Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Review (Greens)
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Shadow of Mordor is an open world action/stealth game inspired by similar games such as Batman: Arkham and Assassin's Creed. The story takes place between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. You play as Talion, a Gondorian Ranger whose family is sacrificed by the Black Hand of Sauron in order to summon the wraith of the Elf Lord Celebrimbor. Talion's life is saved by Celebrimbor and they set off to seek revenge against Sauron and the Black Hand. Throughout the game Talion is able to utilize Celebrimbor's wraith powers in order to give him various advantages and abilities, even the ability to cheat death. Shadow of Mordor is most notable for it's gameplay mechanic known as the Nemesis system. This mechanic introduces a hierarchy of rival Captain and Warchief ranked Orcs that have dynamic names, titles, traits, power levels, abilities, classes, strengths, and weaknesses. They have a memory of general events related to them (such as them killing the player, the player killing their guards or mounted caragor/graugs, the player finding them after they successfully flee, etc.) and will reference these events in dialogue. This system was widely praised for making Talion's enemies incredibly dynamic and immersive.
- Good gameplay. It takes a lot of influence from games like Batman: Arkham and classic Assassin’s Creed.
- Great graphics and art style.
- Good soundtrack.
- The Nemesis system is really cool. It’s not quite as advanced as it is in Shadow of War, but it’s still a lot of fun and really impressive.
- Good upgrades/skills. The skills you unlock make a huge difference in how you play the game.
- Decent story. It’s fairly minimal, but it has a much more grounded tone compared to Shadow of War which is nice. The writing and dialogue is much better in this game, far less ironic and campy.
- There are a very reasonable amount of collectibles, it’s not spammy or excessive like in other similar games. Getting in-game 100% completion is very realistic.
- The controls and the camera can be pretty awkward and buggy, but it’s not completely terrible.
- The two story DLCs are lazy, mediocre, short, and overpriced. They re-use the base game maps (no new locations), barely have any actual missions, can be beaten in two hours each, and aren’t really that fun. The only main positive is that the Bright Lord DLC has a much better final boss than the base game which makes it worth playing at least once.
- Online servers were shutdown in 2020 making the online missions and features no longer available.
- The game uses pre-rendered cutscenes which is disappointing. In-engine cutscenes would’ve looked great.
- A lot of story missions involve sections of slowly following a companion while listening to dialogue. It’s a real waste of this games time given that there are only 20 story missions for the entire game and some of them are fairly short.
- Some of the best gameplay mechanics are introduced far too late into the game. For instance, by the time you unlock the ability to dominate Captains, there are only four story missions left in the game.
- The final boss is absolute garbage. It’s a lazy QTE sequence instead of an actual fight. The later parts of the story feel pretty rushed as well.
- Failing a side mission doesn’t give you a retry button, instead making you go all the way back to the mission marker to retry. This can get pretty frustrating, especially during the more difficult side missions.
- Weapon runes feel lackluster. It’s all RNG which runes you get by killing Captains/Warchiefs, some runes are great, some are kinda useless. You’ll usually end up equipping whatever just kinda works instead of worrying about truly optimizing them.
- Some slight technical complaints. The only anti-aliasing options on PC are FXAA or super-sampling. The frame rate is capped at 100 FPS, it’s possible to disable this limit through tweaks, but it causes a bug in one of the story missions.
Shadow of Mordor is easily one of the best Lord of the Rings games out there. It’s like if Ubisoft were capable of making a quality game. The gameplay is solid and the Nemesis system makes the world feel alive, dynamic, and replayable.
8/10