The story of Shadow of Mordor begins right after Bilbo Baggins defeats Smaug and during the aftermath of the Battle of the Five Armies. It begins with a ranger named Talion, whose family was slaughtered by Sauron’s remaining Orc army (Talion was killed as well), who was exiled from death and bonded randomly with an elvish wraith (not going to give his name up) suffering the same exile fate. Both the elf and Talion reside in the same body, which makes a dual weapon in the heat of battle. Talion must avenge his family’s death, as well as his own, and help find peace for both he and the wraith elf. To do that, they must kick a large amount of ass in Mordor.
I didn’t know exactly what to expect from this game. The last Monolith title I played was their MOBA Guardians of Middle-Earth. It was a great game that was some of the most battle arena fun you could get at the time, but it was a safe bet with an important Warner Bros. license. Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is more of a big ‘chance taker’ for the developers, and one that reminds us of how good their F.E.A.R. titles have been in the past, as well as Condemned (remember that sucker?). Monolith creates some good gameplay mechanics, atmosphere and puts you in the heart of Mordor in this Middle-earth game. All of which cumulates to a fantastic game experience.
Without further rambling, let’s break this puppy down.
The first thing you will notice when you start playing SoM is that the fighting mechanics feel awfully familiar to another Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment title — well, several titles in one series — Batman. You get that free-range, loose and fun combat system, which allows you to take on multiple enemies at once, while guarding against attacks. The Batman series from Rocksteady felt like a bag of fun when you were kicking the asses of villains. You could focus on one villain, block another midway through your attack and push them off enough to keep going on the original enemy. The 20-against-1 scenario truly never gets tired with this sort of flexible attack mechanics. That’s just the base of the attack gameplay mechanics.
As you start leveling up in Shadow of Mordor, you gain both human and wraith special attacks. For example, you can wraith punch an enemy, which knocks them for a loop, then press the attack button multiple times to charge up to a life ending attack that has the enemy’s head explode right off their body. The attacks keep improving, as the characters continue to level up in the game. There’s a lot of ways you can dispatch an enemy to keep it interesting. Some other neat leveling upgrades include draining an enemy to the point of death, transporting your character to another enemy who is far away and then killing them, as well as simply dispatching a brutal death to a loopy enemy that leads to a satisfying decapitation to conclude the fight. I’ve played this game for about a week or so, I have yet to not feel some sort of adrenaline when attacking and killing enemies with authority. It’s quite satisfying, just like the Batman games.
The simplicity of the attack system mixed with the leveling and improvement of new attacks keeps this battle system constantly interesting.
Speaking of leveling, let’s break that down.
The leveling system in this game is a bit deeper than what you might expect. For typical third-person action games I expect some sort of upgrades, be it in the form of purchasing upgrades or with gradual, simple leveling up. Shadow of Mordor proceeds, exceeds and succeeds in creating a multi-tier leveling plateau for our two bonded characters. Here’s how it is broken down:
Abilities tree — The abilities tree is split in two to accommodate both characters. Talion’s abilities include delivering massive death blows to characters, throwing daggers, dealing a decisive blow at the end of a fight, as well as poisoning the drink of orcs (yes, you read that right). There are a lot more abilities to gain in this tree for our ranger, but you get the drift. The wraith has the abilities to to pin people in place, deliver a wraith flash and do a stealth drain. Much like the ranger, these are only the tip of the iceberg in wraith abilities, but you get the idea. All of these things are unlockable by gathering a currency called Mirian. This currency is obtainable through accomplishing missions, challenges and side quests. The more you do in this game, the more you unlock in the abilities tree.
Runes — These are neat items that you attach to your weapons (initially the sword, bow and dagger). They are modifiers that you can collect as you dispatch mini-bosses, significant characters and/or bosses. These modifiers have a certain numerical level attached to them that can be mixed and matched to create a cornucopia of powerful ranges for your weaponry. Seriously, folks, there are such a variety of these things that you’ll mix together to best accommodate your play style in the game. Runes do things like give you a certain percentage chance of recovering health after a critical strike. Or allows you to increase damage in a weapon. It’s basically attributes for your weapons that you can go mad scientist on. It’s a pretty cool weapon modifying tool. I absolutely love it.
A third-person action game like this certainly didn’t need to have these very deep gameplay attributes, but Monolith did a fantastic job with keeping the killing and collecting interesting. The runes especially make this game fun to work with and master.
Now, how about the enemies you get to use this stuff on? While you won’t hang around to smell the roses and try to decipher the enemies from one another, as you’ll just be kicking ass after ass in this game, the way that Monolith treated the enemies is damn unique. The non-essential enemies, the ones you’ll run into the most, tend to repeat a bit, though the dialogue attached to them helps to keep the repetitiveness in check. The mini-bosses and the bosses, such as the war chiefs in the beginning, have names and are enormously different enough with attributes to keep each fight fresh. There is a point where the mini-bosses won’t give you much trouble, but the different attributes attached to them makes you plan differently each time. For example, one enemy might be immune to stealth attacks, which means you have to make your presence known. One enemy might be immune to finishers, which means you’re in for a brutal fight. Yet another enemy might be immune to arrows, which means you’ve got a CQC session about to erupt.
And that’s just the individual strengths and weaknesses of the enemies.
