Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Review
Shadow of Mordor tells the story of Talion, a ranger from Gondolin who, along with his family, have been slain by the black hand in a pretty gruesome cutscene. The Black hand uses them for sacrificial purposes, thinking that an ancient elf spirit, once summoned, will possess him and make him more powerful, except that the elf spirit has other ideas and decides to merge with Talion to prevent him from ever dying, to avenge his family. This gives Talion some sick wraith-like powers to help you seek revenge upon the black hand and kill anybody who opposes him relentlessly. For the entirety of the game the people that oppose you will only be a few different types of creatures and Uruks. When you're fighting Uruks though, you'll be fighting them in what is the most fluent combat system I've ever played in a game before. The story, though, is a different matter.
Starting strong with an intro that says to you "How much more interesting can this get?", it kind of falls apart at the end of the game. Right before the end of the game is when the story gets very captivating with all of its characters keeping you listening intently. There's no boss battle or anything with the antagonist, which is kind of disappointing. The final battle before the concluding cutscenes is kind of a bleak and brief stealth mission with one of the black hand's minions. It isn't as satisfying as I hoped and in all honesty it did disappoint me greatly. Instead, you are left with a quick time event which is as follows: x, x, x, move right stick into circle and press random face button, repeat last step three times, mash square approximately seven times and you win, game over. A concise cutscene plays and then the game ends. Just a warning for anybody, you will be underwhelmed by the ending.
As for the gameplay, whoa. You just need a moment to soak it all in, it's that good. It's pretty hard to get tired of. The thing that makes it so good is that it wins you over by giving satisfaction from everything you do. Even for the small things, like the screechy sucking noise that is played from the controller when you perform a drain on an Uruk. The most satisfying out of all is the swordplay. It takes the freeflow combat from the Batman Arkham games and Assassin's creed games while putting unique twists on it. When you first start out the Uruks will be pretty easy to beat and you will have just enough abilities to put to good use in combat. As you progress along with the game, the Uruks will begin to gain their own new abilities as you do. In one case the Uruks started attacking me two at a time, forcing me to counter twice. New types of Uruk will even show up, like Berserkers, these specially trained bulky Uruks who need to be stunned before you can attack them, Or Defenders, larger Uruks who carry shields and need to be attacked from the rear. All these things and more shake up the combat nicely, making every fight entertaining while being different from the last.
Then you begin to unlock new abilities which can make all the difference in combat, like a stun vault which allows you to vault over an Uruk while simultaneously stunning him, saving you the extra press of a button. And the combat is suited to everyone's needs, it can be as plain or as sophisticated as you like. You can easily win fights by vaulting, striking and countering only. There are, though, abilities which help win fights faster and essentially become a requirement later on in the game, the main ones being executions, drains, and wraith flashes.
Before I go any further, let me just say that the executions are the best part of the free-flowing combat, if not the best part of the game itself. The executions are 'executed' when your hit streak is charged, and a brief yet oh so satisfying animation plays where Talion brutally kills an Uruk in many creative ways. These range from around 10-15 gory animations, differing from Talion decapitating an Uruk, or slicing an Uruk halfway through the neck then slitting his leg joints. You get the point. All of these animations are played smoothly and in a fast paced motion, extending to around 1-2 seconds of jaw-dropping gore. You can easily lose track of time in the combat, it sucks you in like a vacuum.
Besides the sword, you'll also be granted a dagger and a bow. When you aim with the bow it goes into a slow motion mode, called Focus mode. The bow lets you see enemies highlighted in blue in the elf spirit's point of view. The bow mechanics are well designed and the bow is especially useful for making quick kills. You'll automatically switch to a dagger while in stealth, and you when you stealth kill an Uruk, and stealth kills are quick and gory, making stealth missions almost as fun as swordplay.
But the one thing that will keep people coming back to this game, again and again, is it's hierarchy system of Uruk Captains and Warchiefs called 'Sauron's army'. The hierarchy system shows a group of captains and 5 Warchiefs. All of these Captains and Warchiefs are randomly generated, each having their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and fears. All of this is found out by interrogating another captain or warchief, or by interrogating an Uruk marked green. Captains/Warchiefs are plenty of fun to fight, as they add a lot of diversity to the combat and are pretty much like a randomly generated boss battle. The captain could be just strolling along before you pounce on him and gives the atmosphere a very eerie feel because they are everywhere and could catch you off guard.
For the first half of the game you will be stuck in a semi-medium sized map, and just when you want somewhere new to explore besides the ruined and dystopian Gondor, they give you a green and lush new map to explore, with even more hills and verticality. When you get the second map, you will almost instantly unlock the 'brand' ability, which allows you to mind control other Uruks whenever you drain them. This is an extremely helpful ability and was so useful for combat since the Uruks were getting harder. So much so that I was annoyed that the ability wasn't introduced sooner in the game.
One thing I didn't like about Shadow of Mordor is that there aren't many story missions, so the story is really short and I was really craving a few more side missions. The main thing that gives this game replay value is the randomly generated captains which never end. The thing I did like about these missions though is that they are never repetitive, and give you something new every time. I feel like most Action RPG's or open world games struggle with repetition, so that's something I was very glad about. Also, at the final boss battle, there's a cool looking area with red sand, and dust blowing everywhere. In the new small area, there's also a fort that looks all jagged and the sky is red, and it looked all hell-like. I really would have loved to see the new area expanded upon because it is very small and you can't revisit it once you finish the game. Which is a shame because it looked like it would make a good third map to explore. Overall, Shadow of Mordor is a fanatical, fantastic game, taking the success and failure from similar games in the genre and learning from them.
+ Amazing combat/stealth - unexplorable new area
+ Great attention to detail - 'Brand' ability introduced late
+ Non-repetitive gameplay - No boss battle with antagonist
+ Gory execution animations
+ Ridiculously helpful upgrades/abilities
9.6/10
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