How could we see that coming?
Shadow of Mordor was one of the biggest surprises in video game history. An action hack 'n slash game with the Lord of the Rings lincese, telling a side story, getting huge amounts of praise from the industry? What!?
Everybody expect this type of game to be full of gimmicks and have a bad story to tell. Sure, Shadow of Mordor has that, a story that doesn't grab you and some fan services that makes no sense and don't add anything for the game.
But even so, the game is amazing, the combat is so responsive, the characters stops anything that he's doing to respond to your last button press, and I'm a big fan of that.
The running around in this game is pretty great, having the climb similar to Assassins Creed and allowing you to jump from any height, one of the best games to do it in a polished way.
The game is also inovative, it introduced one of the best features ever created in a video game: the nemesis system. Having a grid full of orcs and each of them having a different ranking in power, making the roles shift each time you kill one of them, opening a spot on his old place or when you die, making the orc or uruk that killed you be promoted and receive an upgrade, with new abilities and new resistances.
The game makes you feel really powerful, sometimes fighting 20+ orcs at the time and just slashing through everyone of them. Especially as you go through the game, in the second half you become even more powerful and start being able to mind control enemies so them can work for you as spies/assassins, making your job easier and adding to the fun aspect with lots of variety. It's a must play for every action game fun.
