Good day ladies and gents, hope your all doing well.
Today I'd like to talk to you about Monolith's Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor.
Ever since I read LoTR I was quite infatuated with it. So when the movies started coming out, I was super excited for all the games that would likely come too. Unfortunately most of those oldschool LoTR games are relatively sandbox.
This game looked like it was going to offer something much more - A new premise within the world of Middle Earth as well as excellent graphics, and a new engine system for the bad guys you will be fighting.
After just over 60+ hours of game play and completing 100% of the Achievements I will finally share my take on the game with you.
Shadow of Mordor is a new storyline within the world of Middle Earth, though it has many ties(obviously) and throwbacks to many recognizable characters from the series(such as Gollum, Sauron etc) but brings many new ones in to explore as well. You will play Talion, a Ranger who becomes possessed by a Wraith. Together you will use each others powers to conquer the armies of Mordor, and use them against their master. Overall the storyline was nothing incredible but it was interesting and didn't try to change or stray to far from the world it was built in, and for that you get a sense that your actions in the game really did somehow impact on the rest of the LoTR saga's. Even if it was simple things like talking with Gollum.
The graphics of the game where quite good, especially in video, although sometimes not all the textures would load at the same time. By the end of the game this was happening quite often. Its possible this just has something to do with my system of even the game disc but it may not. I did also have an issue with the silly little videos within the game. Before almost every mission there will be a couple quick(and I mean quick) clips to lead you into the missions. If you happen to blink during these clips there is a really good chance you will miss them - they are that short. Sometimes speaking characters are cut off before they even finish what they were saying. This seemed rather useless. Why have video so short you can blink and miss them?
Beyond the slow load of textures and weirdly fast short videos the graphics were quite good as I said, especially in the storyline videos. It should also be mentioned that the voice acting is also really well done for all the characters, even the enemy characters ("what's in these barrel's anyway?")
Although the graphics looked good (most of the time) and the story seemed interesting what I was personally most excited about was the Nemesis System used in the game which would decide how rival characters reacted towards you and their environment. This idea just sounded awesome to me and for that this game jumped high on my "must play" list.The Nemesis System performed exactly as you would expect. When killed by an Uruk he gains power, and is usually promoted within the ranks and also becomes a revenge kill on your list of target. Uruks that you take command of come to your beck and call and can be used to start fights or murder others, all giving you advantages within the game. This system was excellent and worked well for this open world. Beyond just interacting with you the Uruks will interact with the world and eachother starting duels and going on hunts to gain more power and followers. You can then chose to stop them, kill them, brand them, or leave them be and see what they do. In this way the game feels like it is ever changing and evolving around what you do within it.
Over all Shadow of Mordor was a very fun game. It has an excellent rival system in place with a well thought out story and characters. The game does play pretty well with few bugs aside from a few characters fallin into the ground or Talion climbing invisible walls. Other than these and slow loading graphics the game ran rather well and once again the voice acting and story videos were excellent. For all of this I am going to give Shadow of Mordor a 7, just based on the Story Mode alone. If you are a fan of Action/RPG games or are and LoTR fan I would definitely recommend you try this game.
Well, hope this has been helpful and you enjoyed.
Later