Assassin's Creed: Middle-Earth.
The game, in a nutshell, is Assassin's Creed meets Batman Arkham. You are thrown into two medium-sized environment that have towers peppered about. Climbing this towers, and thus, 'activating' them will reveal the collectibles and sidemissions nearby on your map. Rinse and repeat for every tower. Every area has an assortment of collectibles, that reward you with Lore, as well as side missions that grant you XP or money. Bow missions usually involve marksmanship, dagger missions involve stealth and sword missions are all about combat. In other words, it's as Assassin's Creed as it legally can. That said, while Talion, our hero, is as nimble as any Assassin, both environments in the game are mostly made up of ruins, so buildings are relatively sparse and not very high.
There's also a stealth component, you can hide in bushes, or even use your parkour abilities to drop enemies off of ledges. You can draw enemies towards your hiding spot, in order to kill them, and you can even choose a more violent stealth kill in order to try to scare surrounding enemies away. And don't forget about the mandatory X-Ray/Eagle Vision, so that you can pin-point where enemies lie.
And then, there's combat proper. While you get a bow, that runs on limited ammo that you can recharge by 'branding' enemies, when it comes to taking things close and personal, it's your sword which you'll be using the most. And it's pretty much a straight up copy from Batman Arkham. Mash the attack button, press X to vault over shielded enemies, triangle to counter enemies or O to daze dual-axe wielding Orcs in order to hurt them. Hitting enemies without getting hit raises the combo counter, when it reaches a certain number you can press different combinations of buttons for different special attacks. It's as close to Batman Arkham as it legally can be. Unlike Batman, however, fights can get rather epic and, admittedly. a bit chaotic, considering the enormous amounts of enemies that can be on-screen at the same time. There's no way this game could've ran on the PS3 this well, no way.
And despite how much this game borrows from other games, its main claim to fame was actually patented by Warner Bros. which goes to show you how shameless it can be. I'm talking about the Nemesis system. Basically, there's an assortment of randomly generated Orc captains, with their own names, weaknesses and strengths. If you kill them, if they manage to survive, or if they kill you(as you simply respawn at any tower) they will remember it, sometimes, they may grow resistant to however you killed them. So if you landed a headshot with the bow against them, when they come back they might resist Bow strikes. And it's entirely possible to face an Orc captain who is resistant to melee, ranged and stealth, so you'll have to find other ways to defeat them. It's really cool.
And even better, they randomly roam the lands, so you might be partaking in a side quest and BAM, enemy orc commander comes here to ruin the day. Or you might be battling an Orc Captain only to be assaulted by another one... or even two more of them. It adds a lot of excitement to the game! There are also specially designated enemies, with a green symbol, roaming the environment, which you can question for information on these captains, so that you know what would enrage them(Making them stronger) or scare them.
There's also plenty to upgrade. Money is used to upgrade your health, bow slo-mo, amount of arrows and rune slots for your weapons. XP is used to get more abilities, mostly for combat and then there are the runes themselves. Runes are obtained by slaying Orc Captains, and you can slot them into your weapons for all sorts of bonuses. This edition of the game, as it includes all the DLC, includes some rather powerful runes from the get-go, including one that lets you use the most powerful melee ability from the start.
The graphics are interesting, because while the human characters look a bit mediocre, the orcs are HIDEOUS, in a good way. The story is... it's acceptable. Look, it took some liberties with a few characters, so depending on how much you like Middle Earth you might not enjoy what they did. It's much better when it comes to its own original characters, as I didn't have any expectations out of them. That said... the final boss is a 4-QTE event. That's it.
The GOTY edition comes bundled with a few costumes, which are alright, but also the three DLC pieces. Trials of War are just combat trials, I didn't care about them. Lord of the Hunt is a 2-3 hour mini campaign focusing on capturing and riding monsters. I didn't care much about it, and since the new creatures don't carryover to the main campaign... it felt incredibly superfluous, plus, I don't like Talion's appearance in this one. The story was boring too. The Bright Lord is more interesting, as it takes place before the main campaign and you play as Talion's Wraith companion before he became a Wraith. The gameplay was a bit dull, but what kept me interested was the story. Overall, it was alright, but I'd say that none of the DLC adds anything of worth, you can do just fine with the main game. When I replay this game I won't be playing the DLC again.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a brilliant, brilliant game. It borrows a lot of its elements from other blockbuster games, but they nailed everything, and its own original feature, the Nemesis system, sounds kinda dull, but it does add a lot of flavor to the game. I'd hesitate to call it the best LOTR game ever released, but it's one of the best for sure.
9.0
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