It is a pleasure to leap onto roaming orcs from above, and a delight to ride a caragor across the land, galloping into dangerous strongholds as if to boast to the orcs of your dubious immortality. Meanwhile, Shadow of Mordor’s moment-to-moment gameplay is as excellent as we expect from the developer of such lauded games as Condemned: Criminal Origins, F.E.A.R., and No One Lives Forever. It isn’t just about having options-it’s about how meaningful those options are. If you’ve grown accustomed to charging your way through these types of games with relative ease, you must change your approach-and that means experimenting with stealth and environmental possibilities more than you might in a similar game.

And with one simple tweak comes a consequence that makes all the difference in the world: Shadow of Mordor is challenging. The combat is from the Arkham Asylum school of rhythmic blows, but you might be so overrun by nearby orcs that the only reasonable reaction is to flee rather than fight. Developer Monolith’s greater triumph is that it crafted a game that felt so fresh out of recognizable elements. Now Playing: GameSpot's 2014 Overall Game of the Year - Middle-earth: Shadow of MordorĪ lot of attention has been paid to the nemesis system already, however. And when you next meet, he will bellow his displeasure before unleashing vengeance.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's His facial scars will be a roadmap of the brutality you forced him to endure. In the blink of an eye, everything is taken from you - your friends, your family, and even your own life. You are Talion, a Ranger of the Black Gate, keeping watch over Mordor which has remained undisturbed for ages. The Uruk that got away will remember your face. Winner of over 50 Best of 2014 Awards including Game of the Year, Best Action Game and Most Innovative Game. In Shadow of Mordor, your enemies aren’t just the ones the game tells you about, but the ones you make on your own as you hack and slash your way through the game’s parched environments. The mechanic is the one from 2014 most likely to influence systems-driven games in the years to come. What makes Shadow of Mordor special, however, is how it improves on that stealth-action-parkour formula while simultaneously introducing its own unique element: the nemesis system. Indeed, Shadow of Mordor does more than nod at that other game series-it fully embraces it. You could argue with some success, for instance, that Shadow of Mordor is Assassin’s Creed in the Lord of the Rings, given its focus on fluid parkour, the manner in which you scale tall towers to unlock new missions and gain access to new areas, and the diversity of ways in which to assassinate your foes. It’s impossible to overlook the obvious: that Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was built on the shoulders of giants.

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