Middle-earth Shadow of Mordor (SoM) provides a fulfilling third person action experience coupled with a great appreciation for Tolkien Lord of the Rings lore.
You play a ranger named Talion who is now a ghost haunted by an unknown curse. You watch as your family are killed right before your very eyes. As the Black Hand goes to slit your throat and kill you, you wake up from death and wonder why you didn't join your family. This is the basis of the story for SoM as you try to identify why you're cursed to live beyond death and as to why another ghostly figure resides within you. The ghostly figure has no recollection of his past so your journey contains two parts of which one is your personal journey to find why you're cursed and the other is to find the identity of the figure. The ghostly figure you find out to be Celebrimbor, the maker of the rings of power, early in the game. You start off in Mordor but the game takes you to the second zone which is the land of Nurnen. Mordor is more of a dark and sinister looking place with dirt tracks and strongholds full of dirty orcs but Nurnen provides the opposite feeling of a grassland that stretches the landscape with far more cliffs bordering the Sea of Nurnen. The orcs in Nurnen instead hold themselves in ruined forts instead of the drab wooden strongholds in Mordor.
The story takes you across Mordor as you slay Uruk' Ai, the orc army of Sauron. This is where the Nemesis System comes into play. The Nemesis System is an extremely unique system that ranks the orcs based on strength and their experiences. Once you die the orcs that killed you will advance in ranks of Sauron's army and those that survived the fight will also be promoted. Orcs can fight each other to gain ranks in the army and you can interrupt specific events in the game in order to weaken a specific orc captain. The strongest of the orcs are the war chiefs who have their own bodyguards. If you engage in combat directly with an orc war chief and you haven't killed his bodyguards prior to the fight, then you'll be fighting the war chief along with all his bodyguards that are still alive. In the second half of the game you get the ability to brand orcs basically making them your minions of war. You can command them to fight by your side against the orc army but the great thing about branding orcs for your dirty work is that branded orcs can influence the tide in the Nemesis System. Branded captains can grow in strength as you protect them during combat events to help promote them in the ranks of the army. You can brand a low-level captain and eventually work your way by helping him kill orcs in the rank above him to make him a war chief, then you basically control all the orcs units that belong to that specific war chief. The system also provides a strengths and weaknesses info on orcs of which you can acquire this info from rats in the orc army by interrogating the orc in question. This information can be extremely useful for dispatching orcs efficiently. Finding an orcs weakness can make the fight a lot easier as some orcs can be vulnerable to stealth kills which can make for killing that orc instantaneous but some orcs are immune to stealth kills. Orcs can be afraid of fire or if an orc is on fire then the orc captain will become enraged with strength as he may hate seeing other orcs in pain.
The combat in SoM is one of the most free flowing and well made combat systems that I've played in a long time. You have three weapons at your disposal, a sword mainly used for combat, a bow that can take out targets at range and a dagger that you use to stealth kill enemies. The great thing about combat is that you can go in like a berserker and just slay orcs as you see them or you can go in with stealth and kill orcs silently without ever having to engage in combat with multiple orcs. Parkour or climbing in this game is very simple but useful to traverse tall towers or higher plains in order to get a better view of the battlefield so you can plan your attack and use your archery skills to take out other archers that the orcs might have or you can climb towers quickly to eliminate the archers in stealth. Combat is based on a combo system where for every hit you get, your counter goes up. There is a skill tree in the game for combat, your abilities with the bow and your focus meter which is used to slow down time so you can focus your shots as well as the ability to upgrade the amount of rune slots you can have for each weapon. Each weapon can have a total of 5 runes equipped. Runes are acquired from killing orc captains and they provide a small but useful buff to the weapon. Buffs for example can be lifestealing at a percentage chance or receiving less damage from long ranged attacks. The sword can perform executions with a press of a button but only if your combo meter is at x8 and so on (x16, x24....etc). Shooting orcs with your bow will also add to the combo meter. Skill unlocks can ease the amount of combo needed to perform these extra attacks such as halving the amount needed to x4 and so on, or allowing you to perform two executions from one combo. There are some QTE prompts that notify you when to block an attack. Some may think this a bit too easy but you can turn it off. I left it on and though it was a bit easy to block attacks because of the prompt, it does get confusing a little bit difficult when you're fighting 50 orcs at one time.
You also have the ability to mount creatures in the world of Middle-earth, mainly the caragor, a four legged aggressive monster that moves extremely quickly and bites hard. Some orcs have a fear of caragors which can come in handy but some hate them so they might become enraged if you ride into battle mounted on one of them.
SoM has a fair amount of extra content outside of its story progression. There are missions such as save the slaves or weapon specific missions for the sword, bow and dagger. You can also collect collectibles across the game that provide lore hints to the player. Every bit of collectible provides a decent description of the lore and be interesting to read as some of the collectibles provide voiced dialogue.
The graphics of the game aren't mind blowing but they are nice to look at. The grass moves as you go through them. The characters are high res in comparison to the lower res landscape but in general the game isn't ugly, it's rather nice, just not super nice. (what?)
The voice acting in this game is amazing with the performances from Troy Baker and Alastair Duncan. Troy Baker voices Talion and even though Troy has an american accent, he provides an extremely well done english one. Alastair Duncan plays the role of Celebrimbor. The banter that goes on between the two is good and revolves around the lore present in Middle-earth.
The music is spectacular as the first instance of music in the game reminded me of the LOTR movies. The music that plays during exploration is calming and the combat music gets you pumped up to slay orcs. The sounds of the caragors to the voice acting of the orcs is all extremely well done. The slicing sounds as you cut up orcs is always satisfying to hear and witness. The squeels from the ghuls and the roars from the orcs are all well done. The voices of the orcs all provide a gritty english feel and they all have personality.
SoM, outside its general story progression, provides a fair amount of content to keep you going to 100%. The side missions and extra challenges the game gives are never impossible and are plausible enough for you to finish and get all achievements and 100% the game of which I'll be doing.
8/10 - The combat is great in this game, providing a satisfying combo system albeit a bit easy once you advance further into the game and unlock more skills. The explorable land is quite large as you are given two land masses to explore and complete. The story is nice but nothing too spectacular outside of the lore references. The game has been getting averages of around 15 hours to complete the main story though I finished it in 11 hours. Nevertheless, the game provides a fair amount of content for you to complete and SoM is definitely a great game worth your time and money.
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