It feels like it was yesterday when I made my preview blog for the game when that awesome trailer came out. At first my initial concern was wether or not this game would deliver in its lofty goals, but then I doubtful on wether or not getting this game after news that the last-gen port would have been downgraded, and also because I was afraid I wouldn't do the game justice by reviewing it in a inferior port. So my friend @scorpion2501 offered himself to review the game with me so he could share his perspective in PC. So lets see, is Shadow of Mordor a game worthy of your money or just another cash grab made on Tolkien's name?

Summary

Set between the events of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", you play as Talion (played by Troy Baker), a Ranger from Gondor stationed in the Black Gate of Mordor, who is murdered alongside his family by Sauron's servants, the Black Captains led by the mysterious Black Hand (played by Nolan North), who returned to reclaim the land for their master's homecoming. Fortunately for Talion, he is revived by a elven wraith that the Black Hand was attempting to summon with the ritual killing of Talion and his family. Now sharing the body with the wraith, revealed to be none other than Celebrimbor - the legendary forger of the 20 Rings of Power long murdered by the Dark Lord himself, the two embark on a quest of revenge, sharing a common enemy they need to stop before they can depart to the afterlife.

Plot & Characters

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While the plot may be one of it's weaker points, Shadow Of Mordor still doesn't fail to deliver us an engaging story. The theme that stands central in this game is mostly the desire for revenge, the player, Talion and his wraith friend Celebrimbor are both out for the same thing. Being free from the curse of living forever and murdering the people who turned their life into a living hell, or well, more like an undead hell. Because as I mentioned, both of them are in between a state of life and death, and neither can pass on to the afterlife. While I didn't think the story was as fleshed out as I wanted it to be, it was still an entertaining ride.

The characters are more engaging than the story in a lot of ways. The chemistry between Talion and Celebrimbor is one of the highlights of this game. They bicker a lot, and are always there to make me interested in the story again.

I loved every single piece of dialogue between them. At the start of the game we know little of Celebrimbor, and him suffering from amnesia doesn't help either. But as the story progresses you find his "Scattered memories", which give you a deeper insight in his past, which I very much enjoyed. While I can't say he didn't have that much of a backstory, it was still more than enough to understand his feeling and sympathise with his motives.

Most of the other characters are likeable as well, Torvin being my favorite. Torvin the dwarf is a hunter, and his personality is almost opposite that of our grumpy duo of main characters. His witty remarks and snarky jokes lighten up the mood, which is a great change of pace. And Torvin as well, gets enough background information to make him likeable, and make you want to aid him in his quests.

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This game offers a great expansion and fealty on the lore. The land of Mordor was largely uncharted and said to be home to creatures far more terrifying than orcs, and we get to see first hand how it was like before Sauron. They made so many homages to the background, the biggest one was probably making one of the protagonists Celebrimbor, who is an supporting character from the Sillmarillion largely unknown except to the most hardcore LotR characters. They went out their way to add in-game background details that you can visit in the pause menu anytime that contains character profiles for Talion, his family, the enemies, the monsters, the locations and etc. I really, really love when games add this level of detail.

Unfortunately, the narrative itself is rather weak and very cliched. I mean, c'mon guys you already seen this set up a thousand times as - bad guy kills the hero family now he goes on a roaring rampage of revenge - this time on Middle-Earth. Majority of the characters are one-note and it wouldn't have been much of a stretch to say that the Uruks you fight have more personality, though some manage to be entertaining like Ratbag (who provides some healthy comic-relief by serving as a punching bag in every single appearance during the first act) and Torvin (who is certainly a interesting character on his own but is absolutely peripheral to the plot). The characters that really get the short end of the stick are the actual main villains themselves, the Black Captains of Sauron, who are infinitaly less interesting their Orc henchmen - illustrated by their unspeakable bland names like the Hammer, the Tower and the Black Hand. The one thing that holds the story together is Talion/Celebrimbor's interactions. You think an undead wraith sharing the same body as yours would have been an evil influence trying to put dark temptations into your head, but as it turns out Celebrimbor and Talion get along pretty friendly, with the former offering advice to the latter while still bickering. Nice to see them subvert the enemy within trope for once.

And finally, I am disappointed that the ending is a massive letdown. Without wishing to spoil, but with the gaame building up to a massive confrontation between Talion and Sauron's forces falls flat as the final encounter is nothing but another set of enemies that you've been fighting all game long (only with some branded Warchiefs that will help you out) and a pathetically easy final boss (which on in context, doesn't make a lot of sense either) followed by a OBVIOUS SEQUEL BAIT ENDING. *Sigh* I guess if you are making a game based on Assassin's Creed you still need to make a sh*t ending to make up for it.

