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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor |OT| One Title to rule them all

Revolutionary

Revolutionary

Member
Platinumed the game yesterday. I had my fun with it for sure but it's got a plethora of problems. I'm not sure how anyone can praise this game and deride the AC series in the same breath - it has many of the same problems. Locked off essential gameplay elements until you do missions - check. Wonky free running - check. Mediocre story - check.

I'm far from a LOTR super nerd but I just couldn't take the story seriously at all. The writing was bad for a Tolkien property- "proprietary rights" or "artistic license" in Middle-earth?? Really? And that ending..

I previously mentioned my grievances with the Batman combat not being as accurate as it should be, so I won't get into it again.
Lastly, the Nemesis system was a total wash for me. Sure, watching/helping/deterring orcs from climbing the ranks is cool stuff. But the NEMESIS part? As I said, total wash. My nemesis on the second to last mission was some random ass Uruk I didnt even recognize.

When it comes down to it I had my fun with the game, but I don't agree with the reviews.
 
U

UrbanRats

Member
Revolutionary said:
Platinumed the game yesterday. I had my fun with it for sure but it's got a plethora of problems. I'm not sure how anyone can praise this game and deride the AC series in the same breath - it has many of the same problems. Locked off essential gameplay elements until you do missions - check. Wonky free running - check. Mediocre story - check.

I'm far from a LOTR super nerd but I just couldn't take the story seriously at all. The writing was bad for a Tolkien property- "proprietary rights" or "artistic license" in Middle-earth?? Really? And that ending..

I previously mentioned my grievances with the Batman combat not being as accurate as it should be, so I won't get into it again.
Lastly, the Nemesis system was a total wash for me. Sure, watching/helping/deterring orcs from climbing the ranks is cool stuff. But the NEMESIS part? As I said, total wash. My nemesis on the second to last mission was some random ass Uruk I didnt even recognize.

When it comes down to it I had my fun with the game, but I don't agree with the reviews.
Click to expand...

Yeah to me it definitely felt like a cool experiment to be HEAVILY refined in sequels.

Everything but the Nemesis system is pretty derivative and/or clunky (the parkour is bad, compared to AC).
The game itself is very barebones and repetitive, and the Nemesis system itself needs some work.

I, too, had a complete random idiot as my "Nemesis".
Probably because i never died to the same Uruk twice? Either way, felt very strange.

Despite all of this, though, i had fun with the game, i paid aroun 23€ for it, and it was worth it, i don't know how i would feel, had i paid 60€ for it.
 
Revolutionary

Revolutionary

Member
dl77 said:
And yet you still platinumed it!
Click to expand...
It was within reach once I had finished the campaign, so I figured "why not?"

UrbanRats said:
Yeah to me it definitely felt like a cool experiment to be HEAVILY refined in sequels.

Everything but the Nemesis system is pretty derivative and/or clunky (the parkour is bad, compared to AC).
The game itself is very barebones and repetitive, and the Nemesis system itself needs some work.

I, too, had a complete random idiot as my "Nemesis".
Probably because i never died to the same Uruk twice? Either way, felt very strange.

Despite all of this, though, i had fun with the game, i paid aroun 23€ for it, and it was worth it, i don't know how i would feel, had i paid 60€ for it.
Click to expand...
Yep, absolutely agreed with the bolded.

I rented the game so I don't feel so bad about money I put into it, though. :p
 
K

Kaversmed

Member
I never really had a nemesis. I think I only died like 3 times during my whole playthrough and 2 of the times it was because a caragor would attack me out of nowhere.
 
U

UrbanRats

Member
Kaversmed said:
I never really had a nemesis. I think I only died like 3 times during my whole playthrough and 2 of the times it was because a caragor would attack me out of nowhere.
Click to expand...

Caragors surely killed me more than any Uruk.
My nemesis should've just been a pack of Caragors.

Frankly, i hope in a sequel they'll just let us create our own Uruk, and go up the ranks exploiting an improved Nemesis system, including our own personal strengths and weaknesses (either selected from a leveling up tree or something like that).

It would be more interesting than using Talion again.

Plus the Uruks have so creative and interesting looks, as opposed to the bland copy of Aragorn we had to play with.
 
A

Ateron

Member
UrbanRats said:
Caragors surely killed me more than any Uruk.
My nemesis should've just been a pack of Caragors.

Frankly, i hope in a sequel they'll just let us create our own Uruk, and go up the ranks exploiting an improved Nemesis system, including our own personal strengths and weaknesses (either selected from a leveling up tree or something like that).

It would be more interesting than using Talion again.

Plus the Uruks have so creative and interesting looks, as opposed to the bland copy of Aragorn we had to play with.
Click to expand...

Shadow ride that mother, for lyfe. I died pretty early on in the game cause I had the bright idea of provoking a Graug and try to go all Shadow of the Colossus on him. But I managed to nick a third of his hp, so I guess it wasn't all that bad. As for nemesis I had one, a very weak uruk, with the ambush type. He always, and I mean ALWAYS showed up when I was knee deep in corpses, about to finish a captain/warchief. Bastard would zip line through the fuckin map just to throw a poisoned arrow at my face and then would leave, with a metric ton of swagger "You're too weak to finish off..tch...."

