Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

[Azazel]

Why do you say that? I watched the ending on youtube and it seems to end on a sequel hook, Ranger guy suggests to Celebrimbor they should make another ring and fight Sauron I guess?

 

[Jick Magger]

Why do you say that? I watched the ending on youtube and it seems to end on a sequel hook, Ranger guy suggests to Celebrimbor they should make another ring and fight Sauron I guess?

This is why tie-in games almost always suck, they pull shit like this. "You play as character X as he becomes a major player in the world of Y and make world-changing decisions during the events of work Z...that ultimately don't matter because the source material will never acknowledge it".

 

[HumanTotemPole]

http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2014/10/07/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-review/

The Nemesis system sounds like an interesting concept - is this borne out by people's experiences of it? It's not a game I'll ever be able to bring myself to play because MUH LORE but if a gameplay mechanic has merit then it is certainly worth exploring in future titles.

 

[DrowningHarvey]

Lore rape aside, the game was about as mediocre as AAA titles come. Combat is weak through the game, but at the mid and late parts of the game your abilities get totally out of control.

http://www.gatheryourparty.com/2014/10/07/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-review/

The Nemesis system sounds like an interesting concept

Nemesis system is, like you said, interesting concept. I had few "Oh, not this fucker again!" moments and in the early game and felt that the system has its merits, but the broken combat quickly turned all uruks to faceless cannon fodder, no matter what their status. No point trying to pit orcs against each other when the ranger ubermench can easily plow through them all by himself. I'd love to see Nemesis utilized in better game.

 

[Zombra]

The Nemesis system sounds like an interesting concept - is this borne out by people's experiences of it? It's not a game I'll ever be able to bring myself to play because MUH LORE but if a gameplay mechanic has merit then it is certainly worth exploring in future titles.

Yeah, DrowningHarvey is right. With the combat so easy, it's hard to have a recurring villain be truly scary. They're all just so disposable. However, the system itself is very well done, and as you say, it's very much worth using as a model for future titles.

Even this game could be a ton more awesome if they simply patched it with difficulty settings.

 

[Drax]

I'm pretty anal about respecting the setting and lore of a fictional world (specially Tolkien's), so I probably won't play this, I don't want to die of anger.

 

[Morality Games]

Spoiler

Gollum likes the elf

cuts his own throat instead and turns into Sauron

Ranger meets Freedom Fighter who brings him to meet her mother, a local queen

Elf Wraith cheers on Ranger who stabs Sauron a few times. Roll credits. Ranger reappears in Mordor to mop up the remaining mess of orcs.

Every time I hear something about this game I hate it more and more.

Spoiler

Here's my tolkien cred for those interested:

Spoiler

No Histories of Middle Earth? Canon snob.

Holy crap though, this game sounds worse than I ever imagined. Celebrimbor a zombie ghost wraith? What kind of fanfiction is this?

... also, Gollum hates elves and Feanorians like Celebrimbor would be the kind of elf he hates the most.

 

[Infinitron]

Are "orc games" a genre now?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-09-shadow-of-mordor-is-wise-to-focus-on-the-baddies

Shadow of Mordor is wise to focus on the baddies

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a delight. It's also one of the most derivative games I've ever played. And this feels a bit confusing, really. Some of us spend a fair amount of time worrying about the steady convergence of so many big-budget blockbuster games into one hyper-dense open-world singularity of levelling, stealth kills, rhythmic combat and map-unlocking. And then something like Mordor comes along and fits this profile perfectly - something that takes the iterative template laid down by publishers like Ubisoft in particular and cranks it up to the point of parody. And yet somehow, the end result is, well... Somehow, the end result is a delight.

I think the whole thing makes a little more sense if you flip the argument around, of course. If you'd told me, four or five years ago, in the midst of all the heavily-scripted, QTE-fetishing, cover-hugging set-piece-fumbling cinema games, that in 2014, your typical triple-A title would be played out across the wild expanse of a huge map and would be driven more by the emergent hilarity that spilled from its environments and its systems than the machinations - the deus ex machinations ha ha! - of its narrative designers, I probably would have been overjoyed. Mordor slots into that way of thinking quite handily. If this is where we've been aiming of late, now that we're actually here, it's not bad at all.

The problem with this theory, though, is that not all of the games converging on this spot are as entertaining as Mordor. The basic template itself is not enough. On paper, for example, there's not so much separating Mordor from something like Watch Dogs (and granted, Eurogamer gave both games pretty similar scores). Personally, though, I find Watch Dogs a bit of a witless chore: all those icons spread over that massive city and it just feels more like tidying up than exploring. Mordor's own locations are pretty big as well, and as the game progresses, they too start to fill with mission markers and side quests and all of the same sorts of things Watch Dogs trades in. Suddenly, though, I'm happy to muddle through, and I'm happy to dawdle and give in to distraction. What marks Mordor out?

On the surface, there's doesn't seem to be much to mark it out at all. Its storyline feels rather carelessly implemented (your wife's been killed; now have get outdoors and have some fun!), the open world initially seems drab and unmemorable, part Dr Who quarry, part poorly-tended school sports field, and the sheer extent of the game's borrowings seem likely to overwhelm it. The pitch is Assassin's Creed meets Arkham City, in essence - the clambering and map-unlocking of one, the magical mob-happy combat and aggressive predator stealth of the other.