Even though I am more story-driven type of gamer, I am willing to give the any of the plot's fault a pass. You know why? Because when I checked in and saw I've played for 12 hours with completing only a handful of story missions, I realized I was having fun nonetheless without caring if the story was good or not, which I guess its okay. The story isn't horrible, just average at its really worse. Its more than I can say than some Purists who claim the game missed the entire point of the LotR mythos, or certain "professional" critics who can't tell reality from fiction and making a retarded big deal out of the prologue claiming the game is tone deaf over kissing/killing *cough* POLYGON *cough*.

Gameplay Aspects

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Gameplay consists of two main aspects. The "Nemesis System"

and the actual open world gameplay. I'll start of by talking about the Nemesis System, and how this saved this game from being mediocre. The Nemesis System is where you can see every named Orc character. These Orcs all have unique names, nicknames, faces, weaknesses, powers, and best of all, relations to you. If you ever run into on of these orcs, and let's say burn them, but they run away and live to tell the tale. That orc will now have burn marks on him next time you meet him, and get new dialogue, about how he wants to kill you for what you did to him, or about what he did to you last battle. This makes you really motivated to kill some of those orcs. Because, and I'll go to the next big point in this game, when you are killed, the game doesn't ask you to restart the mission. The game just continues. Your failure is recorded, the orcs who faced you and killed you will gain in rank, and will be harder to kill. They'll mock you when you see them next time, saying how they'll kill you again and again until you stay dead. And believe me, when you have an orc that killed you ten times, you won't be happy until his smug face is erased from this world.

There is also an ability that can let you brand orcs, which makes them your followers. This also influences the Nemesis System, because you will have a chess piece in this hierarchy of orcs. And you can try and take it down from the inside. You can let your orc assassinate other orcs, gain in rank and become the strongest of them all. This really comes in handy when you really want to get rid of that orc that you alone can't defeat...

The actual gameplay is really smooth. The fighting feels really Batman Arkham-esque. With a variety of different moves,the combat feels very fluent and never feels like a chore.

The chopping up of orcs feel satisfying, no matter how many times you do it. This game also features stealth gameplay. Which is needed, because some of the fights you can get into are so impossible to win, you really need to thin them out first. The stealth is pretty basic overall. Crouch and hope you don't get seen, stab victim from behind.

And there is a fun amount of environment interaction, which makes for some fun changes in scenario. You can set bees loose, shoot up walls, or set wargs free form their cages.

There isn't a huge variety of enemies. Your main enemy will be the Orcs and Orc bosses. But from time to time you'll also have to fight wildlife, like wargs, ghuls and graugs. And here the idiom "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" doesn't apply. All of the enemies summed up will also fight amongst themselves, so, have a hard time fighting a swarm of hundreds of ghuls? Bait them into a battalion of orcs, maybe add in a graug as well while you're at it. Then kick back and watch the fireworks happen. Honestly, I think the variety of enemies isn't as big as I liked it to be, it still makes for some hard fights. But that's just me nitpicking.

There is also a skill system and item system. And well, the skill system is what you think it is. Upgrade your health, upgrade the amount of arrows you can carry, learn a new skill. Like this one.

The item system isn't that impressive. You basically find runes to upgrade your weapons, though it always feels nice to find a legendary rune, it doesn't deliver the same punch as actually being able to find new gear.

The worldmap is huge, and filled with fun things to do. There are sidequests by the dozen, that guarantee a lot of hours of extra fun. I completed the main campaign in about 11 hours, while just rushing through the main missions. I had that same amount of time fun doind all the side missions and murdering the orcs that had killed me in the past.

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As a action RPG open-world game, the gameplay is the perfect blend of Assassin's Creed style of parkour and exploration with Batman Arkham's style of combat and stealth with the addition of magical powers and completely unrestricted by a no-kill policy. I won't mince words here, this game is all about killing orcs. Everything you do in this game one way or the other is involved with sneaking up on orcs or fighting them in direct combat, there is very few room to do anything else (even the side activities that give weapon bonus are all about that). At first glance, it might look like this is going to turn repetitive as all Hell. But thanks to the Nemesis system, each orc is generated randomly each different from the next. Orc Captains are sub-bosses with their own strengths and weaknesses and Warchiefs are tougher bosses with very few weaknesses and a lot bonus that require an special approach to kill them.

Admittedly, this game can be really hard when you are first playing it and you are still getting use to the controls. Its a title that doesn't hold hands with you and expects you to use anything at your disposal to solve your problems. Sure you can try facing the Warchiefs head on while he is surrounded by bodyguards and get killed in the process. You can also dispose of their bodyguards before hand to make the fight easier or draw them out in the open away from other orcs to not have an angry mob after your ass. Its a game that rewards players who are creative and doesn't try to hamper by adding unnecessary extra objectives just so they could get 100% like in AC.

