Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor looks awesome

[sze5003]

Yeah but they added the caveat that they won't support it if there are problems. Meaning there will probably be framing and performance issues and they won't fix them. Luckily this game does not have the same fate.

Yea I hate when they do that kind of stuff..just lazy developers. In a way I don't think the pc version will be any different than the console graphically wise. I'm just getting it because those type of games are interesting.

 

[Lil Frier]

Just died for the first time, been in a couple of hours. BARELY missed the counter on a spear throw. The guy got promoted to Captain, so I came back, mounted my first Caragor, and now I'm going to go find his sorry ass.

 

[zerocool84]

Just died for the first time, been in a couple of hours. BARELY missed the counter on a spear throw. The guy got promoted to Captain, so I came back, mounted my first Caragor, and now I'm going to go find his sorry ass.

That's the great thing about this game, you actually really want to kill those guys that kill you. This is not a game where you get defeated and can fight the exact same guy again and it's easy because you already know him, they get stronger, their strengths can change, this is perfect for a Batman game too.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I like the nemesis system, and it does add an additional layer that is fun, but I don't find the fights themselves all that difficult or varying (in captains/warlords). The hardest thing about them is the 30 others that try to join in Granted I've been taking my time and am still on the first map (just killed last warlord).

 

[Lil Frier]

Oh, I'm quite a few hours in, and I think I've done 2 missions. I just keep getting side-tracked by side quests and a general desire to kill things. I wish that they had made the combat more gory though. For all of the violence, it's a bit disappointing that only finishers seem to dismember folks, and that's basically the same beheading animation each time.

Still, loving my time as a general killer. Assassin's Creed was so boring with its combat, it was an all-defense kind of thing. This game makes me want to go on the offensive, build up a combo meter, and brutally execute someone.

 

[BoberFett]

Jesus, this game is awesome.

.....

25 minute battle. Awesomeness.

I may need to check this game out... :hmm:

 

[Lil Frier]

Well, if you ever want secondhand experience with the game, my LIVE gamertag is in my sig. I'm playing it off and on today, so send me a message on LIVE (so I'll get the alert on my phone), and I can put it on Twitch.

 

[sze5003]

When I heard it was like AC I was worried because I'm sick of all the assassins creed games. But it turns out I'm having more fun with it. The hardest part is just the 20-30 other bad guys that come in to fight you, including spearmen, while you try to take down a captain.

 

[Lil Frier]

The game really doesn't have much, in the way of a challenge. I've just finally found the first instance of difficulty, and it's fighting my second Warchief (the first was vulnerable to stealth, so he got Brutalized). You have to kill 20 Orcs in 2 minutes, then deal with a dude who is immune to ranged and can't be vaulted or Flurried. He's similarly vulnerable to stealth though, so I might just go that route. However, it means getting into a mosh of Orcs, killing 20, then getting out of there and onto a high point before the dude makes it to me. We'll see how it goes.

I started Sunday night, and I'm about 35% through. If I pushed hard, I think this would be a 3- or 4-day games. It's probably in the 50-hour range, if you don't collect everything.

 

[Blanky]

I finished this recently. I've not had such an easy boss fight/final mission in...I dare say years. In fact, I don't dare say that, it was a breeze. However, I was buffed by the fact I had recruited all those warchiefs (although you have to...), but yeah the final stuff was easy.

Aside from that, I found the game was good. I only did the side stuff until I got enough money to buy all the abilities I wanted (I finished the game with 2-3 ability points I never bothered with). Also once I hit the power cap I stopped doing all the red stuff, so just did main missions.

The combat was good. It was solid and very fun, if too easy; once you have combat drain and can do combat drain after only 5 hit streaks--and you can get 3 hit streak points per hit with the right ability--and you can do TWO combat drains per streak--and you get a 24% health recovery for every drain (and yes combat drain counts), it becomes extremely hard to die. Any time it got dicey all I had to do was run away a bit and headshot some guys (I had head shot health recovery, too).

 

[007ELmO]

rating out of 10

 

[MongGrel]

Buddy of mine at work recommended this, might give it a go.

I haven't done any in awhile.

