Shadow of Mordor Review
In years to come, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is probably a game most people will remember for its single distinguishing mechanic. In some ways it’s a shame, because while Mordor does invent a refreshing spin on the open-world genre, it also does a lot of the small things right to create an overall polished and enjoyable experience. Mordor is an open-world game developed by Monolith Productions, a long-time -- but rarely noteworthy -- developer from the Pacific NW. This time Monolith has created an outstanding Lord of the Rings action game which hits all the right notes.
After a brief and well-executed tutorial, the player is quickly thrust into the land of Mordor; the evil wasteland wherein the main villain of Lord of the Rings, Sauron, makes his home. Besides Sauron, there’s also orcs -- a lot of orcs. You have a sword, dagger, and bow at your disposal, and the majority of the game is spent fighting through swaths of Sauron's brutish pawns. Combat in Mordor is pretty much a straight copy from the Rocksteady Batman games. It’s an excellent system that works well in this environment, and Monolith did a great job of nailing the aspects of what makes that system work; animations are fluid for practically every scenario, timing feels precise, and you always feel in control. What’s more, combat kills in Mordor are executed with a bone-crunching, heads-flying brutality you won’t find in the Batman games, and it’s really satisfying. Even after 30 hours of slaying orcs, a slow-motion zoom in shot of me lopping off an orc’s head never got old.
Stealth is actually done pretty well too, and the bow mechanics feel tight. Mordor never feels like it’s getting in your way; they make some smart tradeoffs with character movement and climbing, making them easy and quick in lieu of realism. As the game progresses, you’ll unlock ways to make your character more powerful and more dynamic. By the end, there are tons of approaches to every situation, and even more impressive is that I was actually *using* the large variety of skills available to me. The different methods of combat and infiltration are so accessible and easy that it encourages experimentation until the very end of the game. I did feel as though the late game abilities were so powerful that it made the last few hours of the game too easy, but in some ways it was fun just to shred through hundreds of orcs in dynamite fashion.
My exposure to Lord of the Rings is admittedly mostly based on the movies; I’ve read the hobbit and parts of the trilogy, but it was clear even to me that much of the story is structured to disturb as small of the lore as possible. The story is bland and uninspired and the small cast of characters feel pretty one-note. But the story here is not the main attraction, and in fact, the real fun comes from the narrative that you frequently will spin yourself using the Nemesis system.
The Nemesis system is an inventive mechanic wherein strong and noteworthy orcs are added to a constantly rotating pool of captains. Each captain is given a name, VO, personal strengths and weaknesses, and a ranking in the pecking order, which creates a depth to each individual orc. Orcs who manage to kill you are rewarded with greater power, and you can be sure that they’ll taunt you the next time they see you. The result is that you end up creating your own narrative with the orcs from your story, which is often more entertaining than the ones the writers create for you.
There’s no doubt that the Nemesis system makes Shadow of Mordor stick out from the open-world masses, but it deserves a lot of credit for being an all-around outstanding game. It’s true that it wouldn’t be as remarkable without it, but Mordor still impresses with a very tight combat system which is great fun and does an impressive job of encouraging experimentation. The beauty of this fusion of polished, inspired mechanics with it’s own unique ideas is that Shadow of Mordor feels bigger and better than the games which inspired it. I highly recommend it.
