Middle-earth: Shadow of War (2017)

"Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor" offers a great combat system and open-world exploration.

However, the story felt a bit disjointed to me. It seemed like the game levels were designed separately and then stitched together with story clips. When you reach certain points in the game, you get a story clip, but it doesn't always tie well with the gameplay. It feels like two separate experiences rather than a cohesive narrative.

Despite this, the game is still enjoyable. The combat mechanics are smooth, and the ability to climb and explore the vast landscape of Mordor is impressive.

Overall, "Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor" is a fun game with some storytelling issues.

This game is currently three dollars on the steam sale. THREE.

Since I've been reading lotr again. It was an instant purchase. Yet, the first 30 minutes agitates my ever narrowing taste.

At first, it appeared to be a package of simplified Arkham combat, stealth and traversal. Its main character, Aragorn adjacent and plot meddled into middle earth. All enough to plate a lotr experience into a video game while fearing the eye of Tolkien while ingesting it. If he himself appears as a wraith to slap the controller out of my hands, I'll understand.

After some time spent, all these things are still true. Still, it is surprising to see it take place in one city, the nemesis system unfolding within, sprinkled with a Dynasty Warriors immediacy, skill trees and loot. My interest is softly piqued, only from the foundation of mechanics available. Tried and true, certainly but somehow making me feel immediately tired, truly.

That said, those tricksey hobbitses took three dollars from my pocketses and I'm going on an adventure.

Got to my first conquest. Pretty fun overall. I had a blast running down a particularly annoying orc that was hard to kill because he was immune to almost everything and kept running away. The dude suddenly had a blood brother, whom I subdued. So I tried to set up a duel, but the friking orc escaped and the blood brother turned against me. Then, in another confrontation, the blood brother appeared again to defend the orc but started to ran away when he was about half health... so the other orc kill him, because he hated cowards. Good stuff.

The structure of the game is kind of weird, though. you start with a tutorial and then you're made to run around between a sieged city and Shelob's place. You can spend a lot of time there killing orcs and playing but what the game doesn't actually make clear is that all that is actually basically another tutorial. After a few missions, you go to another totally unrelated area, get the ability to brainwash orcs (but in a good way, because we are the bright lord!) and that's when the game proper begins.

That's also when you meet Bruz and the tone starts to waiver between overly serious and overly comedic. I'm not sure if I like the clash of tones, but the funny characters are at least a breath of fresh air for someone like me who doesn't care about the lore of the Rings.

Ok, here we go, the nemesis system is now cooking.

I damaged (or killed, I don't really remember) an orc with a bunch of flies and then he came back as Orcy McFlyface all disfigured and talking about the flies inside his body. It was a tough fight and I had to run away. Later, he then appeared out of nowhere. But I had intel on him and knew that he was vulnerable to poison, and luck had it that I was in an area teeming with venomous spiders (and the game is not smart enough to know the difference) so I just dodged his attacks as I waited as the spiders took all his health. He tried to flee, the coward, but cleaved him in two.

Quite a fun and memorable little story.

Playing this and slowly getting into the game, although it's got some rough edges; particularly the dreadful "hold A to run" control scheme.

What surprises me is the GTA-style mission structure. You go to a place and press a button to start a mission that takes you into an alternate dimension in which the organic open world is replaced by scripted levels. It's not bad, just weird.

Ok, I played the demo and it was pretty cool. I liked the jokey tone and the personalities of the various orcs. It seems like it has a lot of systems, so I felt a bit overwhelmed and lost. But I suppose the game proper will have an actual tutorial and better pacing. The only big annoying thing is "press A to run", which you need to do if you don't want your character to leisurely troll in the middle of a fight.

Now the question is whether I should play this one or go for Shadow of Mordor first.

The writer of this should probably do two things:

1. Read Tolkien
2. Go to one of those Creative Writing Workshops or classes

My god, it's terrible. Which is quite sad, given that the gameplay even if too forgiving and easy at times, remains incredibly addictive, and all because of that nemesis system. I lose myself more in my own narratives of death and revenge... Than in whatever this story is trying to say, which seems to be nothing much.