Honestly, none of these videos have managed to impress me, but it could end up being a decent cocktail of different games, I guess. The presentation/characters are a bit on the generic side, but it's Monolith, so I shall give it the benefit of the doubt
(I only hope it's not too "automatized" - combat included, hate being treated like a puppet when I play)
I had the unique experience of playing Shadow of Mordor immediately after playing Batman: Arkham Knight, which made the symmetries between the two games’ combat systems even more apparent. Fighting in Shadow of Mordor feels like being Batman with a sword, sans his pesky “do not viciously impale” oath. Talion, the revenge-seeking, Aragorny lead of the game, pops seamlessly between individual orcs that encircle him, parrying enemy attacks that are telegraphed with UI, comboing off basic attacks and execution moves, flip-jumping over the heads of enemies to get behind them. It’s smooth, elegant, and satisfying to be an orc-killer.
There are different tools in the toolbelt, of course (like mind control, your bow, and magic), but broadly it’s a terrific idea to adapt Batman’s combat system for a new franchise; it reveals the thinking that went into WB’s decision to greenlight what’s essentially an open-world, LOTR-branded Assassin’s Creed game built in their tech. WB has taken a license that’s been lying dormant in gaming as it’s in the midst of a trilogy in film, pairing it with a developer whose most recent experiments (Guardians of Middle-Earth and Gotham City Imposters) didn’t catch on.
Assassin’s Creed being Ubisoft’s best-selling franchise, this is arguably the safest thing WB could’ve done, but I think it’s actually quite bold of WB to push out a licensed game that’s almost entirely systems-driven. The centerpiece of Shadow of Mordor is its Nemesis system, a kind of dynamic pecking order for the randomly-generated orc warlords that populate the game’s open world. These figures have their own strengths, bodyguards, and fears (like fire), and they’ll rank up within the hierarchy if they kill you or challenge one of their peers and win.
I experimented with this system over about 20 minutes of gameplay—probably not an ideal amount of time—but enough to get a sense of how the Nemesis system operates in principle. Pausing the game reveals a menu that visualizes a dozen-some orcs like a field of chess pieces. Each of these orcs is a real, active character in the world—they might be a warchief, captain, or even one of Sauron’s Black Captains. The goal I was given initially was to install a captain I’d mind-controlled in as a warchief. After hunting one of these orcs down in-game, and weakening them sufficiently to put them under my Wraith power, I had the option to initiate an assassination attempt on the warchief my brainwashed captain served.
This triggered a special mission inside a wood-walled fortress. Scaling the walls of the fort without detection, I made my way to an overlook to see the warboss rallying dozens of low-level orcs beside my lieutenant. My lieutenant initiated the assassination attempt on my command, injuring but not killing the warchief, a maneuver that succeeds or fails based on their comparative power rating, I’m told. From there all hell broke loose: the camp was flooded with more orcs than I could gut, and only a few deliberately-placed explosive barrels (which I could fire arrows at in slow motion by expending Wraith power) thinned the orc horde enough for me to stay alive.
Eventually the warchief is wounded enough to turn tail and run (an event that’s presented by the camera swirling to the warchief’s position as he delivers the equivalent of a “I’ll get you next time!”) line, and the battle—if I choose to—turns into a pursuit sequence from there. I was out of arrows, which I could’ve used to leg the warchief and slow him down, so I had to chase him as he fled through the open world. This wasn’t simple platforming; to close the gap I had to seek out tiny shortcuts and jab the sprint button whenever I fell from a decent height, a micro QTE that grants Talion a small speed boost.
Once I caught him, killing him was easy—without having to fend off his bodyguards, taking him down was relatively simple, button-mashy work. With the warchief dead, my lieutenant was promoted to take his place—something that only happened because he was lucky enough to survive the coup d'état attempt
Looks like a safe, console-targeted game for the derpified generation. Also crap controls for PC, weird/autocentering camera, no fov adjustment, push-one-button-to-win combat, 2009 graphics, focus feature (see ALL or see through walls), no real challenge, only 1 neuron required to play, been there - done that game, etc. etc.
So if you "die", you come back because you're a wraith, and you can mindfuck Sauron's soldiers and build your own army.
Alrighty then.
so we can play as The Evil Badess Motherfucker character? Fine by me then. Gimme Evil ending too! Let me consume Sauron's soul, conquer Middle Earth and eat Frodo for lunch.
The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.
Focus vision, bullet time, one-buton actions to win, a 55 FOV, a disgusting console camera control, an uber-size UI, a super-human protagonist that can super-jump, super-teleport and insta-kill...
This seems really good. Lots of potential to manipulate the orcs so they face off against one another so you don't have to waste your time to kill them. They'll do it for you
The ultimate goal seems to be to take control of the 5 war chiefs by any means necessary and ruin Saurons plans.
It's going on my "To Buy" list that's for sure
Not sure if already posted but just watched this other developer chat and demo.
One type of environment / one type of lightning, that will get old within 10 minutes (yes i know for example DS is also dark throughout the game, but this game doesnt seem to have the same great and varied level design at all). Also there seems to be only 1 death for the orcs (cutting off their heads), just by looking at these videos it's now already old :/
Last edited by vurt on Sat, 14th Jun 2014 09:17; edited 1 time in total
Well, is was a malicious assertion. Probably because there is way too much "derp" in this game for my personal taste, hence the negation of any potentially valid positive aspect of the game.
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