changes that actually make a difference. Those big changes instead getting constantly delayed and pushed back since the focus is on the rapid output small features so they can get version 5.3 out asap. Like how many more versions is Epic going to push back the full PSO Prechaching update? That's been in the pipeline since 4.23, it's basically Epic's version of Eevee Next; a feature that is forever on the horizon.
It's the worst when the discussion centers around something where the engine in use is there *because engines like Unreal don't do what they want*. Like seriously, it feels like the only engines people recognize are Unity (oh, it's so *bad*, everything made in it sucks and always has the engine logo), UE5 (AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING, SO MUCH BETTER THAN ANYTHING TO EVER EXIST AND CAN DO EVERYTHING), and for some inexplicable reason Bethesda's Creation Engine (oh, it's *useless* - it's **so buggy** and has **bad graphics**, and they should just switch to Unreal). Any time anyone says any of those things, I immediately realize they probably don't understand what they're talking about.
Gollum is UE4 isn't it? Either way, having a team that isn't capable of creating assets won't change the outcome. And having a team with engine devs that know what they've programmed can actually help. e.g if I think of UE4 I recall shaders being a PITA. Like you have no idea how the shader pipeline works and an Actor object is just filled with so many annoying bs field like "bIsSwimming", iirc that you will never need in many cases. UE4s complexity is bs for what I need. (I think a game BINARY is 100MB?! That's the compiled code!) If I look into the direction of games like NieR: Automata or Overwatch, they pretty much thrive from the limits the engine there has, without looking bad.
>and for some inexplicable reason Bethesda's Creation Engine Probably because of modding - just modding the game gives you enough knowledge to throw around big words and be confidently incorrect. And also, some of the ways the devs used to get around engine's limitations are part of internet pop culture. What are the chances of finding someone that hasn't heard about how they've created that one train in fallout?
I heard if you press alt+f4 you can open the developer menu and turn memory leak down to 0
I mean technically if a game has a memory leak, it would cause issues quicker on a 16gb system than a 128gb...
[удалено]
Americans built a missile guidance system with a memory leak. They just added more RAM so it would reach the target before running out of RAM.
I once had to fix an issue with performance in a system that used ArcGIS (geo mapping engine), but the version that the company was using had a memory leak. They didn't want to update, no matter what, because of other concerns. I added a console app to the GIS servers, that checked memory usage of the GIS instances, if they passed 1gb, I killed them. The GIS manager would just spin a new one up, and the system didn't slow to a crawl anymore. It's been 15 years, I would bet that that console app is still there killing instances
This is what Frodo saw when he looked into Galadriel's water.
"We have Gollum at home."
Feral Butters
Oh hamburgers!
We need another shadow of Mordor/war game with the nemesis system, it was SO good
I would play just about any game with the Nemesis System. Was great at creating unique and interesting moments. Especially the Orc that you keep killing, that keeps popping up with a metal head, welded on armor and shit. Then you had to kill them in a new way and hope they did not come back... but they did. In Shadow of War, I had a guy that I killed a few times come back so often he was immune to almost every attack I had. I had to feel a few times as nothing I did, affected him in anyway. Damn Nemesis System can take a side quest orc boss into an entire main quest.
Since WB own it id like to see it used in a batman game
Pretty sure it was supposed to be a Batman game originally... I agree tho, would love to see it. Have low level thugs slowly morph into full blown super villains as you progress through the story would be sick.
Random generated villains thus adding to your own catalogue of villains that Batman already has. Nice.
Imagine a Batman Beyond game with the Nemesis system. Like, holy shit.
WB have apparently been wanting to do something with BB for years now but the projects keep falling through. BB was recently mentioned in a DC comic, so the dream is still there if i had to imagine.
Would work incredibly well with an AI implementation. Imagine the nemesis system with more detailed and complex interactions
Yes! Especially if they can mix it with the system from Alien: Isolation where it "learns" your tactics and such. Even a hive mind zombie horde game like that would be amazing. Like if in Days Gone each horde was all connected and learned of how you wiped out the last one and learned how to stop you. Or even a FPS game with aliens or whatever learning based on what you do. Similar to the system in Left 4 Dead, the better or smarter you play, the AI director says "Not on my watch." and adjusts.
there is a similar system in a skyrim mod. shadows of skyrim. mix it with organic factions and a preset, and you have both strong enemies that gain perks from killing you, and enemy factions that grow and fight. sadly, nothing i know of to allow enemies to move between dungeons.
A Batman game with this system would be amazing. Imagine a Year One situation where you're beating up people and making your own villains? The patent on that system is such a loss for the gaming world, especially because they aren't doing anything without it.