The progression skill treee is quite complex and deep to its benefit. Every upgrade you get makes the combat more satisfying and refreshing and the game keeps the pace up by withoulding some of the most powerful abilities by progressing through the storyline, such as the power to brand enemies you receive during the half-way point of the game. There are also Weapon Runes by killing Uruk captains that you can costumize to give your weapons specific qualities. Those can be a little of a hassle, as they are generated randomly or depending the nature which you killed this Uruk (by using his specific fear against him) its particularly hard to get the effect you desire. If you happen to stack up countless runes that are useless or outdated, you can convert them into experience points which is a extremely satisfying feature. Its really the small things that make you appreciate the effort devs put on designing the gameplay.

Though orcs will be your primary foes and the Nemesis system revolves around them, there are other different types of enemies like Caragors (which are wild beasts that can be used to ride and cause distractions), Ghuls (Morlock-like monsters that only appear at night or when you explore caves) and Graugs , unfortunately those are all the game has to offer if you grow sick of seeing orcs everywhere. Its rather unfortunate that the game doesn't feature some of the coolest villains in LotR like the Nazgul or the Mumakil-riding Easterlings. It should be noted that while Captains and Warchiefs provide a satisfying challenge during free-roaming and side activities, the actual story campaign bosses are very disappointingly easy.

Despite reports that the Nemesis system would have been downgraded for the last-gen consoles as they would focus more on the current gen, as it turns out the main selling point is still intact. Orcs still remember encounters, level up if they survive, get promoted if they managed to kill you, their AI is pretty competent overall, instead as of what was originally said that only bosses could level up and the enemies would have been overall dumber. That on itself is a big win, but lets follow up in the next section with my biggest gripe with the game.

Visual & Sound Effects

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I played this game on PC and ran into a few problems at first. Nothing major, but I had to tweek my Nvidea options a bit to make it able to run, because before that, the game would just show a blank screen. After tweeking the game looked really great. It ran at a solid 60FPS, no frame drop at all, loading times were really short, almost none existent. I didn't encounter any bugs or glitches. And it was overal a pleasant experience. Most of the textures looked good, and the game looked really cinematic. Overal nothing bad to say about it.

The sound effects weren't bad at all, slicing of a head sounds any bit as gruesome as you expect it to be, and you can't ask more of that, can you now? The music however is one of the better video games soundtracks in the last year. Like "The Gravewalker" really makes you feel like you're in a desolate bleak place. And can really give you the chills. While "Ioreth" really makes you feel like you're in a fantasy world. Most of the soundtracks are really relaxing, and they are great to just listen to on your own. The action music gets your blood pumping, the sad music makes you feel melancholic and the creepy music will set the tone on how alone you really are in the vast world.

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If you read my game reviews for a long time you will notice these sections are really small because I rarely have any opinion on graphics and stuff like that, my preference usually boils down to art syle over graphical power. However on this instance, I need to go on about my port's performance which was terrible to put it out of the way. The graphics are extremely inferior, the textures look so much uglier than what they were supposed to be. Even someone like me who is pretty forgiving about graphics was put off, imagine others. That on itself is pretty bad, but what really annoyed me was the loading times. Every time you enter a cutscene or open the menu or the map or, there is a loading screen. While they usually last 10 seconds, they feel like absolute pain once you see them enough times. You thought the Bayonetta on PS3 was bad, this port. Sound clipping was horrible sometimes background music was stuck in loops indefinitely and framerate chugged a lot. If anything was holding back my enjoyment was definitely the disastrous issues. In spite of all that, the gameplay didn't suffer as much and the Nemesis system was still preserved.

The game's musical score is sadly really bland as they ditch the Howard Shore-esque soundtrack that made the movies so memorable. Thankfully they do introduce some better songs when you reach the second half of the game. The actual voice acting is pretty good in the other hand (although I bit hampered by the poor lip-synching during gameplay) - in my case in particular, I experienced the whole game translated and dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese, by the same studio which worked in the movies too. Their work is fantastic and leagues ahead of Assassins' Creed IV: Black Flag, whose Brazilian dub was laughably bad.

Final Rating

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I feel like an 8 would be a bit to low, and a 9 a bit to high. An 8.5 feels like an honest score for one of the most fun games I've played in a long game.

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6/10 on PS3 - 8/10 elsewhere: This game is certainly running for GOTY in my book, I felt like I got my money's worth but I urge you that if you can avoid the PS3's port. While still functional and delivers on the same promise as the current-gen and PC, its clearly the inferior version (not surprising there). I recommend to any LotR fans, as well as fans of Batman's Arkham, even long time Assassin' Creed fans like myself who were burned and tired by the series will find some revitalizing energy in this series.