Shadow of Mordor

[Tar-Jêx]

Now that Shadow of Mordor is out, I'm seriously considering buying it.
It's basically the Batman Arkham games, with a lot of orc killing, a severely lore broken story which makes no sense, some more orc killing, a political system, and a nice open world.

Because of the awful artistic license taken on the story, I'm going to go out of my way to avoid all of these wraith abilities and things. I've heard from a multitude of people that some things you can't avoid, which is unfortunate, but it's probably still worth playing the game just for a nice deal of fun.

Thoughts?

[Zigûr]

Back in January I had a short-lived discussion about it here:

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=18621

Having played Assassin's Creed 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations and some of 3 and 4 in the last few years (goodness knows why, I think the historical gimmick and the climbing buildings gimmick suckered me in) I think I'm a bit burned out on this kind of action game.

I played the Battle for Middle-earth strategy games but they were basically just interpretations of events from the books (and films of course). I'm not so interested in some fan-fic a bunch of game developers (who let's face it, are not in a profession generally renowned for great writing in the mainstream Triple-A industry at least) have cooked up.

This is why I said in the other thread that the Kin-strife might be good fodder for a game: lots of juicy racism, extremely violent, obvious villain (Castamir), also doesn't have to wildly contradict original narrative material.

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Back in January I had a short-lived discussion about it here:

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=18621

Having played Assassin's Creed 1, 2, Brotherhood, Revelations and some of 3 and 4 in the last few years (goodness knows why, I think the historical gimmick and the climbing buildings gimmick suckered me in) I think I'm a bit burned out on this kind of action game.

I played the Battle for Middle-earth strategy games but they were basically just interpretations of events from the books (and films of course). I'm not so interested in some fan-fic a bunch of game developers (who let's face it, are not in a profession generally renowned for great writing in the mainstream Triple-A industry at least) have cooked up.

This is why I said in the other thread that the Kin-strife might be good fodder for a game: lots of juicy racism, extremely violent, obvious villain (Castamir), also doesn't have to wildly contradict original narrative material.

I played Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood, along with Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. This was quite a while ago, though, when they were released. I don't think I'm burned out quite completely.

The nemesis system looks very interesting and worth playing around with. I've never really experienced good orc killing before, because War in the North just fell so very flat for me, so I think I would enjoy that aspect of it.

It seems like that after a few driver updates, it will be running reasonably well. After watching TotalBiscuit's *** is... video on it, I'm pretty sure I can try and snag it at the end of the year.

[Kuruharan]

It is things like this game that make me wish pop culture would leave Tolkien alone.

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

It is things like this game that make me wish pop culture would leave Tolkien alone.

I'm sort of on the fence about this. I do love a good deal of orc killing, and walking through Middle Earth, but when someone tries to tamper with the lore, I just can't stand it, especially when it doesn't even make any sense. If they wanted to do their own lore, they should at least not make it clash with anything, and work hard for it to be realistic in setting and make sense.

[Eruhen]

Whazzat? Walking through Middle-earth? Orc killing? Anger at lore-tampering?

Have you checked this out?

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Eruhen

Have you checked this out?

Yes, and from a lore perspective it is pretty awful.

So, being a masochist, and in some small way wanting to try to give it a fair shake, but mostly thinking "surely this will be just as bad as I expect", I started watching a Let's Play of Shadow of Mordor.

It did not disappoint. I immediately noted that the orcs looked like something straight out of Warhammer or World of Warcraft. However, I did not intend to come here and comment on that.

Then the LPer even commented that the orcs looked like something out of Warhammer or World of Warcraft. I still did not intend to come here and comment on that.

However, when I saw Thrall from his young gangsta days I could no longer resist.

As a minor aside, I just discovered that WB made every LPer they could get their hands on take down their videos of the game. The cynical mind wonders if they have something to hide.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

As a minor aside, I just discovered that WB made every LPer they could get their hands on take down their videos of the game. The cynical mind wonders if they have something to hide.

I'm not one hundred per cent sure but I think it's something to do with:
a) who gets advertising money from the video, which is used as the excuse for:
b) big companies like WB are scared that Let's Play videos will put people off getting the game or they will watch the video instead of bothering to buy the game. It's especially problematic, I think, in this time when big-budget modern video games are so devoted to flashy graphics and spectacle. Often people care more about seeing what happens than playing it themselves, probably because these games are so repetitive.

This is just more dilution of Tolkien into 'franchise' and 'product,' a process which will continue to hold back the efforts to have these texts taken seriously as literature.