Review: Shadow of Mordor

I came to the decision of buying Shadow of Mordor after reading so much nice about the game. And after spending some hours with it I thought that a review is fitting. The game itself is an open world semi action, semi stealth game, very similar to Assassin's Creed, and I mean look alike competition similar. Okay, so the environment isn't a city, it's Mordor's tundra with camps and fortresses, so you don't have any crowds to blend into or benches to sit on to become invisible. But the way you stealth, assassinate, jump on ledges and climb any surface as if you where the child of Spiderman and Ezio (He climbs better than
Altaïr) is so identical to Assassin's Creed that it's plainly silly. You can even make leaps of faith, only that you land on the ground rather than in a haystack.

The skill tree

Enough ranting about how this game copied it's game engine from Ubisoft, it's still a good game on levels that Assassins Creed never got to. Let's see if I can brake it down somewhat for you.

Before we get into what's good in the game and what isn't let's take a moment and look into the level system. This game has some different kinds of ways to rank up your character. First there is the XP where you can spend it for upgrades on your health or power, where you really want to go for health when you start of. Then there is the point system where you will get a skill point after a certain amount of XP, this can be spent in a tier based skill tree that let's you unlock new moves. The tiers in this tree is locked from another type of XP that you get mainly from killing Uruk of higher ranks. And the last one if a rune system that let you have passive bonuses in your weapon, such as life regain on assassination etc. I know it sounds rather messy, and it is, for the first hour or so before you get the hang of it.

The Good

This game can be challenging, which is a nice thing for a change in the genre of super easy fights a la Assassins Creed. The Uruks really love to bunch up on you and attack whenever possible, and you're not invulnerable when using a special move such as killing of an Uruk on the ground, so you still have to be ready to counter incoming attacks, cause they will come. Bosses are even harder and have attacks that will kill you in two hits, be sure to dodge and parry all you can! The game will soon teach you that you won't win fighting with honor, cause your opponents sure won't give you that option. Be sure to kill of a few with stealth or bow before going into melee and you will have a much better chance of surviving, and don't be afraid to do a tactical retreat to regain stealth.

When you die, and you will, there's another nice little mocking feature that makes this game fun, the Uruk who killed you gets promoted and will become even harder to kill. Die again from the same guy and he might become even more brutal, this is something that really makes you want to kill all those green skinned bastards! 

A portion of the map - red and white symbols are events.

Another good thing is that wherever you turn in Mordor, there is action. Events spawn all the time and there's always things to do and Uruks to kill. And with the fast travel system of discovered towers, you will always be close to the fun.

The Bad

There are things that really annoy me in this game, and the main ones is the control I have over my character, or rather the lack of. In combat, if you press attack the instant before the game tells you to parry, you will change target to whoever is making the attack and most of the times strike him before he has the change to fulfill his action, this feels rather weird when you are about to kill a target and also keeps you hitting all the Uruks around you instead of finishing them off, one at the time. 

The other thing about controls is when running or chasing a fleeing Uruk, the character locks on to everything that can be climbed instead of just running on the ground. If the developers of this type of games just would realize that when chasing people, I don't want to show off my ninja skills, I just want to kill the coward who's fleeing!

Some Uruks will become captains for no obvious reason, they just come up to you and present themselves as someone who's going to kill you and then become harder to kill. This can be very annoying when you're already fighting another captain. Often, if this happens the most logical thing to do is to flee, which makes perfectly sense if it weren't that this is a game based on killing Uruks, and I wan't to kill them, not flee from them! Much frustration when you know that the one who kills you will become stronger, so you can't just die and hope that that random captain won't walk into your fight the next time.

The Ugly

Would you give him your number?

This game isn't anything I would ever describe as pretty, but one thing in the game is uglier than most, in a good way. His name is Ratbag, and he contribute in the game with some dark comic relief. Hate him, love him or even worship him, it doesn't make him any prettier. The only thing I see when looking at Ratbag is that his character model is better made than my character, which makes me wan't to play as an Ururk. Which wouldn't had been a bad story, just not with a very goodhearted protagonist.

Bottom line is that this game is worth it's time and money, and it will put some pressure on Ubisoft to up their game some, which certainly is a good thing.

I know I haven't talked about the story, that is because you can't mention much without spoilers. Also, the story at the point I'm at feels remote and added to the game to give me a cause to kill Uruks, not the other way around.

So, if you want a good action game that will taunt you for failing, this just might be it.