Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

[Clockwork]

So I finally got around to completing this game. It's Assassins Creed: Mordor Edition. Plainly there was very little in the way of game mechanics that wasn't lifted from any AC game from 2 onward. For those that have no interest in playing the game but are interested as to what the story entails I'll put that in a spoiler.

The game plays well, the combat flows nicely with animations hitting the intended target the vast majority of the time and sounding meaty when doing so. It sounds brilliant, the voice acting is some of the best I've heard and the choreography for the cinematics is fantastic. Its AC but it is definitely better than AC.

Spoiler

Celebrimbor the smith defied Sauron even as he helped forge the ring of power. Cel stole the ring just as it was finished and led and army of Orcs against Sauron using some sort of power that ins't really explained all that well. Anyway, he pretty much smashes Sauron and is just about to kill him or whatever you do to an evil Ainur when the ring slips from his finger and lands on Saurons. 10 points for guessing what happens next. After Cel is defeated, he's tied up and is forced to participate in a ritual whereby Sauron kills his wife and child and it locks Cels spirit in Mordor.

FF to when the game is set: You play as Talion, a Gondorian Ranger, one of the many atop the black gate. Orcs led by the Hand of Sauron (Saurons black Numenorian guards) take the black gate and perform the same ritual on Talion and his family. Talions body is still pretty much solid though so the wraith of Cel takes it. Talion is still in there so the two sort of live and act together. Que Orc killing rampage and revenge tale against the Hand. Its a decent story, fits well enough into LotR lore.

[Jubal]

I object heavily to the "fits well enough into the lore" - I can see a lot of places where it jars horribly just from the potted overview

Glad it's a good game though

[Clockwork]

The quality of writing is there but as I may or may not have said, writing just background and then sitting a story on top is bad writing. There needed to be a reason for all the background given. Its cool enough but could easily have just not used any of it. Much like the present day scenes in AC, unnecessarily trying to throw plot twists in where they don't fit. Tolkien isn't exactly specific on what can and can't be done in ME, I don't see why much of it is implausible. Yes it does go against what is already written but as an alternative, its about on par I'd say. But then I don't particularly rate LotR lore anyway so that may have something to do with my impassivity on lore trampling. Which is odd considering how much of it I've read.

[SaidaiSloth]

Erm.. nemesis system?

[Clockwork]

What about it?

EDIT: If you mean lore wise, it fits easily as some of the other bizarre bs that happens in ME. If you mean the mechanics, ehh, it's almost completely unnecessary which is disappointing. I literally forgot about it. That's how little I used it. Sure you can dominate orcs but there is no point, the runes you get from them as loot are worse and simply challenging them then engaging in some moderate dismemberment is a much better option. Aside from when its required and a couple of times along the game to see if I was missing something about it, I left it alone.

[SaidaiSloth]

Necro.. What console were you playing on? Because if it was the PS3 or 360 version, it was nerfed a lot for them. If PC or Ps4 / xb1... like Cap 2, you're one of the 1.5 people who has the opinion that it wasn't very good :p

[Clockwork]

Every game I play is on PC, although to be fair this (like the AC series) is a casual game aimed at casual gamers which I don't think I can claim to be. To make it more of a challenge I actually went 0 runes after about midway through the game (about 10 mins after I got into the second location) Whether I like the game or not is irrelevant here tbh this is intended to be more a review then an opinion piece. But if you care for whatever reason, I really enjoyed it actually, I had a huge amount of fun rhythmically chopping up various Orcs and juking bosses. I just don't think that the game was imaginative, setting for the story was uninspired and mechanically was lifted from another game. None of these are unfair comments and I for one don't believe a game has to innovate to be good.

EDIT: With Cap2, I know more about what "should" be in the movies which possibly correlates with the 1.5 that also thought it wasn't good in terms of content. Likewise with gaming, I have a huge background knowledge of the industry, I play a lot of other titles in the same vein. The only big AAA game so far that I would slightly describe as 'not only for casuals' are the batman games. If you ramp up the difficulty, one bullet kills you, there are no ranged deflections and the melee enemies require the same combo tactics (stun/dodge/parry/whatever) as this game and the AC series. It gets difficult.

I'm also definitely only a core gamer that occasionally dabbles in hardcore, I'm not fussed with difficulty if the game feels right on lower ones e.g. I love playing the DA series on lower difficulties so I can run without healers/tanks all the time and take the companions that suit what my avatar doing/who they get along with etc.

[Phoenixguard09]

I actually quite enjoyed Shadow of Mordor myself, though I found the most disappointing things were actually the enemies.

I would have liked to have seen a greater variety of orcs, with different tactics and armaments for them, along with some evil men in Easterlings, Variags, Haradrim and the like. Exploring more of Mordor than just the two main maps would have been pretty good too. I honestly felt like I was really getting into the game when it stopped.

Also, what was the point of the caragors and the graugs? Surely wargs and trolls would have been better options? I don't necessarily think they should not have been in the game. After all, we know next to nothing about Mordor's fauna, but having them at the expense of wargs and trolls was, in my opinion, a mistake.