 

[Blanky]

rating out of 10

Personally I give a solid 8/10. AC IV was a better game; 9/10 for that.

 

[Lil Frier]

Personally I give a solid 8/10. AC IV was a better game; 9/10 for that.

After the consensus about Black Flag, hearing a 9/10 for that makes me EXTREMELY skeptical on these ratings, haha.

Personally, I just got into the second area recently. I'm at 60% completion, except I did ALL of the extra stuff on the way, including the Artifacts, Ithildan, Outcast missions, and weapon missions. I intend to 100% everything, but Hunting Challenge 7 has been an elusive PitA (was about to kill a Graug, and then it disappeared, pretty awesome...).

Right now, I'd agree with the difficulty assessment. The lack of a real penalty from death is a big reason the game is easy, for starters (I think I've died maybe 8-12 times, not really sure). Like was said, once you get into double-dipping on the combo building and the streak requirement drops from 8 to 5, it gets REALLY easy. Except, for me, what I prefer to do is maybe 1 brand, then a Wraith Flash (I think that's the ground-pound move). That gives you 3 more points on your streak, so 2 hits lets you rinse and repeat that pair of moves.

So, I imagine that this game never gets to challenging you once you're into the second-half of the map. They make it too easy to build up the combo meter (I got it over 100 casually when I was fighting The Hammer), and you have so many moves (which are AWESOME) that it's hard to see where the challenge comes from.

I would probably be on the 8/10 fence, with a lean towards 8.5. I think that the gameplay is phenomenal, and that the story is pretty good. My only knocks come from the lack of difficulty and the also-ran ideas of the Reforge towers (AC's Leaps of Faith) and the random item pick-ups (like the feathers and flags and crap from AC2). It really strikes me as Assassins Creed with a great combat system that makes you want to fight, not just cower and counterattack.

 

[007ELmO]

I did not like Black Flag much. I haven't played much AC but I played AC 4 for a few hours and couldn't get into it.

 

[sze5003]

I didn't like black flag much either. The mechanics in this game feel much better. He doesn't get stuck when climbing and doesn't auto jump or climb the wrong thing many times.

I've played many of the AC games and after a while they all got to me and I got tired of them. The only cool part was building up your ship.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I played this for almost 8 hours yesterday. I am loving it. Combat flows so well and you have so many ways to approach a fight. My favorite thing though is the lore and story they add for all the artifacts and plants you collect. Even the creatures you kill have a bit of story. They did a good job.

 

[Lil Frier]

Agreed, an awesome game. The only issue on that front is that it becomes EXTREMELY easy in the second-half, if you're one who wants to do all of the collecting and such as you go (which I did). By the time I made it to the second map, I had the whole talent tree unlocked. Shoot, now that I've unlocked the Brand ability, every living non-Warchief (there are 4 or so Captains who died) is Branded for me now.

Difficulty is hard to come by now. The only way to present ANY challenge for the weapon-specific missions is to go for the extra objectives, but most of them just make the dagger missions slower, not harder. I absolutely love the combat, and how powerful you feel once you're at your peak, but I feel like they give you too much too quickly, meaning the latter stages of the game lack any real feeling of accomplishment or reward. I think all I have left to get for ability unlocks are Graug riding and the Caragor ground-mount abilities, neither of which entice me. I think that animal riding is the only negative on the core gameplay.

However, like you said, the way they built all of the stories is great. The little things are interesting, how you're progressing is interesting, all of that. However, the cream of the crop is meeting a Captain, then having him talk to you about a previous encounter with him, what you've done to his fellow Captains, and stuff like that. The intelligence (though not in combat) of the A.I. is probably the most engaging thing in a game I can remember in a long time.

 

[sze5003]

I am still early in the game and at first I figured combat was pretty tough. It's started to ease up a bit. But I've only done one red mission so far. I'm liking this a lot more than AC and I'm glad I picked it up. I'll probably finish it a long time from now because I flip flop playing different games.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I haven't progressed to the second area yet but I can already see combat getting very easy except when you get surrounded by 10+ orcs.

I really like the LOTR tie ins they have in the game as well. Also Ratbag is a great character.

