Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

[AndyKurosaki]

Yeah this is absolutely brilliant. Showed it to my brother and his mate last night, they're both buying it today. It's the superb combat system of Batman combined with the climbing style of Assassins Creed.
Come out of nowhere to be one of this year's best games.

[dezm0nd]

The game definitely has caught on via word of mouth a lot more than I expected. It's more spoken about at work than FIFA which is an oddity and excitingly refreshing

[DomsBeard]

For a laugh I'd thought I'd check my local cex to see if they have a copy. They do!

On my way to get it now

[Baron Phil]

The game is good on its own but the nemesis system makes it.
I thought there would be a limited number of named orcs but then I was killed by just a grunt Orc in a random group of enemies and he was promoted to vice captain, given a name and a unique set of armour. The next time I met him he had a load of dialog taunting me about the last time we fought, it made taking his head off so much more satisfying [emoji1]

[wolfrider]

I got killed and that one death, wiped out a lot of my hard work weakening the Orc leadership. If I was to convince anyone to make the upgrade to the new consoles, this would be the game I would show them.

[Flabyo]

It takes a little while to get the hang of the combat flow, it's very similar to the Arkham games but not *quite*. Once you unlock a couple of extra bits like the instant kill finishers on hitting x8 combo and so on it starts to click.

Don't be afraid to run away if you get overwhelmed either, unless you're stuck with a Nemesis who has the tracking ability you should be able to run and hide (seriously, one guy must've killed me about 5 times because he had this ability to find me wherever I was hiding, it was SO satisfying to finally take him down.)

The plot is kinda weird, but I think I know where it's going. The voice acting is pretty decent, no idea who is doing [redacted] but they're so close to the movie actor I thought it WAS him.

There seems to be some decent mission variety, and the minute to minute flow of exploring, stealth killing and mass brawls has a pretty good balance to it. It'll need to mix things up a little soon for me though or it might get repetitive. But it's really really good so far.

[DomsBeard]

Had a half hour last night and couldn't believe the amount of Orcs on screen! I had my arse kicked unsurprisingly

[Baron Phil]

I had a captain appear in my game last night that had killed someone on my friends list. That it's another really nice touch. Unfortunately I wasn't able to avenge count stex, sorry.

[Flabyo]

So, Shadow of Mordor is pretty much the perfect game for an AI coder.

There’s a pretty complex social simulation going on under the hood in here, and the game lets you meddle with it.

After a while the captains start doing their *own* missions, and if you don’t go over and interfere with them they get stronger (examples: a captain is going on a hunt, you can go down there and find ways to make sure he doesn’t survive it… or one captain is going to execute another, and you interfere to decide who lives and who dies)

If you’re in the same region as a captain and they die, you get notified. I was playing last night, sneaking on one guy, when suddenly there was a shot burst of ‘captain X has died’ alerts. Went over to where they were (when they die they drop an item, which is marked on your map) and found that a flipping cave troll had murdered them all along with their guards and was quietly kicking the corpses around.

You do need to play story missions to unlock the more interesting powers, it could probably do with signposting that better. And it’s VERY hard for the opening hour or so while you get the hang of the combat. But once it clicks it’s very *very* good.

[arry_g]

So, Shadow of Mordor is pretty much the perfect game for an AI coder.

There’s a pretty complex social simulation going on under the hood in here, and the game lets you meddle with it.

After a while the captains start doing their *own* missions, and if you don’t go over and interfere with them they get stronger (examples: a captain is going on a hunt, you can go down there and find ways to make sure he doesn’t survive it… or one captain is going to execute another, and you interfere to decide who lives and who dies)

If you’re in the same region as a captain and they die, you get notified. I was playing last night, sneaking on one guy, when suddenly there was a shot burst of ‘captain X has died’ alerts. Went over to where they were (when they die they drop an item, which is marked on your map) and found that a flipping cave troll had murdered them all along with their guards and was quietly kicking the corpses around.

