I just played... Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Half dreary, half lively.

                Franchises have one thing common to all of them: they are all gripping in the darkness of a milking abyss, gasping for a breath of fresh air, a breath that is unlikely to ever arrive as taking a whiff of a fresh batch of air is something those on the higher chairs will generally not want to risk stepping down for. It’s no surprise that most franchise products have a tendency to develop a sense of staleness, sterility and all-round dullness – all owing to an adamant desire to not think out of the box.

                Over the years Tolkien’s world has given rise to one of the biggest and most beloved franchises around, giving rise to the wonderful Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the veritably mixed-bag Hobbit film trilogy and a slew of generally mediocre products otherwise. Indeed, it is rather rare for a multi-faceted franchise to give rise to a good, original videogame – partially owing to an overwhelming fear of alienating the general fandom of the franchise, but games that manage to do so generally either (a) take a scrying glass to the franchise and adapt in a manner best suited to it, in their own manner (such as the Arkham series) or (b) take another tangent of the franchise, one that gives them a great deal of flexibility and creativity without the heavy commitment of a direct tie-in (such as Shadow of Mordor).

                The game does a great job of sticking to the lore, but also at taking (several) liberties with it, visible from the start – where we see our hero, Talion, watch his family get murdered and then we get to watch him get murdered, but he is then resuscitated by an Elven wraith turning him into a walking corpse possessing a wraith within it – a double whammy of undead. So yes, you are actually controlling two characters in one – as you stalk Mordor wherein a great shadow looms. Of course, you’re dead, which makes for some interesting gameplay elements, besides the capacity of ridiculous acrobatics, such as the part wherein dying doesn’t result in a game over, but only moves the game forward a bit – with the armies of Sauron and the various Uruk Captains gaining in strength. And therein, within the Armies of Sauron, lies the game’s greatest innovation – a somewhat organic, hierarchy of Uruk captains and warchiefs all open season for you to hunt, control and terrorize – but, more on this later.

The villains aren't very interesting unfortunately, and have little under their belt besides 'killed your family'.

You can enter 'wraith vision' of sorts to highlight objects.

                As a somewhat zealous-yet-open-minded admirer of Tolkien’s works I always tend to approach any adaptation with a rather hefty grain-of-salt, and early reveals of Shadow of Morder really failed to tickle my pickle. It looked like a generically gritty hack ‘n’ slash game with a generically grim protagonist on a generically grim vengeance quest. The Nemesis System (a.k.a. the Armies of Sauron) is what initially piqued my interest in the game, and as more details came flooding in I was rather piqued in the interest department, since it was clear this wasn’t meant to be a standard tie-in. Indeed, that is evident from the title of the game, with an insistence on not bearing the ‘Lord of the Rings’ moniker, as indeed it takes place before the events of the novel/movies/whatevers and also takes its liberties with the lore. ‘Middle-Earth’ it calls itself, and I actually find myself respecting the developers for not sticking the ‘big names’ of the franchise on their work and opting to actively set it apart from the others, and the game certainly benefits from this. The mixture of Arkham-style combat and Assassin’s Creed-style exploration were the final things to pique my interest, which caused it to pique to saturation which ended with me getting the game.

Expect to use it follow quite a few trails in the main missions.

                One of the unfortunate things I realised is that some of my impressions from the initial reveals were spot-on. Generically grim hero on a generically grim quest is sadly the best way to describe my attempts to cook, but also the best way to describe the main plot of the game. The set-up is simultaneously bland yet unique, we have our grimy grim hero and his wraithly grim compatriot set out on a grim quest to avenge quite a few murders of family members by cutting a trail through Mordor. Mind you, I actually didn’t mind the overall grimness of the game owing to its nature (with a vicious murder chain and what not) but the entire plot, especially the main plot, reeks of something that could have been so much more. So much more could have been done with Talion’s character – we get a glimpse of what could have been in my favourite moment in the entire story, where the ghostly undead comrade reminds his bodily undead comrade that he is no longer alive, and we get a quiet moment where Talion reflects on the fact that he is no longer of this world (wherein ‘this’ refers to the world of the living in the Tokien-verse, and not ‘this’ as in our world with overpriced coffee and no country that speaks Sindarin). Alas, the main plot is dull from both a story perspective and a gameplay perspective, as all the main story missions are dreadfully dull and archaically scripted. Lore-wise, the game is relatively spot-on with many interesting connections and mentions, all without going down the road of overstuffing itself with references – hell, one of the things I enjoyed about the setting was the complete lack of painfully obvious references and overbearing parallels. It does its own and thing and carries it well – and even the additions to Tolkien’s lore are acceptable.

Titbits of lore help add to the world.

                Combat in the game is modelled after the Arkham approach, wherein combat is akin to a dance where the longer you go on, the dancier you become and the more flourishes and pirouettes you can do, but a single misstep will break your entire routine and you will have to start from scratch. The Arkham style works because it is simple, straightforward, satisfying and encourages precise play – you become more powerful as your combo strings on and you open up several special attacks while doing so. The Arkham system is arguably one of the best ways to represent asymmetric combat wherein the protagonist, be it Batman or a doubly undead man, is considerably more powerful than his foes and can easily take on armies of them. And indeed he can as most large-scale battles against the Uruk can turn into a clash between the lone Talion and a legion of Uruk and one of the things I’d have to praise the game for is having a very enjoyable ‘power curve’ within it. Talion starts the game as a relatively normal Ranger with a few wraith-tricks up his torn sleeve, but by the end of the game is capable of devastating armies in a few moments and, literally, dancing from Uruk to Uruk chopping their heads off. The best part is that you get to PLAY this rise in power and each upgrade you unlock feels meaningful and impacts the way you play the game. Indeed, at the start of the game you might struggle against a swathe of Uruk but later on their numbers mean nothing to you – though it does go to the extent that the game becomes ridiculously easy, but you can argue that this curve is justified. Combat was generally responsive, though I did suffer from what felt like moments of delayed inputs wherein pushing the dodge button did nothing to avoid that Caragor leaping at my throat, or I input the command to perform an execution but the game didn’t register the direction I pressed in and I used it on the measly Uruk lying on the floor and not on the giant shielded Uruk about to stab my rear. These moments were rare, but they generally occurred at the worst times and thus felt poignant enough for me to type about as I am right now.

