We had planned to post a review for the PlayStation 5 version of Daedalic Entertainment and Nacon’s The Lord of the Rings: Gollum today, but we can’t do that in good faith at this moment. Simply put, the PS5 version we tested was too broken to fairly critique.
So, why not just stop there and give Gollum a zero-star or half-a-star review? Well, that’s not fair to the game, either. These technical issues were so overbearing that it felt impossible to critically assess The Lord of the Rings: Gollum as a gaming experience in a legitimate way. It’s Digital Trends’ belief that if a game is outright broken like this, it’s not yet worthy of a review in a traditional sense.
However, we felt that the PS5 is a popular platform that many will buy the game on — and one that’s generally reliable when Digital Trends tests games. After discussing the situation internally, we felt that there were red flags there and that it would be worth holding back a review regardless of how it ran on other platforms.
Still, we don’t recommend playing The Lord of the Rings: Gollum on PS5 at release. These patches may resolve many of the game’s most significant technical issues, but it’s also very possible that other issues will remain . Interested players should keep an eye on the general technical state of the game after the day one patch before playing, as we will.