As I write that, I realise that Assassin's and Arkham were already pretty similar as it is. Move in close, though, and Mordor's willing to pinch things that are really quite specific. You open up new parts of the map by climbing towers dotted around the place and essentiallysynchronising just as in Assassin's. Meanwhile, you have the Tolkien equivalent of Batman's detective mode for tracking people by their shimmering footprints. Individual elements of the combat have direct parallels in both earlier games, and you can even approach Mordor's skill tree as a kind of mix-and-match design document: that move from the Dark Knight, thanks, and that one from good old Ezio.

I think the Mordor difference, though, comes down to focus. This is a game whose true stars only become apparent over time. You may be cast as a ranger, blandly dashing and pierced, unconvincingly, by the barbs of recent tragedy but it's actually the spirit of the orcs he fights against that is particularly strong here. Buffoonish and brutal by turn, they're your main enemy in the game, and they slowly permeate every inch of the design until they overwhelm it. They fight amongst themselves in endearingly bloodthirsty ways, and they say amusing things to each other while you're crouched in the bushes waiting to gore them. I was waiting to gore one of them just the other day, in fact, and he suddenly turned to his friend and said, "I set myself on fire by accident this morning." Maybe that wasn't exactly the line, but it was the gist of it, and who really writes down anything an orc says, anyway?

The important thing, I think, is that Mordor's emergent silliness is built around these guys.Mordor knows that the Men of Gondor are a bit dull, the elves and dwarves are a drag to the uninitiated, and the hobbits are far too tweedy for most of us to get genuinely excited about. Forget the handsome fool you're actually cast as, in other words, because the designers did long ago. They know that Mordor is an orc game where it matters, and while the subtext can be a little weird at times (it's odd to play Mordor in modern Britain, where you're essentially a lone member of the aristocracy picking away at everyone else because you're afraid they're starting to organise themselves) an orc game is still a pretty magical thing to behold.

 

[Akratus]

Jesus christ man, the orc discrimination is well underway. Fucking fascists.

 

[Rivmusique]

it's odd to play Mordor in modern Britain, where you're essentially a lone member of the aristocracy picking away at everyone else because you're afraid they're starting to organise themselves

These people are crazy.

 

[Berekän]

I wish it was at least moderately challenging so I could at least enjoy the Nemesis system but so far even that gimmick falls flat. You just roflstomp the captains and even if they come back you just roflstomp them again which makes the feature quite pointless, I don't get to "learn" the characters because they're just more cannon fodder. With all the nice stories I've read on the net so far about people getting to hate their nemesis after getting beaten multiple times by them it's sad that you have to be bad at the game to enjoy it.

Wish they had just gone fuck it and turned the difficulty all to eleven. The feature is pointless without challenge. Period.

EDIT: Oh, and it bothers me a lot how fucking blind all the orcs are in the game.

 

[Greatness]

I think we've hit the bottom now boys. You can literally win the game with your monitor off. There's only incline left from here.

 

[Ulminati]

So is there any reason whatsoever to play this instead of Styx?

 

[Cyberarmy]

There is some challange in Styx at last, planning and tactics are involved.

 

[Akratus]

Da cereal bawks with lats of styx on it? Lots of styx and children. With the litle boy with the handgrenade and the children with 200 dollars. I think it's called choo-choo train. I need the price for the cereal bawks.

How much it cost please I need it for my dad.

 

[Atheist]

http://webmup.com/lixAA/vid.webm

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Hahaha holy fuck, that last line about feeling uncomfortable with Orc discrimination can't be real.

 

[Talby]

Fucking elfgendered Gondornormative shitlords, you have no idea the oppression I suffer as a wraithsexual transorc.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I am so fucking sick of seeing commercials of this game.

I'm sick of seeing Gollum walk towards me, the stupid wraith-like specials effects, and the rock music with multiple awards plastered on the screen like a pile of shit.

 

[Trash]

Killing orc after orc after orc is however something I don't get sick of.

 

[Delterius]

Killing orc after orc after orc is however something I don't get sick of.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Killing orc after orc after orc is however something I don't get sick of.

oh sweet Elbereth...check your human privilege, you piece of eagle dung.

 

[Mangoose]

I am so fucking sick of seeing commercials of this game.

I'm sick of seeing Gollum walk towards me, the stupid wraith-like specials effects, and the rock music with multiple awards plastered on the screen like a pile of shit.

why do you have cable tv still

 

[DragoFireheart]

I am so fucking sick of seeing commercials of this game.

I'm sick of seeing Gollum walk towards me, the stupid wraith-like specials effects, and the rock music with multiple awards plastered on the screen like a pile of shit.

why do you have cable tv still

I don't pay for it.

 

[Mangoose]

The first two arkham games had decent game design.

and where in arkham asylum was this decent game design exactly? i must've missed it somewhere between the dull challengeless platforming and the click-LMB-until-everyone-ded combat

I really hope you didn't play either game on Normal, with super obvious attack/counter cues.

Edit: When you have enough enemies with knives, stun batons, and hulk guys, you can't run around spamming attack. Not that they're still that difficult, you just have to throw in cape stuns, spam batarangs, and spam dodge and then it's not much trouble. Bane on Hard fucking made me throw my controller though.

The main difference between Assassin's Creed and Arkham is that, well, there are multiple difficulty modes that are quite different from one another, and the combo->special takedowns (that you need to use on Hard).

Now if you only upgraded your armor and combat shit to be OP in combat then suck a dick for not buying fun abilities like upside-down takedowns.

Also if you do the Challenge fights (and Predator ones) those are actually pretty damn challenging.