MadCap's Game Reviews - "Shadow of Mordor"

One cannot deny - largely due to the Peter Jackson-headed films of the early 2000s known as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the oddly similar trio of movies known as the Hobbit trilogy more recently - that Middle-Earth has become an institution all it's own.  The original novels as written by J.R.R. Tolkien have evolved much beyond their humble beginnings as the start of every facet of fantasy fiction that exists today. Every novel, every video game, every film in the fantasy genre owes at least some of it's existence to Tolkien even if the connection isn't direct.

Dungeons & Dragons...Dragon Age...actually, this inspired a lot of RPGs.  Like...any in a medieval fantasy setting.

But with great fame comes great licensing.  Whether it's in the form of the aforementioned movies or, as we are so fond of here, video games.  As is the case with Shadow of Mordor, a title that very interestingly isn't going under the Lord of the Rings banner and is just going with a simple Middle-Earth as the pre-title. For some other titles I might find this a little ballsy but, again, this is the Tolkien epic that we're talking about and, again, the entire thing is an institution.  It's become so deeply embedded into popular culture that we know it by name without even needing to know the name of the franchise.

Sometimes, that can go really well and produce a game that becomes one that stands on it's own merits as a classic.  Other times, you get a game so bad the lead developer blocks you on Twitter for pointing it out (yes, Randy, I know I do it incessantly. Apologize and I'll be happy to stop). So where does Shadow of Mordor fall on the scale?  Let's look deeper within.

We are introduced to Talion, a grizzled ranger of Gondor with a broken sword (never heard that one before) and a sad backstory in which both his wife and son were killed by orcs and his own throat slit in a ritual sacrifice to summon...something. However, this gets Talion a Yu-Gi-Oh!-esque alternate persona in an elven wraith who has fragmented memories and gives Talion shiny new powers like being able to tear information out of the heads of enemies. So together, the pair of them take the emergency exit and must traverse the landscape of Mordor in order to get to the Black Hand of Sauron and defeat him so that the curse that keeps Talion from ever dying can be broken.

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Now, I'm not going to spend this review going on about the differences from the books and the films - that would be silly and take up way too much time.  After all, it's an adaptation and one has to take that into account in criticisms of things that don't work with the lore, but do work from a gameplay mechanics standpoint.  Thus why Mordor is looking a bit more leafy green than the "barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash" that was so aptly described beforehand.  Speaking from experience, one can't very well hide with any skill in a barren wasteland. Against and between rocks? Maybe, but eventually you'd be found out unless your enemies are either blind or just astounding stupid.

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So, I do understand that. And, by extension, I understand why there are leafy patches around so as to justify the leafy bushes.

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Oh, you're wondering what the "Loading..." text is about? One of my gripes with this game. The loading screens. This game loads when you first start, it loads upon entering a mission area, it loads when you pause, it loads when you select a menu option, it loads when you leave the pause menu, it loads before a cutscene, it loads after a cutscene, and this game does have to be downloaded directly to the Xbox 360 Hard Drive, by the way. I wouldn't mind this so much except...well, it had to be downloaded directly onto the Hard Drive. Why all these pauses? If there so much being rendered on the screen that you can't load everything?

That might help to explain why - in spite of this being a triple AAA game - there are texture problems in certain areas, even in areas where the player has been standing for a while. You rotate the camera and a section of wall or the ground is blurry before it suddenly "pops" into the same appearance as that around it.  Compare Dragon Age: Inquisition from a few weeks ago, which also had to be installed from a first disk, but had no problems of the sort when playing from a second.  And that game had much larger areas to boot. Several larger areas.  It really confuses me to no end, and really drags down the game quite a bit.

I'm not kidding, this irritated me to no end when I first started playing to the point where I was ready to chuck it out a window.

However, where the game does redeem itself is in the combat.  And how does it do this? By shamelessly ripping off the Batman: Arkham series.  If that doesn't sound like a compliment, trust me, it is.  Considering rangers are set up in Tolkien's universe to be these combat-hardened badasses, it only makes sense that Talion can weave about through combat, moving seamlessly from sword slice to rolling over the back of an orc to slam your wraith-powered fist into the chest of another orc to stagger it just so you can pull a sweet finisher combo move (also, side note, the finishers are all pleasantly visceral. They clearly put quite a lot of work into them). It feels very organic like the moves of Batman atop the rooftops of Gotham City. So, yes, it does get a point in that regard. It is very good.