Needless to say that after that happened twice I lost it and went after him, exploited his fear, let him run off, issued a death threat just to make him stronger and this beat his scrawny ass like the little bitch he was. Felt good. Nemesis system can be a hit or miss to some. In my case it worked fine and I'm loving this game. Some moves are OP, but it feels good to be a badass in this game.
 
L

Loxley

Member
Cross-posting this from our Hobbit trilogy thread in Off-Topic, but it's my idea for a potential sequel to Shadow of Mordor:

My ingenious idea for the sequel: the roles are reversed and you play as an agent of Sauron's, you play the bad guy.

The setup:

- In the prologue, Talion and Celebrimbor are shown
crafting a Ring of power like the end of Shadow of Mordor pretty much suggested they were going to.
- Sensing this, Sauron sends one of his best out to defeat Talion and the new uprising of Men created in the last game.
- This "agent" wouldn't be a Uruk or an orc, but an Easterling.
- This Easterling would be a descendent of the Wainriders, which would give this character a good reason to hate the men of Gondor and Rohan and want to see them destroyed. Plus, as an Easterling he just saw Talion wreak havok across the Sea of Rhûn - which would only make him even more pissed off.
- I keep saying "him", but hey, why not make the character female? The Wainriders taught their women how to fight, and it would certainly set her even farther apart from Talion.
- "But what about the Wraith abilities?", you ask? Well, (bare in mind this a total gameplay conceit as within the first game) in his "weakened" state at the end of the first game, Sauron uses almost all of his remaining will to infuse one of the Nazgûl with this Easterling to give her similar abilties to Talion. Again, I know this is complete poppycock within the Legendarium, but its simply an invention to bring the Wraith powers back.
- Specifically, Sauron infuses this Easterling with the Nazgûl named Khamûl. Why him specifically? Because he was an Easterling like our main character. That would create an interesting dynamic between the two of them.

The gameplay:

- This time around, instead of Uruks, the chief enemies would be Men and Elves (save dwarves for the third game) . What's great about this is that it pretty much opens up the rest of Middle-earth for exploration. Rohan, Gondor, and Rhovanion could all be potential locations, which would immediately solve the lack of environmental variety that Shadow of Mordor has.
- You'd also be able to fight a few Dúnedain, whom Talion has begun to rally to his cause.
- Because you're playing a character who is under the thumb of Sauron, your Wraith abilities are far more brutal and unforgiving.
- Seeing as Rohan would be a location, horses would be added to the game as mounts. But since you're Sauron's servant, so could oliphaunts, spiders and potentially even
bats
.

That's my initial idea anyway, there are a ton of possibilities for the follow-up.
Click to expand...
 
Jibbajabbawockky

Jibbajabbawockky

Member
Kaversmed said:
I never really had a nemesis. I think I only died like 3 times during my whole playthrough and 2 of the times it was because a caragor would attack me out of nowhere.
Click to expand...

I feel like in the very beginning when I was just wandering around randomly and had very few upgrades I got caught a couple times in a stonghold and got overwhelmed and killed. So for a while there I had a bunch of Uruks that I kept running across that had killed me or I had to run from and that's where I felt the Nemesis system really was great.

Problem I had was that once I killed those guys and started doing way more of the side missions and got a ton more of the upgrades, the difficulty of the game went way down, so I started just plowing through everyone that got in my way. By the time I got to the second map I feel like I was way too powerful and the game got really easy. Which was fun in its own way, feeling powerful and all with the special abilities but most of the Captains and Warchiefs lost most of their challenge since I rarely died to any of them anymore.

So basically, the Nemesis system was great in the first several hours when the captains felt like real threats but once you started upgrading and the Captains stopped killing you, the actual nemesis aspect of it went down quite a bit.


Loxley said:
Cross-posting this from our Hobbit trilogy thread in Off-Topic, but it's my idea for a potential sequel to Shadow of Mordor:
Click to expand...

That sounds pretty freaking awesome. It would the be the TIE Fighter to Shadow of Mordor's X-Wing. I love it!
 
B

BigJonsson

Member
You guys weren't kidding about Tallion becoming overpowered halfway through the game lol

Felt good to take own the now-warchief Uruk that kept killing me earlier in the game
 
S

Stormus

Member
The foundation is set. This game is a solid introduction to what could be an amazing sequel (a la Assassin's Creed to Assassin's Creed II). They need to focus more on the story, and introduce more developed characters and towns.

I got 25 hours of QUALITY gameplay out of SoM. It was worth the price of admission.
 
I

il Diavolo

Banned
Finished the game last night and holy shit was that ending underwhelming. The penultimate boss was a joke and after that I had this gnawing feeling that the final encounter
would be a glorified qte
, got to him and lo and behold.

Nemesis near the end fell completely flat seeing as I only died once against the uruk the game chose. Interesting idea but doesn't really work If you've hardly been killed by uruks in the game.

Bad ending aside, I enjoyed my time in Mordor. Game is a good badass simulator.
 
