Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

It's not bad. Not bad at all.

The combat flows really well, it's great taking on a dozen Uruk at once. It's pretty much Batman Arkham combat, only you have a sword and your takedowns are brutal slaughter instead of a broken arm. The captains and their paths through the nemesis system work a charm. It's actually cool to see yourself get killed by a lowly mook, only for that to gain them recognition, a promotion, new armour and strengths/weaknesses. Makes hunting them down and getting revenge really satisfying. Not far in enough to try any real power struggles, but based on what I've seen so far it's going to work well. The acrobatics might not be quite as smooth as AssCreed, but they do the job, and the stealth is just better. Was it TotalBiscuit who said it was more Assassin's Creed than Assassin's Creed? He's right, you pick a target, you find his weaknesses, you wait for him to get into a vulnerable position (or arrange for him to get into one), and you strike. Do your homework and you get a nice clean kill. Screw up and you're taking him on in a melee with all his mates. There are loads of different types of orc, and most of the wildlife wants to kill you, so you'll need to think about combat at least as much as in Batman.

It's quite pretty, too. The textures aren't the best quality (Mostly medium settings for a Radeon 7840 2Gb card, probably around console quality. I'm sure the Ultra settings requiring a 6Gb card are better. 6Gb ffs!), but the art direction, the animation and especially the weather are great. Loads of little touches like rain drops splashing off your character and water dripping off ledges, bats and spiders and general wildlife wandering about, Mordor feels very alive. The voice acting is exemplary. The orcs have a huge amount of interesting or even funny stuff to say. The intro is great. The collectibles are even worth collecting, as well as giving you money to upgrade things, they come with little stories or snatches of conversation from the ancient past.

I suppose the story, while still quite fine, does suffer a little bit from the sandbox nature of the game, the extra freedom always causes the narrative to lose focus. The varied orcs are still orcs, so the lack of different factions to fight might cause it to feel a bit samey. And Talion takes up too much of the screen for my liking. But none of my quibbles are major.

This is pretty friggin sweet, tbh, and I'm glad I bought it. It takes some of the best bits from some great games, and welds them together with some interesting fresh ideas, and it does a damn fine job of it.