Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Ya know, you don’t ever really hear much about left or right earth, do you? Maybe nothing happens there and everyone is happy and smiling all the time. Come to think of it that wouldn’t make good content, especially not 6 films and 40 games worth. 

We’re back in good old Middle Earth but that’s where the source material starts to takes a back seat, we have brand new characters and with that brings a new protagonist to the Mordor war! Technically he’s new to the lore but I’ll take this time to say that Shadow of Mordor takes place after The Hobbit but before The Lord of the Rings, so he becomes new to the universe without the award question of his absence in the first 3 films.

The new guy in question is called Talion.  A big old grump and we start by taking a look into an average day in the life of Talion, we seem to have caught him on a bad day though because his family has just been sacrificed in front of him. Wow, this one’s of to a scorcher but bare-with me it gets slightly better. The reason for said sacrifice is to awaken a wraith, it’s like a ghost but Middle Earth is a bit middle agey (no pun intended) with its words sometimes caught somewhere between aristocratic toff and Victorian cockney commoner. Unfortunately, this goes awry and the wraith ends up merging with Talion, kinda like The Exorcist but with less vomit and head spinning. Our ghost friends name is Celebrimbor and he’s an elf whose family was also sliced and diced along with him, and together they embark on a magical journey of discovery.

Carrying on from what I said earlier, the source of this franchise is very well trodden so any mistakes would be picked up pretty quickly. So, what has been chosen this time around? The Orcs are now Uruks, a slightly different kind of Orc but something about being an earlier breed of Orc, and this Uruks have quite a hierarchy system but more on that later. The wildlife consists of Caragors, think wolf meets warthog, a Wolf-Hog if you will but on second thought that makes me think of that one sonic game so don’t do that. The Graug, this is the fancy, Shadow of Mordor name for troll; big, angry and can wreck an Uruk gangs shit pretty sharpish. So to answer my own question, everything has changed without being changed. It’s all been tweaked a bit in ways to keep its feeling fresh but retaining that sense of familiarity in the world and it does it well. There are still Dwarves along with a thick Scottish accent which is a nice change from all the humans proudly declaring their lines like they’re in a school amateur dramatics production. It also seems that Dwarves are the only race in this world that are allowed to convey happiness and joy rather than the straight face of the Human or the twisted, pained ramblings of the Uruk. Sauron is in to take his rightful villainous position and of course I didn’t forget to mention Golem. The poster boy of the brand in my mind or at least it seems to be the character that most people have latched onto, but to be honest only shows up in this game pretty much as fan service.

So, we’ve covered lore, said hello to our spanking new protagonist, but what about that Uruk hierarchy I teased you with earlier? Something new that Shadow of Mordor does bring to the table is the Nemesis system. Uruks are split into captains and war chiefs, all of which receiving a name and a title like Gavin the Bore. Gavin, has the opportunity to climb the ranks by beating other Uruk captains, maybe even a war chief if he’s feeling particularly ballsy that day, or by killing your Wraith ridden ass. The Nemesis system makes this random and completely organic meaning that captains will fight among themselves, duking it out for rank and commanding a larger army of Uruk underlings. But that’s not all, you can obtain intel revealing strengths and weaknesses of the captains and war chiefs. For example, you may find intel that tells you a captain is afraid of Caragors at which point you can find the nearest Caragor, jump atop and ride into battle as majestically as a drunken stumble home. These weaknesses can be very useful to take revenge or just take your frustration out on the nearest group or Uruks that happened to contain a captain. All of this without you having to unlock an ability, trigger a cut-scene or complete mission is quite interesting, or at least it would be if the Nemesis system worked on last generation consoles. If you were playing on a PS3 or Xbox 360 like I was, you were treated to essentially a cosmetic Nemesis system, changing the names and ranks of the Uruk as designed. However, repeats start building up, you will bump into Gavin the Bore again and after killing him for the 5^th time I’m starting to think the randomization isn’t as reliable as I was informed. 

Other problems that Shadow of Mordor has with last gen consoles is the graphics and textures. Now I will admit I didn’t see much of this until about the start of the second half but then it was everywhere. The roofs all merge into a brown slab instead of the wooden planks they were intended to be, the grass becomes what looks like fuzzy felt and the draw distance at some points just seems like someone cut out a silhouette from black paper and stuck it behind. Bloom was an issue; on a couple of occasions it was like walking into the light of god himself only for me to reach the other side and be greeted with a dead-end cave that has no right having bloom in it.

These are all minor annoyances though because the PS3 and 360 versions have glitching issues and not the funny kind where you character flails about like Octodad, the controller snapping kind. Per example, I was trying to sneakily infiltrate an Uruk gang, silently isolate and pick them off one by one, maybe headshotting any remaining Uruk and then take out the captain, I had even done a proper recon and counted the number of enemies. As a started phase 1 of my plan I made my way towards my chosen vantage point but the game had different ideas and apparently I hadn’t climbed the wall in the right place. With Talion refusing to come down and my plan quickly falling apart I was forced to get the attention of some Uruks to try and knock Talion of the ledge he formed such a friendship with. They were happy to oblige and gleefully threw axes and knives at me until I had reached my goal. On another occasion, after hopping around the rooftops of an Uruk camp and scouting out which one to pick off first I made a wrong turn and ended up having to climb back up a tower to continue my Santa-esc visits but with a different type and much sharper present to the neck. The tower however must not have been paying attention because, at the moment I made contact with it, instead of grabbing a ledge I just phased through it leaving Talion falling in an endless abyss, for about 2 minutes before reloading.

I feel I’ve talked about the bad bits of the game a bit much, what does it do well?

Well, all in all the game play is great. It’s the best bits of Assassins Creed; the stealthing around your targets and deciding which one’s day to ruin with a dagger to the chops, and the best part of Arkham Asylyum; the combat flowing seamlessly, hit after hit like a very prolific drug addict and then moving swiftly back into stealth mode like said drug addicts mum just walked into his room unannounced. The characters are well rounded and most have rich backstories you learn of from picking up artifacts related to the NCP of the hour while on your travels. The Upgrade system was useful and it didn't take too long to unlock the next tier giving me something to look forward to as I agonize over which to use my skill point on in fear of it being shit. While I was on a last gen console and didn't get the full benefit of the Nemesis system, the concept is fantastic, giving you another problem to worry about that left alone will only get worse. You can have a lot of fun with it, choosing one Uruk to raise up to a war-chief, all the while having all his strengths and weaknesses in your back pocket, and then literally stab him in the back providing he's weak to stealth. It starts getting  a bit overkill when you acquire a skill that lets you control enemies that fight with you, turning you into the AI director in Left 4 Dead.

Final thought: Shadow of Mordor is a good game with a solid story, I guess one of the benefits of something new to this world means it isn’t hindered by any previous lore about the character because there isn’t any. If you were to purchase this however, I would highly recommend the steam version though any of the newer generation console versions would probably suffice.