You do need to play story missions to unlock the more interesting powers, it could probably do with signposting that better. And it’s VERY hard for the opening hour or so while you get the hang of the combat. But once it clicks it’s very *very* good.

I spent an hour playing the game to learn its mechanics, died a few time, explored a bit and so on and then restarted. This playthrough I'm eight hours in and have only died once. It's nice feeling awesome but it's only because I've learned to run when things get tough and I pretty much agree with the opinions you expressed. As someone who has programmed AI for traffic systems, flight paths and behavioural analytical systems I am fascinated by the implementation of the Orcs and their hierarchy. I want to see more developers doing this and expanding on it.

One incident I liked was two Orcs "Mog the Meat Hoarder" and "Zog the Pot Licker" who both feared each other but both kept running into me at the same time and subsequently running away. This happened in a variety of ways and a variety of times. I would go on a mission or search the world for collectables, one would find me, the other would find me, they would see each other and run. After several encounters, several burning, cuts and traps Zog eventually lost his head. Mog no longer fears Zog... now he fears me!

[Alex79]

I hadn't even heard of this until Jon Denton raved about it on last week's podcast. Sounds great.

[DomsBeard]

It is superb, batman meets assassins creed. I've just been collecting stuff and doing side missions so far.

[The_Rooster]

I'm gonna pick it up once I get back from holiday in 2 weeks.

[Flabyo]

So there's this one orc. His name is 'Hogga the Fool'. He looks really goofy with a lopsided mouth, he doesn't seem able to talk, whenever he turns up he just sort of giggles a bit as his introduction speech.

But I hate him.

I never seem to find him on his own in the field, he always turns up uninvited during battles with other chiefs. He's also bodyguard to one of the war chiefs.

He has the trait 'will not execute an unworthy foe'.

I'm losing count now of the number of times he turns up JUST as I'm about to die, lands the blow to put me down, then walks away without finishing me off, chuckling to himself as he goes.

I HATE HIM.

[countstex]

Forgot to update that I finished the story for this last week. It was a fantastic ride, and the way the orcs you know from the field come in to play during key story moments is excellent. I think this has set a new standard for what it means to be a next gen game. In trueth it is largly just a bigger prettier version of an Assassin's Creed or Arkham game, but the simple addition of that Nemesis System and it feels like a whole new genre.

On the point of Day-1 DLC, I've read many time that this is due to the gap in a game going 'gold' and the actual release. The team will continue to work on new stuff, but clearly can't update the gold code which has gone to the presses, since we still live in a world with physical copies. I would assume this time would be far less if everything was pure digital. And as always, you never have to buy DLC if you think it's not worth it. Often these day one DLCs tend to be pre order bonuses anyway so anyone keen on a given game is rewarded for that.

[suzzopher]

Not posted in a long time but just finished this.

My game clock came in at around 50 hours, I spent so many hours just taking down captains and warchiefs. As a fan of both Monolith and the license this game gave me everything I could want. The assassinations were handled better than every Assassin's Creed game, so many ways of taking down your prey. But once you open up the second area the ways in which to approach each objective were even better! Love this game, looking forward to the DLC now.

[ratsoalbion]

I borrowed our James' copy and finished yesterday with 95% odd complete and a game clock of around 30 hours.
I too thoroughly enjoyed the game.

[suzzopher]

I borrowed our James' copy and finished yesterday with 95% odd complete and a game clock of around 30 hours.
I too thoroughly enjoyed the game.

I think I could get 100% if I play for another five hours, but I spent way too much time dicking about in this world.

[ratsoalbion]

I think I've only got three of the dagger subquests to clear, but they're the ones I find the most annoying (stealth with instant fail-states)!

[suzzopher]

I think I've only got three of the dagger subquests to clear, but they're the ones I find the most annoying (stealth with instant fail-states)!

Urgh, I hate those missions. I have some of those and some artefacts to find.