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Your Own Worst Enemy
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor by Monolith Productions is a shining example of how to properly make a story-driven game. Not that the main plot itself is particularly well-written — it’s actually a fairly typical tale of revenge, sacrifice, and discovering self-purpose. The game’s best stories instead come from your own gameplay, crafted from the innovative Nemesis System. This system randomly generates personalities and combat traits for each of your key enemies, the orc leaders, elevating them from simple AI-controlled opposition to beings with their own fears, motivations, and fighting styles. Eventually you’ll come to make relationships with these orcs, challenging them to open skirmishes in an orc stronghold or tracking them down in the bushes while on patrol. They want vengeance for scars you’ve given them in previous fights. They’ll cower in fear, making a hasty retreat or fight you to the death, for their honor. By the end of Shadow of Mordor you’ll have your own unique moments, likely forging a special bond with a few orcs in particular. They are your nemeses, and the source of stories that you’ll remember the most fondly.
The 1 Hour Review
Shadow of Mordor opens with a bang, thrusting you into a dramatic series of events that serve as both the backstory for Talion, the game’s protagonist, and gameplay tutorials. It’s an exciting sequence that provides you with ample motivation to defeat The Black Hand, and sets you up with just enough basics to enjoy the huge open world that you’re dropped into. You begin the adventure in Udûn, a region that includes The Black Gate of Mordor, famously seen in The Lord of the Rings films. The art direction is true to the source material, evident from Talion’s rugged Ranger gear to the chaotic construction of orc strongholds. Combat is immediately satisfying, drawing comparisons to the Batman: Arkham series of games. Fluid animations highlight the stylish moves that Talion has at his disposal, while a reactive counter system punctuates the dance-like flow of confronting multiple orcs at once. Stealth on the other hand is a bit clumsier, and you’ll find yourself often getting stuck on corners while tracking your prey. There is also a lack of cover transition actions, so moving between hiding spots is not a smooth process. It’s not a big concern though, since even from the very beginning Talion’s sword-fighting repertoire is more than enough to slaughter an entire orc stronghold solo.
You’ll remember when you first met, each victory (or defeat), and plan for your next encounter. And so will they.
After a few clashes with orc captains you’ve likely already started to form rivalries with certain ones. Whether they unexpectedly ambush you while you’re infiltrating enemy territory or you hunt them down for revenge, the names and faces of these orcs are burned into your mind. You gather intel on their strengths and weaknesses to exploit confrontations to your advantage. They furiously scream in anger in retaliation for a scar from a previous battle. They gleefully insult you for running away from a fight they were winning. It’s in these moments that your own narrative organically forms. You’ll remember when you first met, each victory (or defeat), and plan for your next encounter. And so will they.
The 5 Hour Review
A few hours of play later, you’ve gained enough upgrades to expand Talion’s abilities into superhuman territory. With an arsenal of gruesome executions, deadly archery, and supernatural wraith powers, you’ll likely find yourself outmatching your opponents to a ridiculous level. Shadow of Mordor encourages you to leap over shielded enemies and dodge shots from archers, but they’re usually defeated so quickly you hardly notice. Talion can stun any enemy, slow down time for headshots, and frequently activate one-hit killing blows with few limitations. Further increasing your combat dominance are runes, dropped from orc captains after their death. These Diablo-style loot drops have varying tiers of rarity and strength, and can be equipped on all three of your weapons: sword, bow, and dagger. These runes have powerful effects like regaining health on counters and giving full focus (the slow time ability) after just a few hit streaks. After obtaining a handful of these items and combined with your skill upgrades, the difficulty of the game decreases significantly. It’s fun to be powerful, but it detracts a bit from the thrill of a good fight.
