Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Wow, this was completely under my radar. Looks like it comes out in a few days. May have to take a break from Destiny.

I was perplexed and bamboozled by what it was meant to be (not that I've been focusing much on it, Inquisition's the centre of my attention), until I recently saw a fairly long gameplay video. It actually looks better than I'd expected, a bit like Assassin's Creed + Middle Earth - all that Desmond and non-assassination nonsense.

Time/money (and lacking a PS4, forget if it's out for the older console) mean I won't buy it, but it does look quite interesting.

I saw this come up - but I couldn't shake the impression that it's generic fantasy, with Tolkien tacked on as a cash-cow plugin

I mean, it's not as if Tolkien's short on mythology...but it doesn't give any impression of being part of this. Which doesn't fill me with confidence if the developers felt they needed that boost to sell the game.

I'm sometimes too much of a cynic, though, and happy to be proven wrong.

I'm impressed he could sleep with that big sword strapped to his back.

Reminds me of the Lindy Beige video which showed that a long sword sheathed on the back couldn't actually be drawn (without moving the scabbard).

But, such things are forgiven in videogames, much the way nobody minds that characters don't have to go to the bathroom.

thaddeus6th said:

But, such things are forgiven in videogames, much the way nobody minds that characters don't have to go to the bathroom.

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If the game is highly moddable, surely there will be a mod for this sort of thing for those that somehow want masses of reality thrust into their games.

The sort of people that when playing Tombraider, won't feel that's its just not correct until you can add a mini game/functionality that sees Lara be required to complete and send in her Tax return.

I think I can forgive the loose association with the material as long as it's a good game. I would prefer that, anyhow, to something that's true to the story but a crappy game. Which is all to often when a game is based on a movie/book franchise (Not The Witcher, obviously).

Venusian Broon said:

If the game is highly moddable, surely there will be a mod for this sort of thing for those that somehow want masses of reality thrust into their games.

The sort of people that when playing Tombraider, won't feel that's its just not correct until you can add a mini game/functionality that sees Lara be required to complete and send in her Tax return.

Click to expand...

You know, this is why I don't do open world games. I know people that love building up their house, amassing wealth, buying cool clothes for their character... and all I can think is that if I wanted to spend hours grinding away at repetitive tasks to get the $ for nice clothes, I can go outside and pick up an extra job and get it for real, so why bother doing it in a video game? Who wants to play a shooting gallery game in Red Dead Redemption for an hour just to afford new spurs? It's like video games now almost make you spend the same amount of time mastering a skill in the game (hunting, hacking) as it would take for you to learn the actual skill in real life so that you can buy pretend goods that, but for the $60 you dropped on the game, you could purchase for real...

soulsinging said:

You know, this is why I don't do open world games. I know people that love building up their house, amassing wealth, buying cool clothes for their character... and all I can think is that if I wanted to spend hours grinding away at repetitive tasks to get the $ for nice clothes, I can go outside and pick up an extra job and get it for real, so why bother doing it in a video game? Who wants to play a shooting gallery game in Red Dead Redemption for an hour just to afford new spurs? It's like video games now almost make you spend the same amount of time mastering a skill in the game (hunting, hacking) as it would take for you to learn the actual skill in real life...

Click to expand...

I totally agree with you. I fully admit to be reasonably 'completionist' in video games - so if there's a bunch of things that can be found/done and I like the game, I'll work away at it. For example for the first five Tomb Raiders I have found every single secret.

But...inventing a whole bunch of mundanity to aim for, role playing at the most tedious level (I remember seeing someone's blog when he was role-'playing' Oblivion as a bog standard Imperial guard. So he got the gear, picked a shift, paid himself a wage, ate every day and did...erm guard duty. Constantly....AND THIS WASN'T EVEN A MMO GAME!!!), or grinding for hours to advance a few steps but not really get anywhere (e.g. sums up me and EVE Online when I tried it out!)


p.s. as I expected there is a Pee mode for Skyrim. So your character 'fills' up when you drink you must pee or end up soiling yourself.

However I'm not sure if this is really for total immersion role players, or for people with strange urination fetishes. Could be for both markets.

As I searched I decided there is some real bizarre people in this world. I've seen and read a lot of shocking things, but I genuinely baulked, open mouthed, at the 'Death-rape' mod for Skyrim (where you get the option to rape your wounded victim and as a result kill them...) That left me with a queasy feeling.

There are some sick puppies on the internet (although I suspect that's a revelation to no-one).

I tend to like the exploratory nature of open world games. For reasons that confound me I could never get into Red Dead Redemption though. It did feel perhaps too 'gamey' killing X birds to go up a rank etc etc. It'll be interesting to see how the semi-open world (if I can put it that way, and I can, because I just did) of Dragon Age: Inquisition works out.

I love the mordor game. The combat is more fun than in Assassins Creed or the Batman games. Its fun to just battle endless waves of orcs/uruks. The story is not very interesting, tho.

I just caught this review on Den of Geek.

http://www.denofgeek.com/games/midd...2456/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-ps4-review

I think it might be a buyer. Like several on here, I was a little concerned about that it might be loose and fast with the lore, but if even Den of Geek says it's good, (a website that as the name implies is quite passionate about staples like LOTR) I would suggest it would be worth a shot.

Just finished this one. I enjoyed it a lot. Now on the the next, whatever that may be.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-overall-game-of-the-/1100-6423918/

If they're saying it... it must be good.

Story wise, it has no depth, but it is a good game, one of the best I have played, at least something new to try.

I finally got round to picking this up the other day (£8 in Asda if anyone's interested). Must say, it's not grabbed me at all. There are concepts I see the potential of, like the nemesis system but I suspect it might be one of those things that's better in theory than practice.

Sadly these days, I don't really have the time to give slow burners much of a chance - so it'll probably find itself traded in.

I think the next fantasy one for me will be either the Witcher 3 or Dragon Age Inquisition - assuming I finally get round to buying an Xbox one...

I'd advocate Witcher 3, if you only pick one. It's a fantastic game. I like a lot of Inquisition, but it has more drawbacks than TW3.

So, is this game actually playable on the PC? I picked it up in the recent Steam sale, and it would be fun if I didn't have to keep looking at the keyboard to find the key I'm supposed to press to do whatever I need to do.

Seems like they couldn't be bothered to de-consolize the interface, and just spread control keys all over the keyboard.

BTW, I remapped some keys, and that somewhat helped. Still died when it said 'to avoid death, move the blob into the circle and press the indicated button, and I thought 'there's no button indicated on that mouse icon', then realized 'oh, it was telling me to press the space bar'... which isn't a button.'

Played a couple of hours before that. So it is a fun game... when I'm not dying due to the lousy controls, or poorly-worded explanations. Unfortunately, the rapid respawning makes the 'open world' elements seem rather pointless; you can't clear an area to move around in safely, because the orcs you killed will reappear after about five minutes. The most fun part for me is figuring out tactics to deal with so many orcs, and respawning destroys any attempt at using tactics outside the missions (where they don't seem to respawn).

Also, as dumb as orcs might be, the AI is risible. I kill a whole bunch of orcs, one wanders past, sees the bodies, then basically just shrugs and wanders off. There's little need to be careful while playing the game in a stealthy manner.

What puzzles me is why game publishers will push out a mass-market PC port from a console without spending a relatively small amount of money to make it play well there. They lose a ton of sales that would more than have paid for the extra development work.

What's the general feeling about this game now? Just because I'm looking for ore open-world RPG's, preferably not with sexual content (hence why I can't consider W3).