Also, the stealth that it borrows from that series is also good, but while also adding some new skills to the mix as well. With the Wraith inside of him, Talion can assault the minds of orcs that attack him to cause damage that otherwise renders him immobile and open to attack (but the time can be shortened with upgrades). There's the standard stealth attack which guarantees an insta-kill on everything but the bosses (and, sometimes, even on bosses depending on their health).  There's also, once it's unlocked, the Brutalize technique in which Talion mercilessly skewers an orc again and again in a manner that makes all orcs in a surrounding area run away with pants crapping fear.

However, on the subject of stealth, I do have to come to another gripe I have.  It's entirely possible to sneak out in the open, right up to an orc, and bury Talion's broken sword repeatedly in their face, before immediately moving to another and another if they happen to be close enough and somehow he remains unseen.  Apparently he has learned Monty Python's art of not being seen.  Or the enemy AI is rather useless when not engaged in combat.  Can they not see the not-at-all disguised man rummaging around the rocky terrain? While it is fun, and indeed hilarious to traipse about Mordor's rockiness stabbing orcs in the face and laughing over their mangled corpses, there's really no challenge in it and the orcs really only provide it when in packs, a la the boss battles that crop up (and those can be a real pain).

Boss battles that you're directed to via the "Nemesis System", a system that was apparently cut down considerably for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions because the development team wanted to be "focusing on the next-gen platforms".  "Dicks!", I reply, but the system as it works is essentially the same I've been told, simply dumbed down a bit.  Not that I really find this excusable, of course.  If you're going to half-ass for one system, you should half-ass all the way, or put the full-ass behind all of it.

The system as it works plays off the Always Chaotic Evil nature of orcs, namely that they're all more than happy to stab in the back the next person up in line so they can take his spot.  On their own, the orc captains, chieftains, and war chiefs will fight one another to jockey for position.  Talion's objective in getting to the Black Hand of Sauron involves taking out the war chiefs.  To do this, he joins up with an orc by the name of Ratbag who's more than willing to cut a deal so that he can become the sole war chief.  Just like Frodo's decision to help Gollum in the latter two volumes of the Lord of the Rings, I'm certain that Talion's kindness and charity will pay off in the end.

Oh, also - despite being modeled on the appearance from the films - Gollum shows up and isn't voiced by Andy Serkis.  Their choice for his voice actor isn't bad, and they had me fooled for a bit. Though if he starts going on about the Savior and how he's going to destroy Dante and rule humanity with it, I'm out.

Needless to say, however, the Nemesis system is rather neat and I do enjoy it.  It's especially funny if one of the bosses kills you, they'll remember doing so after Talion regenerates at one of the white towers that dots the landscape and goes after them again.  The common soldier orcs can also be promoted to captain or higher if they kill the player as well, increasing their power and standing within Sauron's army.  With some of them, I almost think it's worth it to allow yourself to be killed just so you can have certain opponents to fight, particularly during the time when the identity of the war chiefs is in question and Talion has to fight his way to them to get to the Black Hand and you actually do have to fight their immediate subordinates to gain intel about where their bosses are.

Which brings me to the upgrade system.  Talion gains experience from every kill and every quest. Once he gets enough, he gets an attribute point that can be put into either a ranger skill or a wraith skill. Ranger skills tend to focus on sword combat, defense, or health while wraith abilities will increase the amount of ranged arrows that can be shot, increases the amount of damage from Talion and the wraith's mind probe hand gesture, and some stealth properties.  These are arranged in tiers, with some not being able to be unlocked until the player progresses a certain distance in the main campaign.

Talion's weapons - sword, broken sword, and bow - can be upgraded with runes (dropped by bosses), slots on each weapon being unlocked for a certain amount of points.  They can range from doing more damage to staggering enemies on impact to restoring the player's health after a certain number in a chain of hits is met and much, much more.  It's interesting to find the right balance and - to give credit - it is nice that you can switch out your runes for any given situation that you might find yourself in, bringing in a facet of strategics that most hack n' slashes tend to either dumb down or avoid entirely.

So yes, this game is basically Batman: Mordor Asylum in structure, and that's not a bad thing. More games in the hack n' slash genre should follow the examples of that series, and Shadow manages to keep the flow moving from unarmed into sword combat.  A definite bravo!  Beyond issues with the development team didn't put the time or energy into making the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 versions up to par with the current-gen versions, this game is pretty good. I've definitely seen far worse adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's work in video game format.

Or has everyone forgot The Lord of the Rings: Final Fantasy Edition? ...I mean, The Third Age?

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is now available from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Monolith Productions, and Behaviour Interactive for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

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