The main plot also begins to lose momentum, consisting of mostly escort style missions or simple target elimination. The emotional tension from the opening scenes is lost as you run around the map, chasing down your next orc captain or weapon upgrade. The driving narrative almost shifts completely into your rivalry with the nemesis orcs, deepened greatly after spending several hours clashing with their ilk. Shaky alliances are even formed as you assist in internal power struggles, siding with your preferred orc captain. You groom and direct the hierarchy of orc society, truly becoming the shadow of Mordor.
The 10 Hour Review
By now Talion can access abilities like unlimited executions, leap stuns, and teleporting kills, rarely making any opposition a threat. To test this power, you start eliminating the pinnacles of orc society, the warchiefs, one by one. More preparation is required before tackling them as each one requires a special mission to be completed before they will personally show themselves. This adds more variety to quest structure as the missions deviate from the norm, adding elements like terrorizing orcs and taking orc hostages to the mix. It’s also more important to gather intel on them to fully take advantage of their weaknesses. Fighting an orc captain without understanding their abilities is a very doable feat. No so much for the warchiefs, as being caught unaware will likely spell your doom due to their increased damage dealing capability and threat of being overrun by their stronghold minions. To add to the strategic depth, warchiefs will surround themselves with any of their surviving orc captain bodyguards. This makes it vital to hunt down and kill each of these bodyguards to deny their aid to the warchief. The payoff of all the preparation is worth it though, as you’re rewarded with a true sense that your actions have sent ripples throughout orc society. The entire stronghold flees in panic at the sight of their deceased leader. Orcs further down the food chain begin to vy for the top spot. The chaos feels real, and you’re the cause.
Taking down warchiefs is easily one of the best highlights of Shadow of Mordor.
After striking down all of the warchiefs of Udûn, the story finally picks up again and throws you into a duel versus The Hammer (a captain for The Black Hand). It’s a satisfying but short event that leads into a location change, taking Talion’s adventure to the Sea of Núrnen. This is a completely new map that replaces the dusty wastelands of the Black Gate with lush hills on coastal waters. With this new setting comes an entirely new orc army, complete with unknown warchiefs and orc captains for you to expose.
The 15 Hour Review
Shadow of Mordor gets a little repetitive when first venturing out in the Sea of Núrnen. The beautiful new setting is a wonder to take in, but doesn’t change the approach to gameplay at all. There aren’t new types of hiding spots for stealth and melee combat isn’t affected by the new terrain. Orc captains still exhibit the same set of strengths and weaknesses which you have more than enough experience with from Udûn. The addition of more wild monsters to mount also isn’t very interesting, as mounted combat is limited to one or two types of attacks. But then you unlock the ability to brand orcs after a few story missions, and the gameplay is refreshed with a dynamic new army-building feature.
Orcs become things to be collected instead of rivals to track down.
Branding orcs lets you take complete control of their will, allowing you to give them commands and assist you in dominating the unbranded. No orc is immune to this, not even warchiefs. This lets you turn the tide of any battle, branding orcs mid-combat to betray their allies or stealth branding orcs for a coordinated ambush. It adds an element of strategic infiltration, letting you brand orc captains to eventually become assigned as warchief bodyguards. These bodyguards will of course betray their leader on your command, much to the chagrin of the doomed warchief. You can brand particularly strong orcs and aid them in ultimately becoming warchiefs themselves, securing powerful allies for the game’s final missions. While great fun, branding orcs does diminish the use of your upgraded combat skills as you’ll more than likely prefer to brand every orc possible instead of killing them outright. It also puts a backseat to the Nemesis System, since you can easily control any orc and thus they will no longer repeatedly seek you out for conflict. Orcs become things to be collected instead of rivals to track down.
At the end of the game, the Nemesis System does play one final part by facing you off with the orc you’ve had the most history with. It’s a nice way to include the organic narrative you’ve created with this nemesis orc into the main story. Memories of your battles won and lost resurface, and this kind of experience is where Shadow of Mordor shines the most. The enjoyment to be had in the game isn’t from progressing its narrative. It’s discovering your own.
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