Gadgetory

what's up internet Kevin here and today i'm talking about middle-earth shadow of Mordor which is available on the xbox one ps4 and PC and eventually the xbox 360 and ps3 all the game player seen here is based on the ps4 and today we're going to talk about my experiences with it for the past 24 hours now this is a new original game taking place in the Lord of the Rings universe that draws heavily upon the series mythos to create an original new side story taking place between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings players take on the role of talion one of the last Rangers of Gondor who's now a sort of undead abomination fused with an ancient elven Wraith granting him some superhuman abilities and a small case of immortality now if you're looking at the gameplay you've seen so far in a thinking man that looks all like Assassin's Creed well that's because it draws really heavily on that fusion of action and stealth mechanics that Assassin's Creed made popular and was refined by the batman arkham game series but of course it has a few of its own little twists and spins on it to make it its own now to begin with though let's talk about the presentation which this game has done an excellent job of so far graphically the game is beautiful great weather effects and the music very much brings to life that cinematic Lord of the Rings feel one thing I've really appreciated so far is just the attention to detail going on in this game enemy banter is consistently up to date based on things you've been doing in game and any captain's that you cross swords with a number of times remember you and remark on that fact especially if they've dealt you a finishing blow in the past and the game's writing has done an excellent job lining up with the series lore while not laying on the obvious reference is too thick with only one particularly big name character making repeat appearances so far mechanics wise if you've played the batman arkham games then you'll feel right at home here combat is focused on rewarding timing players build up a combo score for repeated attacks which can then be periodically cashed in for a powerful finishing move or AoE stun and precise timing is needed to pair your dodge enemy sword blows to keep the chain going the game also implements an interesting last stand mechanic whereas whenever you're about to die and an enemy attempts to finish you off a small and surprisingly difficult at times QuickTime animation occurs giving you the chance to fight back and stand back up though this can only be done a few times back to back with each new attempt getting harder than the last usually leading to an auto fail it's also worth noting that the fluidity of common animations in this game are just perfect the camera is always right where it needs to be to where you never feel like there's some off-screen enemies ruining your day and the way the game shifts between actual gameplay and finishing move animations or last stands is fantastic even interrupting your own actions for a parry or ground execute never looks that awkward there seems to be a transitional animation for any situation which really helps make the combat look consistently beautiful novel the combat system has been excellent so far the stealth mechanics on the other hand have been just a tad bit wonky err enemy awareness is absolutely terrible having enemies not notice you even when you're crouched walking directly in front of them while they're staring at you and while they may notice you at the last second you still get rewarded with a stealth kill though thankfully this isn't always the case when groups of enemies are involved orcs tend to travel in large enough packs that it's never too easy to just assassinate every single one of them methodically but you can definitely thin out their archers and stragglers with ease considering how blind they are to someone lightly hugging the ground now of course this game does include some RPG mechanics as well in two major forms one you can level up your character and two you get ruins that you can equip to your weapons as you kill enemies and complete quests you'll gain experience power and currency which all goes towards unlocking and purchasing various upgrades some fairly standard passive stuff like more health or ammo capacity and more specific new activatable abilities like being able to do drop assassinations or ride while animals as mounts as for the runes you collect these from killing powerful enemies which can then be equipped to your sword dagger or bow to grant you different combat bonuses like certain actions or gaining health or bonus damage under the right conditions now all of these mechanics so far are all well and good but the one mechanic that seems to be the real focal point of this game is the orc chain of command basically the orc army is an ever-shifting mixture of leaders that changes due to internal power struggles or from you murdering them one by one and your actions in the game helped a shift who gets power where for instance killing one captain will open up a vacancy for another captain to get promoted into or getting killed by a random orc will net them a name and a promotion turning them into one of the various captains captains are much tougher to kill than regular orcs and intel gathering from certain enemies is essential to make your job easier allowing you to track down a particular captain's whereabouts and knowing what kind of attacks are vulnerable to in some cases even dying in a single hit using the correct methods such as sniping or a sneak attack it's actually a really interesting spin on the way Assassin's Creed has done things in the past where everything is usually very much spoon fed to you you know you're given a very specific mission to find this specific man and kill him the way the mission tells you to whereas in this game it's forcing you to do your own legwork you have to collect Intel and find out how you can best and most easily kill a certain captain of course you can't choose just to attack whatever captain you randomly see but that is almost always a recipe for destruction because you're probably gonna end up running in to one or two more of them at once and then just find yourself getting Boromir it does get a little on the annoying side at times if you focus on trying to kill one guy at a time only to end up running into one or two others and they all gang up on you but I have yet to decide if this is just terrible luck and location generating or if it's an intentional decision to force players to have to choose their battles wisely be quick and never try to handle 50 orcs by yourself so so far after playing it for a full day my current feelings are a bit of a mixture between love and frustration the lower accuracy attention to detail combat mechanics individuals all make me really love the overall experience of this game but there's several moments where I found myself just getting really frustrated with how many captains the game throws at you one after another after another my biggest concern as of right now is how monotonous the rest of this game ends up getting if every mission boils down to just the captain system of getting Intel and killed this specific work it might just start to wear a little thin but if more interesting mechanics get added with time and the game's story continues to be engaging this game could definitely be a real big winner for this year especially for Tolkien and Assassin's Creed fans so I'm just going to go ahead and keep pouring some more time into this game and hopefully have a full review ready for you guys sometime early next week until then though thank you so much for checking out today's video if you enjoyed it please hit that thumbs up button to let me know as well as subscribe if you have yet to I've also got a couple of things of interest linked down below so make sure to check out that description until next time guys I'm Kevin kensun and I'll see you later you