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Qtttp: Shadow of Mordor

It's worth that amount, yeah. You have three-five hours of decent braindead entertainment before ugly repetitiveness kicks in, that's why I'm literally zero hyped for Mordor at War or whatevs it's called
 
The crucial part is whether you will like the combat system or not.

I liked it even though i didn't enjoyed the combat at all in batman games. To me it feels satisfying killing orcs while using all the different abilities. I like raising alarms and then going in a horde of orcs (or was it uruks) and trying to fight them all along with the bosses.
 
GAF overhyped this game pretty hard but it's definitely solid and at $4 it's a no brainer. It's easily worth 10x that much without hesitation.

Go for it.
 
As someone who has less time than money these days, I played SoM over its free weekend on Steam and I didn't find it worth my time. I played it for 4-6 hours and it was already feeling repetitive.

Plus, I feel like an open world game needs an interesting open world. The brown/gray Mordor full of orks and uruk is not an interesting world.

It's certainly a polished game so anyone who thinks it's the worst game of their lives is just being ridiculous. I just feel like SoM is a standard open world game that checks all the boxes without adding anything interesting.
 
I fall asleep watching Lord of the Rings every time, but I played through this and will definitely play through the sequel. The gameplay is pretty great.
 
No hyperbole at all, and I strongly disagree that the game has solid mechanics.

That said I generally don't play games I expect to be bad. I expected SoM to be mediocre, but it was on sale and got great reviews so I decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be worse than I could have imagined.

Only game coming to mind which competes for the worst I've played would be Mega Man X7... maybe there are others I've forgotten.


No hyperbole at all? So you’ve seen someone “vomit toothpicks” and they look “literally” identical? Cause I’m gonna assume that no, you haven’t.
 
Oh for sure. The LOTR setting is far from the best part or essential. In fact, not caring about LOTR may arguably make you enjoy it more. It's a very fun game.
 
One thing that doesn't get mentioned enough is how many little dynamic scenarios play out in the open world. The hostile creatures will attack human slaves and their Orc masters as easily as they'll attack enemy bosses. An orc guard might be eaten by a Caragor causing the slaves to make a run, causing patrolling Orcs to run in chase, maybe bringing their warband leader along with them. That warband leader might end up crossing paths with an enemy warband, with a fight then ensuing, and then maybe a Graug happens to be going by leading to full scale chaos. Then you add the player to the mix, who can just watch it all unfold, or try to influence events to their own purpose.

The game is meant to spark these kinds of events and little stories, and color each player's experience. It could be better at achieving that than it is, but its the right kind of ambition imho, and it succeeds more than most.
 
No hyperbole detected, I completely agree with him. There's technically worse games for sure, so much worse in fact, but those games have a personality; they are memorable. For all the wrong reasons perhaps, but that's besides the point. I'd say Shadow of Mordor and Rise of the Tomb Raider are some of the absolute worst games I've ever played in my life and I've played literally thousands. They offend me to the core and I hate everything about them even if on the surface things seem fine: technically good graphics (zero style though, just homogenized to hell), decent control (though rarely any actual player-input required). I have zero faith the sequel is gonna be any better, from what I saw in some random trailer it looks just as bad.

This still looks like hyperbole, especially when another highly rated game is also brought in to the mix. I think there's a difference between games that "seem fine" but you just hate and actually bad games.

One of the worst games I've played is Transformers: The Game. That janky abomination was in no way saved by a personality and is only memorable for being so utterly terrible in almost every conceivable way; the transformation animations were pretty good, jarringly better than anything else in the game! The gunplay is probably the weakest I've seen in any game, almost no visual and audible feedback, leading me to question whether Bumblebee's guns were actually firing! There was certainly no "seems fine on the surface" about it. By comparison, Shadow of Mordor is a masterpiece of competent game design and for me translates to something actually entertaining to play and is objectively far better.
 
No hyperbole at all, and I strongly disagree that the game has solid mechanics.

That said I generally don't play games I expect to be bad. I expected SoM to be mediocre, but it was on sale and got great reviews so I decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be worse than I could have imagined.

Only game coming to mind which competes for the worst I've played would be Mega Man X7... maybe there are others I've forgotten.


First thing you said about it was it looked like someone vomited toothpicks. I'm gonna go out a limb and say you've never seen anyone vomit toothpicks out so yes you are being hyperbolic. And while SoM is very bland and uninspired, it doesn't look like someone vomited toothpicks. Its just grey and brown all over which is boring looking. And the combat is the Arkham combat system. There's a reason why every 3rd person action game rips it off. Because its easy to implement and easy for players to use and gives them a ton of control and good feedback.