T

Thrakier

Member
2014-10-19_00039mzj1r.jpg


2014-10-19_00042xnjfo.jpg
 
J

jblank83

Member
The more I play SoM, the more I dislike the main character. He's such an assface.

Sort of wish I was just playing as the cool ghost.
 
N

neorej

ERMYGERD!
Oc7tZYH.jpg


So this asshole killed me three times in a row, but his assistance would be greatly appreciated in a battle against a warchief. So finally, I have him cornered, nowhere to go, my sword is glowing, do I hit combat brand, or execute?







Execute that motherfucker. I'll figure out the warchief-thing some other way.
 
M

Monster Zero

Junior Member
I will be starting this game in about an hour for the first time, could you kindly give me one piece of advice you wish you had at the start of the game. Any tips appreciated
 
Dibbs

Dibbs

Member
Played some hours of it but couldn't appreciate for some reason so I sold it, I love the AC games and Batman: AA but guess I don't need any more of these kinda games.
 
T

Thornton Reed

Member
Ok so I'm 7 hours in and this is easily one of the best console experices I have had since the last of us on the PS3 last year. I think the combat is unmatched I'm having so much fun with it and the brutal executions and and extra something special. I have encountered a couple of dodgy camera angle moments but other than that I can't get enough of this world.

I would just like to moment to mention 2 of my favourite features so far, 1st the use of the speaker in the DS4 is genius it adds a level of immersion which i love, and sencondly the graphics and lighting are insane I don't think the game is getting enough praise in this department, it just looks fantastic from every angle. All in all I'm loving it and I just want to play it more and more :)
 
D

DodgerSan

Member
Question for those more well versed in the lore than I.

Are the Uruk-hai supposed to be around at this time? I thought they first appeared around the time of the war of the ring?
 
D

DualShadow

Member
Just finished what I think is the second last story mission, gonna mess around some more than go in for the final mission.

Question: Is it possible to force a certain type of rune to drop? I remember a pop-up about it but can't remember. I want to get some nice epic sword runes.
 
L

LurkerPrime

Member
DodgerSan said:
Question for those more well versed in the lore than I.

Are the Uruk-hai supposed to be around at this time? I thought they first appeared around the time of the war of the ring?
Click to expand...

Uruks are just another name for orcs; Uruk-hai are the elite soldiers bred by Saruman at his tower, as seen in LotR: The Two Towers. The game is set before the movies, so Uruk-hai are never shown.

That's my understanding.
 
P

petethepanda

Member
Man. I don't know if I'm just playing this the wrong way or something, but I'm just hating this game. It's rare that I'm this far opposite of the popular opinion on a game. The stealth is frustrating, the climbing is wonky, half of the fights I get into seem to escalate into oblivion...

According to the load screen I'm at 29%, just starting to do the "four warchiefs" part (I had been trying to focus on a lot of side stuff like I do in Ass Creed but I've grown horribly bored of it). I've killed the first guy's bodyguards and now I'm going after him. The start of the mission has you killing five tagged supporters with combat finishers in one of the city areas. As soon as I start going after one group of guys, things quickly escalate, and before I can even get to a second supporter the screen looks like this, with seventy guys and a captain (a second shows up about five seconds after this as well). I inevitably die, it goes into the "chess board" mode (which I have just started skipping as it's really frustrating to sit through if you're not into the game) and by the end the warchief now has a new bodyguard or two which I then have to go hunt down before going after the main guy again. This has happened twice in a row and motivation to return is quickly diminishing.

I guess I'll at least force myself to play until I get to the second area since that at least sounds like it isn't as visually bland as this initial environment.
 
D

dreamfall

Member
jres80 said:
The more I play SoM, the more I dislike the main character. He's such an assface.

Sort of wish I was just playing as the cool ghost.
Click to expand...

Nahhh. Talion's alright, Story Spoiler
Celebrimbor is totally using him as a vessel. Even when he shows a little bit of interest in Lithariel, Celebrimbor totally scolds him telling him to remember his mission/family. I thought Celebrimbor was really just pushing Talion to complete this mission to change his past, and "help" Mordor according to how he saw fit. Talion's Ranger doctrine forces him to be cold to deserters and such, but he seems dedicated to try to save the Queen and do good. Even if he is a bit stoic.
.
 
T

tebunker

Banned
Got 100% the other night, the only thing that let me down was/is the last "Boss" Fight... Otherwise great game, I look forward to what they come up with for the DLC. I enjoyed the Nemesis system, my Nemesis had killed me like 4 or so times, thought he was dead...


Branding orcs all but breaks the game though to be honest, so maybe that needs some tweaking. It definitely becomes a god mode simulator at the end.

Now to tackle some of the challenges and maybe clear out some of the Steam Achievements.

This game was definitely the perfect appetizer to Bayonetta 2 for me, perfect length, perfect mix of gameplay...
 
D

dreamfall

Member
Does anyone have a link/YouTube of Ioreth's song? That's pretty.

EDIT: Nevermind, kinda found it remixed weirdly. Here. Sadness. Without lyrics.

I do wish she was integrated more fully in the game, maybe with some flashback missions. Like Cristina in AC2.
 
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