Shadow of Mordor - A little something something
0yep... Shadow of Mordor. The clips include:
- amazing AI.
- some way to manipulate/overcome the targeting system. Also distract failed to register either due to the enemy's animation or some background process, see the new mission overlay.
- standing in the air... not sure if the captain's anger has anything to do with it. There is another inconsistent way to reproduce a similar effect though, maybe next time.
- one of many reason that giving me control while briefing me on the mission or giving me exposition is a dumb idea.
- a branded captain stopped giving a shit midst recruiting. Escaping it completed the mission though...
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And then a long thought... PC, played on default options, lowest graphical settings, now at about 70% into the story.
The landscape and the bow reminded me somewhat of Shadow of the Collossus, and the stealth element reminded me of the Ps2 era Tenchu, both a better game/series than this one. Otherwise, it's just another rebrand of Assassin's Creed, which I've never played.
About the story, I never liked LOTR. Other than some cameo and name drops, everything can be replaced by anything & it wouldn't have mattered to me. Generic storyline, generic setting, same old generic main character with stupidly over-emphasis on his bicep vein who looks too young to have a teen-turning-to-adult son, same old crowbarred love interest because his dead wife cum source of vengeange are that forgettable to said forgettable main character.
About the gameplay... oh dear.
It's all about prompts, and you'd live and die by the prompts. There's so much overlapping functions on the same buttons that the only way to know what can be done is based on what command appears on the screen. The targeting system is shit. Not only does it stealth target only those appearing in an arbitrary part of the screen, it has tremendous difficulty picking the right target out of a group, both in stealth and in combat.
Combat wise, bicep vein mostly faces off against a crowd, and there's no quick way to physically tell an enemy's class from another until a berserker makes me regret swinging my sword. The camera will cinematically pivot around bicep vein's majestic ballet, completely throwing all my sense of direction out the window. The finishers' input don't blend well with existing command inputs, Flame Arrow's in particular makes no sense.
Bicep vein's stealth kills always lead to an unskippable mini-cutscene with the camera hurriedly spins to the glorified view of his bicep vein instead of letting me find the best way out of the crime scene. Then there's cutscenes with the captains, for every little things, scared, enraged, dead, love on first sight, all unskippable, prioritising my immediate input, and turns the camera to face it against my will.
Traversal wise, it's sticky. Every jump is a gamble, sometimes bicep vein refuses to climb onto a chest high platform which is obviously climbable, other times he can't let go of cover. He's the kinda bicep vein who willingly swan dives a suicidal height yet is fully determined to dilligently hop down every single rung of a ladder. Also i hate it when run is a button, especially a face button when a trigger is more comfortable to hold for any exended length of time. Plus bicep vein's walk speed is awfully slow to the point that walking is utterly pointless.
I'm not really into the Nemesis system or whatever it's called, it might be a great technical achievement, but it feels like they just tag some buffs on selected enemies, that's it. Probably due to my poor hardware, I've some missions where the captains' model aren't fully loaded in, so i'm seeing the blurred generic burly orc model a moment before they change into their respective models. Basically just a lot of stock dialogues and repeated names randomly tagged onto some models with a selection of colour and armour palletes, then generate random quests tagged to random captains. And i'm not sure it's the wisest usage of processing and memory for a game.
also:
- mission objectives aren't briefed before choosing the mission rather after the mission has started. So i have to waste a few seconds reading them when shits are potentially going down.
- repetitive missions.
- mounts take forever to turn.
- QTEs add only frustration to the game.
- the camera hates me.
Nothing is remotely hidden in this game. Everything is blatantly told and shown and marked on the map. A graphically intensive and demanding world with no joy and reason to explore except for 100% completion.
Yeah, this lengthy post kinda makes up for however long i didn't upload anything, i guess.
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