You just cannot have played all that many games. There are plenty of legitimate complaints about SoM, but if it's the worst game you've ever played you must stick solely to some pretty top notch games, and never play anything but.

I can't see how you can say that mechanics aren't "solid". They work, combat works, the nemesis system works as it is intended. If they aren't to your tastes fair enough but they are objectively functional, and work to their intended purpose.

You mentioned about the combat being essentially mindless. Admittedly it is a system geared toward spectacle rather than difficulty, but to call it insulting does it a disservice. It's rhythmic, visceral and generally pleasing to look at. The later abilities can trivialise proceedings but they are still fun to use. It's a fairly faithful adaptation of what is now a well established (albeit probably overused) combat system.


OT: It's a fun game. It isn't a great Tolkien story, but dips its toe into the lore. Combat is fun for the most part, and the nemesis system allows for some pretty memorable encounters.

The complaints about the story and barren world are legit, but based on the fact that you like AC and Batman, definitely go for it.

Agreed. Tailon is way too powerful but its still fun to just murder a bunch of orcs.

No hyperbole detected, I completely agree with him. There's technically worse games for sure, so much worse in fact, but those games have a personality; they are memorable. For all the wrong reasons perhaps, but that's besides the point. I'd say Shadow of Mordor and Rise of the Tomb Raider are some of the absolute worst games I've ever played in my life and I've played literally thousands. They offend me to the core and I hate everything about them even if on the surface things seem fine: technically good graphics (zero style though, just homogenized to hell), decent control (though rarely any actual player-input required). I have zero faith the sequel is gonna be any better, from what I saw in some random trailer it looks just as bad.

But that's not what he said? He said everything about it was garbage. EVERYTHING. Not just its technically fine but its a soulless game with no heart like your saying. He thinks everything about the game unredeemable trash which is just silly because it honestly isn't that bad. He also apparently thinks its a worse game than shit like Superman 64, Sonic 06, Silver Surfer, Bat Rats, etc because he said its the worst game he's ever played. I didn't like the game because it was too easy and the art style was trash but I can't get on that level. It has some qualities.
 
Look, I was totally underwhelmed by SoM when I played it. It's not my cup of tea. But I can also recognize that lots of people - particularly people who like the games it directly evokes the most, like AC and Arkham! - will enjoy it. Don't understand why people can't acknowledge that distinction.
 
I am trying to like it. But the whole leader thing is getting on my nerves. They are always surrounded by 20 guys. And some many times you are fighting on and suddenly another one shows up.

That's kind of why I liked it. The world was living and anything could happen. Early on getting ganged up on was brutal and usually involved me running away but by the end I was so strong that I was taking on warchiefs and not even bothering with taking out any of his subordinates beforehand.
 
I finally started playing this game on Xbox One last week and am absolutely loving it. The combat is fun and vicious, the upgrade trees are pretty rewarding with some really cool abilities, and it's honestly refreshing how small the open world is in this game.

It's small, but absolutely packed with a bunch of fun stuff to do. There are some collectables, but not much at all, and collecting it gives you some meaningful stuff to craft new abilities.

The nemesis system completely lives up to what I heard about - in my ~10 hours of play I've encountered a ton of memorable captains and warchiefs.


I went into this game expecting a short diversion I would quickly grow tired of, but instead it's turned into something I simply want to be playing all the time. My only complaint is about the input lag on aiming, but from what I've read it exists on PS4 also, and I've gotten used to it well enough anyway.
 
One thing that doesn't get mentioned enough is how many little dynamic scenarios play out in the open world. The hostile creatures will attack human slaves and their Orc masters as easily as they'll attack enemy bosses. An orc guard might be eaten by a Caragor causing the slaves to make a run, causing patrolling Orcs to run in chase, maybe bringing their warband leader along with them. That warband leader might end up crossing paths with an enemy warband, with a fight then ensuing, and then maybe a Graug happens to be going by leading to full scale chaos. Then you add the player to the mix, who can just watch it all unfold, or try to influence events to their own purpose.

The game is meant to spark these kinds of events and little stories, and color each player's experience. It could be better at achieving that than it is, but its the right kind of ambition imho, and it succeeds more than most.

I agree. If you watch the world from up high for a while it gets interesting.

I ran into a new Elite Captain last night whilst riding a Caragor and he was all "...Ohhhhh, you've brought your mother with you...". I like things like that.
 
I bought this for something like 7€ because I'm a tolkien fan, never played AC or the Arkham games but I liked XCX and love Zelda. I felt bored after 30 mins, it just seemed uninspired and pointless. Also being put in the middle of a warzone at the start of the game, with multiple objective and the map being a complete clusterfuck of icons and objectives was overwhelming. I prefer slower games for a start but to each his own I guess. Uninstalled and never touched it again
 
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