Should you be killed in the heat of battle by one of them, the enemy (and this goes for all enemies) will get promoted and become more powerful. You get a nice cutscene of snippiness when this happens in the game, as well as taken to a new screen where you get to see the enemy promoted. That also means that if you meet the enemy again during the game, it will be more difficult to bring them down. The way that Monolith constructed their enemy system, and the reward/punishment to losing to said enemy makes Shadow of Mordor unique, fun and entertaining.
To find these mini-bosses and bosses, you’re given icons on the screen that represent challenges (weapon, survival, hunting), collecting artifacts (mostly a wraith thing — see picture below for example) and main story missions. Each progression you make with these things potentially opens up new ones, also they help to build Mirian and XP. If you need a frame of reference for this, picture Skyrim, size down amount of things you can do within that big world (maybe take half of its land and side quests), then you get the idea of the consistent mission/challenge/collecting girth of Shadow of Mordor. It’s quite impressive for a game that doesn’t need to be as big as it is. Half of what it does would probably satisfy most gamers, but Monolith went the extra mile with things and it has paid off big time. I spent most of my time in the game simply hunting down groups of Uruks (high-end Orcs) and just constantly slaughtering them over and over again to gain XP and progress my characters. The more bosses and mini-bosses you encounter, the bigger the reward.
Speaking of slaughtering, Talion and the elf wraith aren’t the only ones that inhabit and pose a threat to the Uruks. You will occasionally bump into Caragors (scary-ass dog-like creatures (much bigger than dogs) with strong hide), Graugs and other nasty creatures in Mordor. The Caragors are fun to watch in action because the Uruks are deathly afraid of them, as well as perfect meals for the Caragor. Randomly in the game you will find bands of Caragor attack Uruk and take them out for you. You have to be careful in the game, though, as Caragor will turn on you as well. The joy of the Caragor is when they are trapped in Uruk cages in front of a large group of Uruk. You can break open the cages and watch the Caragor carnage in action. Oh, and you can ride them. Have fun with that ability. As for the Graug, it’s best to just run. Or enjoy the show of them killing Uruks. Whatever you choose. Overall, the extra monsters (and help) in Shadow of Mordor makes for a neat dynamic that creates a bit more life for the game, and makes this game a little bit more special.
There is other wildlife in the game, but not as significant as these two groups of wonderful killers.
Other gameplay points of interest include the enemy artificial intelligence. Enemy reaction to getting slaughtered or slaughtering you can be random at times. The A.I. of the enemies is a bit repetitive, but sometimes it’s interesting to watch at certain points. If you kill a captain in the game (mini-boss), his soldiers will try and flee. If a captain is about to die, he will try to retreat (that’s fun to watch, as their success depends on their attributes). The enemies know when you’re down in the game and will do their best to take advantage of that and gang up on you when you’re about to die.
Staying on the topic of dying, when your energy level dips to a certain point in a fight, you’re given two chances to recover via a quick time event (QTE). Talion will fall to one knee and an arrow requiring you to move it (the arrow) into the middle of a circle, and press a randomly selected button before a counter-clockwise circular bar fills up, is how you save Talion’s life in the QTE. If Talion falls to his knee again, the circle becomes smaller, the bar speeds up and you’re given less room to think. Should Talion be brought to his knees a third time, then Talion dies. When you start over, you start on a forge tower in the area, which is pretty much your home base for respawns. You can activate the forge towers by going to the wraith side of life (just tap L1) and the towers crop up. If you activate one, it opens up that particular area on the map (see below) and also grants you the ability to fast-travel from one to another (you will be thankful for that).
As for the presentation side of things, Shadow of Mordor is so damn gorgeous. The moment Talion steps into the environment, you see such detailed depth and scale with everything. From a large statue harking back to the beginning of the second age to broken down castles and Uruk built environments, there’s enough pretty to go around in this game. I’m especially impressed with the lighting, the shading, shadows and textures in the game. The dynamic weather and day/night back and forth makes for some good visuals.
The models of the characters and the expressions of the captains and leaders of the Uruk is also impressive. While I was playing this game this week, I had to turn the volume down and just read subtitles as the action went by. I could actually read the lips of Uruk captains as they threatened Talion and their lip pronunciation was spot on. It was kind of frightening that Monolith had gone to that much detail in the game. Anyway, the model of Talion is impressive, as you get very lively clothing that sways and is affected by the environment (rain, fog or shine). The wraith is pretty cool, mimicking the look and style of Peter Jackson’s wraiths. The only downer to the presentation is the cutscenes, specifically the looks of Talion. For some reason I thought the least amount of effort went into him, especially when compared to others on the screen. It might be a petty complaint, but it’s noticeable. You’ll see it.
Visually, Monolith delivered big time in Shadow of Mordor.
As for the audio, composer Garry Schyman nailed this game. The music kicks at the right times, turns up with intensity at appropriate moments and thunderously leads the charge when it comes to driving the game’s action and drama. He should win an award for his effort on this title. I’m not sure I’ve wanted a video game soundtrack so badly in my life, as it’s that good, folks.
Presentation aside, is this game fun? Yes. A resounding ‘yes’! You will have plenty of action awaiting you, enough cerebral titillation with the role-playing game elements and hours of time willfully wasted exploring the lands of Mordor to see what it holds. This game might be the sleeper game of the year for 2014, and right now it deserves to be. It’s certainly worth your time and effort, so don’t pass it up because you think it’s another movie/book related title trying to make a quick buck. Believe in the efforts of Monolith on this one, gamers. They did a great job.