Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Stick with me here, I’m going to make a weird analogy to open this review. Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor is like The Sims. The reason I really enjoy Shadow Of Mordor is not because it’s great fun free-running around the open world, and not because it’s awesome to sneak into an base full of Orcs and hack them to bits, but because it let me choose my own path through the story. The game gives you a series of skills and an end goal, then just sets you free to your own devices. It’s a player-driven narrative, filled with political manoeuvring, gruesome violence, and beautiful vistas and the entire experience was entirely unique to me.

Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor, set between The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, gives the player control over a ranger by the name of Talion. While training with his son, Talion and his comrades at the Black Gate are attacked by the Uruk forces of Sauron led by The Hammer, The Tower, and The Black Hand. Talion, his wife, and his son are captured and ritualistically murdered in an attempt to summon the elven wraith Celebrimbor. However, Celebrimbor saves Talion from death and the two go on a revenge tour of Mordor to avenge the death of his family.

It’s a great set up, but sadly the plot never seems to become any deeper. You meander from side character to side character never really getting to know any of them very well. As for Talion himself, he is kind of one note. Talion… Angry… Talion… Kill… The backstory of your wraith buddy Celebrimbor is also explored through some flashbacks but is so sparsely delivered it never has any lasting effect on the player. The ending is a bit of a damp squib too. No spoilers of course, but it just, sort of, ends. It’s not a bang, but a whimper. On the other hand, those people who have absorbed every inch of Middle Earth will assuredly mark out in every moment of Talion’s adventure. If the words Celebrimbor, Sauron, Uruk, Mordor, or even Hobbit, mean absolutely nothing to you then you know exactly as much about the tales of Tolkien as I do. It’s not something you necessarily have to worry about though as much of the reason to progress comes from the player-led narrative put in the game.

Shadow Of Mordor is some of the most fun I’ve had with an open world game entirely thanks to an AI framework called the Nemesis system. It creates a hierarchy of war chiefs, with several layers of captains underneath who all move freely around the game world undertaking their own missions to become more powerful – that is, unless you take them down first. Each orc captain has their own weaknesses and strengths, goals and downtime, which you can take advantage of for your own needs. Taking down each captain puts you in different scenarios, in different locations, forcing you to change up your tactics every time. You don’t even have to be on a mission to run into one of them. It didn’t take long for me to bump into three captains at the same time while out minding my own business. It’s fair to say, I’d had to flee and had to come back with a plan at a later time.

As the game goes on, you are granted access to differing ways of subverting the chain of command. You can make captains your own by dominating them and then sending them after other captains. You are essentially playing a big game of chess with Pigug the Champion, Gluk the Crazy, and all of their Uruk friends. Not only does it work on a technical level, but Monolith have added a huge amount of personality to each and every captain you meet. The camera zooms in when one spots Talion, then you are presented with a name, some obvious traits and something horrid spat at you in an awesome cockney accent. If you’ve fought a captain before, you’ll get unique dialogue dependant on your previous interactions with them. For example, if you almost beat a captain but he flees before dying, next time he turns up he’ll show signs of your previous encounter – like a bolted-on metal eyepatch or a fleshy chunk torn from his face.

The tools you get in order to play the game of political chess come not only from Talion’s ranger abilities, but from Celebrimbor and his wraith powers. Traversal and combat are ripped straight from the Assassins Creed and Batman: Arkham franchises respectively. Pressing the run button makes Talion move swiftly up and over any terrain – with the more difficult climbing puzzles achieved with the help of Celebrimbor and his magical wraith powers. The combat consists of an attack button, a counter button, a dodge button, and a stun button. Sound familiar? It’s the counter-based system from Batman: Arkham Asylum. That’s not a bad thing. It’s fundamentally strong and, again, adds Celebrimbor’s wraith magic to the equation. Talion is granted a bow, allowing for long range attacks and a host of ghostly one hit kills which are gruesome, and awesome. The combat and traversal together give you a set of tools to take out any captain or warchief any which way you desire.

The rest of the game is consists of standard open world tropes. Every action undertaken in Mordor gives you various types of XP, allowing you then to unlock abilities and skills to make Talion and Celebrimbor more powerful. There are also collectables based around Lord Of The Rings lore and combat based quests to improve your sword, dagger, and bow scattered around the world. None of them are particularly interesting, at least not to a LOTR novice, but they are worth partaking in to help you take down a troublesome captain or warchief. The world itself is the right size, with enough desolate brown mountains and lush green fields to make traversal interesting, plus there are plenty of Uruks pottering around to attack if you get bored.

However, if it wasn’t for the nemesis system, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor would just be another just plain good open world title. The inclusion of it makes it easily the first “next gen” video game that isn’t just nicer textures and a longer draw distance. The rest of the elements are good, but previously seen elsewhere. The Uruk politics simulator, combined with the freedom to make your own choices when taking on Sauron’s army, make Shadow of Mordor an absolute joy to dive into.