[New Release] Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - PlayStation 4 Review

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Hi everyone. So today let's take a look at Shadow of Mordor a Lord of the Rings game from Warner Brothers. Now, this is an opportunity for Warner Brothers to kind of stick its flag in the ground and say hey, we can still make great games. Shadow of Mordor has you playing a deceased Ranger. That is dealt with very early on in the story, and you then become possessed by a wraith who is, Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor well, essentially out for a bit of revenge. This creates quite a mystical opportunity in Shadow of Mordor where you are a super powered individual who essentially can't die. If you die, the wraith brings you back to life again. Now what this game is offering which is completely unique actually and I think we'll probably see over the next few years get copied quite a bit is in the nemesis system where every time you die various characters that you have met, the people who have killed you, will get promoted up a chain of command. This leads to five warlords who you are going to have to defeat before coming onto the final Big Boss.

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The idea here works really well because to begin with you're quite a weak character and you're going to die so you're going to populate this kind of smorgasbord of people who really hate you. You're going to have to kill them in order to be able to take on those warlords without having lots of extra support. Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor The warlords are extraordinarily difficult especially if you don't take out their underlings first and the way the game kind of folds together the narrative story that emerges based on the number of times you die, who you die whilst you're fighting and the kind of layout of these various different warlords makes for a really engaging game. It changes the dynamic quite dramatically really because you are weak at the beginning and you do die a lot but as you level up and you again become accustomed to your powers etcetera things become more easy and so it kind of has this natural level progression that I've never really encountered in a game before. it's engaging and it keeps you wanting to play because actually the ability to defeat the next war boss is really just down to you mastering the game. It works incredibly well and at no point does it feel particularly frustrating because death is not a permanent thing in this game.

It adds to the texture of the narrative story, a very interesting thing. Graphics on display here Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor really are some of the best I've ever seen. On PC this game easily hits  frames a second on modest hardware and in actual fact we've been running the game easily at  frames a second and enjoying every minute of it Animations are fluid and the combat feels tight. You really do feel like a badass in this game when you're pulling off multiple attacks across multiple enemies on screen, sometimes fighting anything up to  to  different mobs, all simultaneously, and at no point does the combat become overloaded. The game gives you just enough breathing room to keep banging out those combos and keep hitting those enemies without taking damage. The way the character animation's been done here is exceptional. The auks actually, or should I say the Uruk-hai, actually feel like they have personalities and you get lots of different personalities emerging Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor as you play through the game. At no point so far have I found I've repeated the same sets of dialogue multiple times. Heard the occasional resample as it were but not a massive number like you would expect to see in a game of this type. The replay value feels quite solid here, there's a lot gameplay and lots of things to do across the map.

Actually some of the most fun is had in some of the incidental side missions that occur. Overall, I've really found Shadow of Mordor to be a fantastic game that kept me coming back to play time and time again. It's certainly deserving of a number of accolades this year and I honestly think if they can continue this style of gameplay into other Lord of the Rings games or even into other types of games, we might very well have a winning formula.

 + Combat. One thing I've heard people say is "combat consists of button mashing." They are likely describing how they play, not how the game is played. Combat requires timing, wraith abilities, and using the environment.

+ Graphics.

+ Nemesis System. I'll just say this: "Zogdush Thin Bones." For the record, he's dead. I miss him, in a weird you're-my-favorite-one-to-kill kinda way.

+ Side Quests. Killing occasionally gets repetitive, but Mordor is supposed to feel like a hostile environment for you and for your enemies. To add variety, there are challenges like "kill 10 archers without raising the alarm." This fits. It'd be weird if there were challenges like "follow x-number of orbs until you reach The Black Gate."

- Skins. Talion's uniforms look great during gameplay, but the cut scenes default back to his main outfit. This breaks immersion.

- Difficulty. The captains (and mobs) are usually too easy. However, this has been resolved by limiting health upgrades.

- Stealth. The A.I. can be summed up like this: "Out of sight, out of mind." Even if Uruks see Talion, it's too easy to break their line of sight only to sneak up on them again. One would think that if an archer's only function is to stand atop a tower and stare, he'd be aware of his environment (like looking down at the fingers holding onto the edge in front of him). Or at least have peripheral vision.
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