 

[Lil Frier]

I just finished the game. I'm a little torn on the end (promise I won't spoil story stuff). On the one hand, it sucked to have the content so easy at the end. However, there was the benefit of replacing the fighting with great cinematics, and you focused on the story at the end, which was something it deserved. It's just that there's been this disappointing trend in shooters of late (speaking to CoD and Halo), where beating the final boss doesn't bring a feeling of triumph. This suffered a similar fate, basically for the last 3 main missions.

However, I still think that, from a non-remake standpoint, this could stick as my GotY choice (I have a hard time believing anything will top 4 Halo releases at once). The game just took Assassin's Creed, made the combat infinitely better, then replaced an asinine amount of fetch objectives with a reasonable number or fetch objects, which were coupled with entertaining lore (though the Ithildin was rather disappointing at the end).

Difficulty really was the only negative for the game, in my opinion. I could have given this a 9.5, if it was SOME kind of a challenge, or if they had paced your power increases better. I think I'll stick it with an 8.5 though, and that's as someone who grades things VERY harshly.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Halo should not be game of the year when it is releases of games we already played years ago. That would be like hiving GTAV goty again because it is released on xb1 and ps4 with better visuals.

That said, this is a good candidate in my view. Not that goty means anything at all anymore.

Games like this always have a hard time balancing the idea of you being too weak or too strong. One of the reasons I don't like demon souls that much is because they make the game harder than it needs to be. Even with the best weapons and armor and leveled up, you still feel weak. I didn't like that mechanic at all. I wanted to feel powerful in that game. At least here when you have these abilities, it makes you feel strong against the fodder you come across.

 

[Lil Frier]

Well, I suppose it's how you base GotY for yourself. For me, I won't have more fun with a game this year than when I go through Halo again, then eat up days online, then get into the Guardians beta to end the year. It's why I mentioned that this would probably be my pick of new stuff, because I don't imagine anything BUT a 4-game compilation to be as fun. I mean, I wouldn't be opposed to Halo: TMMC as a GotY any more than most of the AAA franchises, where everything is mostly iterative with a coat of paint. You're right though, GotY from any other point of view is nothing but a chance to complain for someone else. People base it on different things, so you get different methodologies for selection.

I agree with Souls as well. I tried the first one, but only for maybe half and hour. It wasn't that the game felt difficult to me, though, it was just so awkward and clunky that I didn't feel like putting up with it anymore. The concept of it was something that would likely intrigue you by the challenge, but I imagine that after beating that game, I would feel relieved it was over and proud I beat something so hard, but I wouldn't have had much fun. It's a concept I shared with BioShock 2, that you were a Big Daddy, yet you were made of glass. You weren't even a glass cannon, because you weren't strong on offense, either. Every minor encounter was a death threat, and not a minor one, and punching everything to death because you rarely had sufficient ammo for a long encounter, wasn't all that enjoyable. As such, I never bothered finishing that game.

 

[swanysto]

I have been watching some youtube videos of this game, and I really want to get it. My question for those of have played it a bit is this: Can you go around the camp and essentially take out orcs one by one to limit the amount that pop out when you are fighting a chief? Or do they just respawn more, no matter how many you kill around the camp? I am the kind of person that would spend an hour going around to kill 20-30 orcs if it meant that I would be seeing the chief with minimal interruptions, but that would go out the window if they just spawn more.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I have been watching some youtube videos of this game, and I really want to get it. My question for those of have played it a bit is this: Can you go around the camp and essentially take out orcs one by one to limit the amount that pop out when you are fighting a chief? Or do they just respawn more, no matter how many you kill around the camp? I am the kind of person that would spend an hour going around to kill 20-30 orcs if it meant that I would be seeing the chief with minimal interruptions, but that would go out the window if they just spawn more.

Yes you can. When you get to a camp and are spotted an orc will light a signal beacon and a horn will sound. Then you will be outnumbered to the point you cannot win. You can stealthily take out the enemies around the camp and around the captain/warchief. Then go in one on one.

Actually I have taken out the guards around a captain with arrows then stealth kill the captain in one shot.