The smooth transitions between wraith and man help add a sense of fluidity to combat.

                Alongside the Combat, though not entirely a part of it, is the Stealth and Archery. The Stealth is rather basic, you press a button to sneak about though the AssCreed style movement lets you vault and climb all over the place while being stealthy, it’s functional and not omnipresent – more useful early on, before you are capable of making Uruk’s heads spontaneously explode. Archery is… interesting because it involves pulling a wraith bow out of wraith air and using it to shoot wraith arrows at your foes, complete with the requisite ability to slow down time when you aim. On their own, Stealth and Archery aren’t much, but when you combine them with the Combat and the Movement they really manage to gel together really well – if you find yourself outnumbered you can turn tail and climb up a giant building, use your vantage point to snipe Uruk or hide yourself and use stealth to re-enter Combat. Additionally, there are various environmental factors you can use, such as exploding barrels (of the booze (grog) variety), exploding fireplaces (wraith induced explosivity), Caragor bait and so on – so if you find yourself in a pinch, it leads to a bit of organic combat where you might have to make quick use of the environment to ensure you don't die again. You might find yourself overly-swarmed by Uruk, unable to fall back since doing so will let your target escape but not falling back might cause you to return to death momentarily, but lo and behold you find that there is a grog barrel nearby, so you enter wraith bow mode and use the slowdown to line up a shot and make Uruk explode.

                Movement is, as mentioned before, of the AssCreed kind wherein you can jump all over the place and perform leaps of faith, albiet without mandatory conveniently placed haystacks. You can also mount some of the wilderness to get around faster, or get around in a stompier fashion – though fast travel might often be the way to go because the world is unfortunately not very interesting. I’d praise the devs for opting to make a smaller, more content-rich open world rather than an incredibly large, massive world of boredom (*cough* FarCry 3 *cough*) – though that still isn’t enough to stop the desolation of an open-world. There are several side-things to do, weapon challenges and so on, but those are generally ‘more of the same’ and the game’s world is an undulating spread of brown or green – though I don’t feel like rapping the colour-based aesthetic of the world, since that IS what Mordor is.

They'll remember.

I'm a sucker for cool 'showdown' scenes and each Uruk captain gets his own. 

                Though, the magnum opus of this game is the Nemesis System (a.k.a. Armies of Sauron) which is the most enjoyable, memorable and sadly under-explored part of the game. The dynamic, randomly-generated Uruk Captains and above, have their own randomly-generated names, traits, personalities and so on. There’s a pretty impressive array of possibilities for the Uruk, and partaking in the shifting, uneasy and bloodthirsty hierarchy is a lot of fun. As mentioned before, death in the game doesn’t really result in a game over, but Talion simply dies and is then brought back to life after some in-game time has passed – but death has its consequences, the Uruk who kills you gets a massive boost to his power, throttling even a common Uruk from namelessness to attaining a name, a title, various attributes and a whole lot of smug pride at the fact that he killed you. Similarly, if an already named and initiated Captain kills you he gets a massive boost in power and will remember the fact that he killed you (ergo, he becomes your Nemesis). Uruk rise and fall, clash against each other, lead their own attempts to gain power and you get a say in all of that, you can interrupt assassination attempts, disrupt feasts, turn duels into wars and even dictate their rise or fall. Combine this with the fact that, later in the game, you get the ability to dominate and control Uruk to obey you, letting you literally dictate the armies. The system can lead to some really amusing moments, such as when a Warchief enters the scene to confront you (complete with slow-mo walking and other Uruk chanting his name), walks up to you menacingly and then turns tail and runs because he has ‘Weakness: Fear of Carragors’ and you just happened to be sitting atop one.

                I’d say that the Nemesis System deserves to have its own game – wherein the system is more fleshed out, with more possibilities and complexities (perhaps unbound from the lore and franchise), perhaps with political systems, more dynamic events and general variety. Additionally, wherein the system is the core feature, since despite its importance it is not central to the game’s plot and is more of a ‘brilliant side-feature’.

                Additionally, I’d want to address the elephant in the room, an elephant that appeared in the room after I finished the game and has been stalking me for a while now resistant to the charms and wiles of peanuts, and it’s the nature of how rushed the final parts of the game are, combined with the fact that the game ends on a cliff hanger – cum – sequel/DLC hook.

Tooltips ahoy!

                All in all, Shadow of Mordor does a whole lot of good in the ideas department, and does a fair bit of good with these ideas but doesn’t reach a crescendo that these ideas deserved. A strong example of a whole lot of strong, potentially incredible concepts executed in a more mundane fashion – a fashion that will leave you thinking about the potentially lost potential in great ideas. Is it worth the purchase? Hard to tell, it’s a fine game but I suppose, such is the risk of going on a thoroughly tangential tangent, does not have a target audience it squares in on. I had a good time with it, even if parts of it were spent lamenting the potential for utter greatness.