Shadow of Mordor - Reviews & Interviews

Here is another roundup of reviews for Shadow of Mordor this week. I also found two interviews to go along with the reviews. So happy reading and watching everyone.

PC Gamer - 85/100

The tech specs are demanding, but this is the Middle-Earth game to rule them all.

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Digital Trends - 4.5/5

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor nears perfection, but the demands of a scripted narrative work against its freeform structure.

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Shadow of Mordor is a triumph, its final irony being that it's arguably the best and most pure Assassin's Creed game to date.​

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A hugely entertaining, tongue-in-cheek and fulsome experience, it’s a worthy expedition whether you’re a Rings fan or not.​

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Shadow of Mordor paints the pictures that rest somewhere between bookends.​

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Gamereactor

Gillen caught up with lead game designer Bob Roberts to discuss the game and find out more about its development.

"We definitely kept up with exactly what they're [the film production] doing in the films," said Roberts. "Make sure we're not generating any kinds of details that would ever overlap and taking advantage as much as we can of the world they're creating to kind of inspire us as we build out Mordor."

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More information.

It's so strange. I'm used to thinking of LOTR franchise games being crappy...my mind keeps flashing back to those god-awful PS2 games that drifted out of the sewer after the movies were released. This one - based on the reviews - seems to be living up to the hype.

Well, kudos to them. And it's nice to see them treading unfamiliar ground.

"I'm used to thinking of LOTR franchise games being crappy"

I feel the same way. SoM takes familiar gaming mechanics from open world mission based games Assassin's Creed IV, Batman Arkham, Far Cry 3, Watch Dogs, etc. so as long as the implementation is different enough and adheres to the LotR setting and lore (as it does in my view) then I think that's a good way to go. Other LotR games have major problems in my view with the gameplay.

Well, LotRO and WitN are both pretty good LotR games, to be honest.

I have a special place in my heart for the old Hobbit text adventure as well

DArtagnan said:

Well, LotRO and WitN are both pretty good LotR games, to be honest.

I have a special place in my heart for the old Hobbit text adventure as well

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Commodore 64, baby... Still remember the song.

That Hobbit game was the best of the worse, imo. Man, some days I really miss my C 64 =xxx.

No one has ever topped this depiction of Smaug.



I also enjoyed War in the North, the Lego LoTR/Hobbit games are also good if you like the genre of casual collect-me-up and don't take your Tolkien too seriously. Looking forward to playing Shadow of Mordor once all the DLC is out.

I don't know to me comments like this:

"Shadow of Mordor is a triumph, its final irony being that it's arguably the best and most pure Assassin's Creed game to date"

...don't really inspire me to check out the game, because I'm not really interested in seeing the pinnacle of console style games on the PC. Not my cup of tea.

What I've been reading is that it's like the batman arkam games or assassin's creed in a LOTRO setting. Not my thing at all. I don't need to run around biff bamming endless enemies with cheeseball arcade/console like button mash combos.

I have read that it has good mouse/keyboard controls, so I guess that's a plus and better than most console games/ports manage in their total disdain for PC.

This is another of those "could be interesting but doubt I'd ever finish it since it's a console game" kinds of games that is not a must purchase for me, and I'll wait til it's on sale for 75% off to finally buy it and barely touch it.

I'm still checking it out in case there's more too it.

I wouldn't dump on games just because they do well on console. You shouldn't expect anything really complex but they can still be fun.

I loved Rockstar's Batman games though wasn't so thrilled with Assassin's Creed so I'm not at all sure what to make of this one. The Nemesis system does sound fun. The setting all being in ugly Mordor doesn't. Decisions decisions...

So anyone on the Watch played it yet? so we can have a real opinion ?

GothicGothicness said:

So anyone on the Watch played it yet? so we can have a real opinion ?

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You haven't been paying attention, have you?

Check some of the other Mordor threads for opinions.