Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor Impressions

This game is incredibly challenging, but that's the point. As soon as I understood this, the difficulty became motivation for me to play it more rather than driving me away.

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There's a female ranger skin! It's so much more fun to be a badass woman than the main dude.

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When I began the game I was tying not to engage the Nemesis system, just skulking around killing orcs as I was able to while trying to find some of the hidden upgrade items. At the end of my first hour of playtime I was killed by a pair of orc captains and was disappointed to see that both of them had been granted more power as a result of my death. But then when I came back later I started doing a couple of the main missions and started getting into the game a bit more. I'll tell you now that I will definitely be playing this beyond the three hours as I've barely scratched the surface of the combat system and I want to see how the further character upgrades will affect my ability to deal death to the unending swarm of orcs in Mordor.

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It's incredibly weird to have the orc captains reference killing you before, though I suppose it's more from resurrection not being established in Middle Earth before. Unless I'm wrong?

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The setting of the game really helps establish its oppressive tone and grim mood. In Peter Jackson's Return of the King film adaptation we see that Mordor is basically All Orcs All The Time and in Shadow of Mordor it feels much the same. The black landscape reflects the fact that its erstwhile tenants pay little heed to the overall health of anything aside from their war machines, the rock walls and ground often look slimy and dingy in the twilight. Once you unlock the rideable beasts, starting with the Caragor, the landscape becomes even more hostile because any non-tamed Caragor will just as soon eat you as any unwary orc that gets in its way.

I spend as much time as I can in high places so I can scope out the next area I want to get to.

This is Mr. Elf, the wraith who accidentally gets bonded to you in the game's prologue. He gives you Elf Powers.

So, I had to look up Mr. Elf's name on Wikipedia, which is Celebrimbor, because I haven't unlocked it in-game just yet. I think that's revealed later in the game after some more sub-quests. Anyway, his powers are cool, but they can make things a bit complicated during battle. He can drain the life force out of orcs to make them terrified of you, or kill them depending on how wounded they are. Another thing he can do, but with an entirely different key combo, is interrogate orcs for information about the various orc captains littered around the game's map. While drain is simply pressing "E", to interrogate an orc you have to grab him with Ctrl, then hit Space to grab his mind, then hit Space again to rip the intel from his brain.

It wasn't until my most recent play session that I understood the difference and was able to start gathering intel on the various orc captains that were otherwise silhouettes in the "Sauron's Army" screen in the game menu. There are two kinds of Intel: a captain's name, and his weaknesses. You can get names from any orc, but you need to find a specific orc called a Worm and given a different icon on the mini-map in order to get weaknesses to exploit. Captain's weaknesses can vary from being terrified of Caragors to being vulnerable to ranged attacks, though there are strengths you can learn about as well. There were a couple of orc captains, like Pigug Skull Bow for example, who are invulnerable to ranged attacks which means you have to get up close and personal once you find them.

As I mentioned earlier, I am definitely interested in playing this more than my allotted three hours for the blog. At $4 the Game of the Year Edition is an absolute steal, and I've already had enough enjoyment to make it worth what I paid. I don't know that I'll jump on the sequel, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War that's coming out in a couple months, right away. Since its big draw is being able to port your Sauron's Army from Shadow of Mordor into Shadow of War, I think I want to get better at killing orc captains for a while first. Still, Shadow of Mordor delivers on what it presents and if you're into that you'll enjoy the game.