Off the Shelf Media

It’s been a few years with this game’s release but with the recent Steam Summer Sale, I was able to pick it up for around $6. I am having a hard time remembering the exact price because of how long I was playing it. Certainly worth that price tag but it is not a flawless experience that age can give a free pass for. It’s a classic Warner Brothers title like their  Arkham or Mad Max but with a unique twist. Those titles are all worth a playthrough and maybe sometime we will get around to releasing a Mad Max review because that title is probably one of the most slept-on that deserves praise. I digress, it’s time to slap some opinions on what looks like the most trademarked title I’ve ever seen.

Gameplay: 2

To be even more clear this is not the first game. That would be Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, which is also a good game worth playing but maybe a bit rougher around the edges as it was the first installment, certainly not as long but sadly I had played on its original release, long before the idea of reviews came to mind. Looking back, I had around 30 hours dumped into a single playthrough and for Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, I have more than 20 additional hours. This is the first point about this game that serves as a double-edged sword. Certainly, plenty of content to occupy yourself with and in a very familiar package, a classic example of ‘if it isn’t broken…’ but some things were.

The movement mechanics in this game are not very good. Some of the worst target locking for climbing and combat I have played and the default controls will cause you to trip over yourself. Something about making the ‘climb down’ and ‘stealth dominate’ buttons the same should have been an obvious red flag and corrected before release, it’s annoying for a player to have to change such a pivotal mapping when many of the other options are already in use. Before the comments about being able to change the button scheme start, this was the scheme the makers of the game thought was best. While the button mapping is a fresh issue, I distinctly remember the climbing and target lock being my biggest gripes with the first instalment which is disheartening to see them persist in the next iteration. The method seemingly used to balance this movement issue is the enemy NPCs not really having any observation unless you are within three feet of them and a sprint that is long enough to cross an entire map at the speed of a small sedan. Perhaps the issue exists because this unaware enemy gameplay made sense with the setting but more often than not, it left me laughing at how close I had to get and annoyed by the frequency I could just sprint out of combat with zero repercussions. It’s not like Assassin’s Creed (which this game constantly mocks if you eavesdrop on Ork conversations) where being discovered means a relentless chase by the pursuing enemies which gives your detection or stealth some heft to its action. Stealth is a joke in this game which is slightly frustrating when you are asked, even if it is very few times, to not be detected at all at certain points. It really highlights the inaccurate controls. Similarly, this inaccuracy with target lock-in combat only persists at the worst possible moment.

The Warner Brothers combat style is great, it offers a satisfying, highly animated, superhuman, fast-paced lung and closes the gap no matter the distance fighting mechanic that creates an enjoyable game loop. The countless fights you get in will almost always end with your character’s prowess lording over the many fallen combatants that stood in your way. Unless of course, your health runs low, and rather than being able to dominate the captain you whittled down to low health and end the entire fight the game determines you were attempting to drain the life of your nearby ally which takes about three times as long and results with your death from a lone archer on the other side of the fight. I can firmly say that every death except for one was a result of this failure to lock onto the nearest logical target or was the main cause my health had dropped so low, to begin with. The majority of the time the combat is no contest. Even if it drops low you can run a total of five feet around the corner and guarantee your pursuers will hardly put a chase on the nearest rooftop.

That kind of maneuver does not feel like part of the game. It’s frustrating to be diminished most commonly by poor control and secondly by lack of skills unlocked. The length of the game is tied almost directly to the skills you have unlocked which is certainly fair, it’s a good metric to define it but with 54 hours in the game, I had not unlocked all of these skills until hour 50. That is a big commitment to play a game for so long and it does not really feel like it has taken form after you have devoted so much time. Do not get me wrong, you will be able to find victory more often than not but the clunky feeling stands in the way until the very end. The game is not suddenly easier but rather all the tools are at your disposal. The overall experience remains enjoyable because of the Nemesis System. 

Story: 0

Warner Brothers I believe patented the game’s enemy and combat systems, which is really the reason you sink your teeth into these two games. The story, playing in the backdrop of The Lord of the Rings, does little more than move you from point A to B to understand the system in depth. It is not bad but to be based on one of the greatest literary franchises of all time it certainly falls short of remotely equal. To fill the gap of slapstick dialogue between the orcs you dominate early to explain the system and the short and forgettable ‘main story’ the core gameplay shines so boldly in comparison to everything else in the game. Essentially, before each player is a set of random enemies that are generated by the passage of time or if they manage to slay your character. The enemies serve as high-level captains, they are unique bosses that have certain abilities and skills, sometimes by how they win or are defeated but largely randomly generated. You can kill one of these captains and they might return based on their demise such as in the event you lit them on fire and now they seek their revenge but are now described as “The Burned.” It keeps the game fresh and progresses naturally. They will celebrate your defeat and offer a chance for revenge or sneak up and confront you as you plot the demise of another. It easily gives the player 30 hours of gameplay without even worrying about the official objective.

