The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (Xbox Series X|S)

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