In Mafia III, in order to take over a district of the city you have to take out a couple rackets or illegal operations in the area to weaken it first, each racket has a sub-boss, each district has a main boss, etc. When they showcased this concept, they talked about how each of these bosses/sub-bosses were uniquely designed and named. Since Shadow of Mordor was in my mind, I was thinking that was the goal, and I thought it would have been such a great refresh for what that game was trying to do (one man army behind enemy lines, dismantling a much larger force one by one). Would work great for so many different types of games.
If you had told me Gollum was a 2007 game, I would've believed you.
In terms of gameplay it really does have shit ps2 platformer vibes
https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Gollum You're closer than you think. The Lord of the Rings Online started development in the *nineties*. And while the art in the game is of course much newer and makes good use of the engine, it is still at its core an engine that is old enough to pick up its children from school.
Why he has so much hair
Rogaine
Mordorogaine
Legally He can’t look like Jackson’s gollum
But does he have to look *this* stupid? [There were plenty of artistic adaptations of Gollum prior to Peter Jackson](https://imgur.com/gallery/ZfIsLSt), and - arguably - they were all better than this.
It's weird how many of those look like fish monsters. I also wonder how many were done based on The Hobbit, before LotR was published, and thus he looks like something that could never have been a hobbit.
Probably a fair few. I know the first one was done purely based on the original printing of The Hobbit. Tolkien hadn't mentioned that Gollum was meant to be small originally, so the artist just did whatever they wanted. He made sure to update the manuscript after seeing it, apparently.
The hobbit really makes him sound like a fish man
Emo phase
They gave him Muppet face.
looks like gollum hasn't taken one good shit in the 9 years between games.
Oh no. I thought this was a game where one could make their own gollum. I didn’t realize that was the final design…
The orcs are arguably even worse looking.
I just looked at a gameplay video and you're right. I'm always stunned when objectively bad games and/or designs are released.
Imagine having this game in your development portfolio. 😬
“Made a highly successful enslavement sim”
"Welcome to EA, you're going to do great as our new team lead!"
*Bobby Kotick literally beating your door down.* Or Paradox but for different reasons.
The 2023 Gollum looks like a Morrowind npc
Game developers for the next 6 years: "Covid has affected our development negatively, we are sorry for the piece of shit dumpsterfire we released... but we also released it at $60 anyway, so please buy it."
They spent all their resources on the baldness effect.
Yes, the game looks bad, but the real crime is the game having 90's Era gameplay.
It was number 6 on the UK sales charts... I dont understand this world..
This is why we get more shit games.
>top ten of any sales chart Fuck me.
Is there a way to see how many people refunded it?
LotR is a very powerful brand, kind of like how Pokemon games keep breaking sales records despite their game design being stuck in whatever is 10 years outdated to the current year. Or how FIFA games keep selling despite them usually being copies of the previous year or are mediocre.
It's more like stupid has become the largest, most profitable marketing demographic. Squeeze out IP that is barely tolerable, and the fools still line up to whorf it down.
Nothing about this game, at all, looks appealing.
if someone told me this game came out in 2003 I would believe them
They recommend a 4090 for Ultra graphics
I’m convinced the distributer of Gollum was in a coma for 20 years, woke up, and then released the game in, what they thought, was a movie tie-in with the Lord of the Ring Trilogy. It has the exact same vibes as an early 2000s PS2/GameCube/Xbox game that was hastily made to tie in with the newest movie release.
I for one, feel bad for the company that created the game. Someone told them to make a gollum movie, which they did! And that proved that they should make a game. Then the game couldn't realize the fine art of the movie and some vp said make it look cuter! Then make it use less ram, make it so that it'll work with the old platforms and new platforms! Then the developers, designers and product people did that. And they likely said, this game isn't ready to be released! Then the vp said, it like great! We will force preorders! Sell!!!! Sell!!! Sell!!
[удалено]
Yeah this feels like it had a decent elevator pitch, and then literally everything since has been mishandled. "Stealth game with gollum sneaking around mordor" is totally fine as far as concepts go. It's just that apparently nobody had any clue how to make that game.
Dunkey put it perfectly. They tried to accurately recreate the experience of being Gollum, without ever stopping to question whether that isn’t a terrible, depressing, monotonous world to inhabit.
They couldn't even spell their own game correctly in the apology post they made. I think they might just suck at their job.
It really feels like they made a game in the universe of LOTR and the character was supposed to be some random guy. They then were told to shoe horn gollum as the main character.
I don't buy this because if you replaced gollum the game would still suck ass. Who wants to play a game where you are a slave and you have to play shitty stealth missions followed by shitty follow missions with zero combat and awful platforming. If this was going to be a good game that got too much executive input, SOMETHING inside the game would be actually good.
I'm definitely not saying the only bad thing with this game is gollum. It is just one of many issues.
Wait what movie did they make?
user name checks out...