The biggest issue with this game mechanic is that no one else can use it without being anointed by the divine Warner Brothers. No other game has even entered the rumor mill of using it but many have copied the system similarly, like Ghost Recon Wildlands, a good game in its own right but the core concept is hunting down lieutenants, slowly climbing up the cartel’s ladder until you get to the leader. If the Nemesis System could have been implemented that game would have an unlimited amount of possible playtime. It is an incredibly well-made system and I can understand wanting to hold onto it but there is nothing in the pipeline which is the most disheartening part of the game. It’s a good edition, a commendable work, but sitting atop this mechanic like Smaug himself is so nearsighted. I can only hope the next iteration will see more improvement than these two games. To be so incredibly close to a flawless experience makes the gap more noticeable. If only the first game existed I would wait ecstatically but because the improvements from these two titles are hardly noticeable, not worse but not even a comparable give and take between the two it feels empty-hearted. Not an unexpected role from a major game developer but why not let the Nemesis System stretch its legs in another franchise? Why not offer it to a sequel of the original Mad Max that was released almost ten years ago? It would be the perfect fit provided the restrictions of advancement in the game had more to do with randomly generated loot than the necessary skills to play the game in its entirety.

Atmosphere: 2

As a whole, the game feels good. The majority of your time is spent in fun combat but the requirements to proceed will shut you down. It would be better served to have most of the skills at your disposal and any leveling or upgrading further improves the potency. Skyrim is a good example as most of the skills you unlock in the player tree do not give you new abilities but rather improve the core skills you have, this is not absolute but it makes the new skills you unlock feel pivotal and well-earned but not necessary to be dominant if you have honed your playstyle. This game wears on you like tiny cuts, making the ending seem tiresome and those small moments that get in the way could have certainly been mitigated. One such example is the forced dialogue you encounter when a captain detects you. A lot of them are well appreciated and flex the strength of the engine with the commentary pertaining directly to the actions your character has made or to the relevant skills of the captain, certainly a cool feature. But by the time you encounter your 30^th captain and they only laugh maniacally or drone about your death for an extended period without a single option to skip the tone sets in, this is only worsened if you encounter multiple captains at a time, which you will, and by the endgame it only serves as an annoying pause in the action that stops just to have you realize your character is now reoriented and the target lock is going to pick an enemy you do not intend to go after.

Shadow of War is a fun game to play but I would suggest Shadow of Mordor first and if that is enough to satisfy you without wanting more then stop. The improvements in the next game will not leave you writing home about it or singing its high praise. It will only have you wanting something better that could be done with a great mechanic.

Value: 2

The gameplay is the reason you buy this game. Do not be fooled with any other reasoning you might see online or any other hype. I know people are more sensitive about J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, and for good reason, but I am not opinionated enough to go into if this game lives up to the canon or not, I’ll defer to the Lord of the Rings scholars for that. The story gets in the way of the gameplay and is embarrassing while teaching you about the Nemesis System. The atmosphere is good and certainly makes the relentless murder acceptable seeing as you destroy waves of creatures created through pure evil. The value is excellent and probably was also at the time of release and now you can pick up both games for under $20 is a no-brainer. Probably worth $30 given today’s standards but honestly the amount of time needed to sink into this game to enter the late stage is a negative.

Duration: 0

It is an odd blend that should be noticeable to spot for a game such as Shadow of War. To have progression so dependent on skills and not the unique weapon and armor systems seems like maybe testing was not as thorough as it should have been. Even with all the time I dedicated to the game I have one or two complete sets of weapons and armor but one for certain is a byproduct of finishing the main campaign. The abilities and bonuses these sets give you are well worth it but are hardly utilized because of the limited exposure they get unless you focus all your time hunting them down. This leads me to think that the developers or someone high on the totem pole did not see the forest through the trees; This game didn’t need a story to be good or much of the core skills locked behind such a slow-moving leveling system. It needed unbridled freedom which for most of the game is present but looking back I was happy to uninstall this title after completion because the game system that inspires unlimited playability wore me down with the surrounding grindy mechanics that did not feel rewarding.

Total Score: 6/10

It’s a good game, but its age is very easy to notice while playing. It is a good thing when it comes to price but bad if you want to describe the game as fluid. You can probably predict that the worst part about this game is the fact that the Nemesis System remains a buried ruin in an awkward state, trapped from reaching its full potential for seemingly no reason. In closing, I would warn against getting this game for a die-hard ‘LotR’ fan because it is an incredibly loose correlation to the actual stories, then again most recent media from the universe has lost any serious relation. It does some things well but the majority is just a casual setting.