SecretAsianMan

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War(dor)

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I liked Shadow of Mordor quite a bit and what I've seen of Shadow of War seems like its going to expand on SoM a lot, especially in terms of the Nemesis system.  There's a gameplay demo that was shown off to the media that talks about how you can now build up your own army with its own internal hierarchy.  The demo seemed rather tailored and scripted but it still got me excited.

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I loved Shadow of Mordor, this is exciting news! I felt a little unease watching the gameplay thing, partly because the combat seemed a little disjointed non-finished, partly because i didn't see the stuff I liked which was just smashing an entire outpost and dueling with a tougher guy, and partly because I saw a LOT of numbers. I love numbers but I saw Level 190 in there and that gives me pause. I'm probably in, but I want to see more.

 

The name is bad they should fix it. They had so many ways to crush it and they fucked it up.

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Middle-Earth: More Shadow of Mordor

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Moredor

Middle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor

Middle-Earth: Another Shadow of Mordor

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and the Surrounding Locale

Middle-Earth: The Guy Casting the Shadow of Mordor

Middle-Earth 2: The Shadow of Mordor

Middle-Earth: The Shadow of Mordor 2

Middle-Earth: 2 Shadow 2 Mordor

Middle-Earth: Of Shadows and Mordor

American McGee's Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 2

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordors

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor: Shadow of War

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor: War of Mordor

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor: Mordor War

Sid Meier's American McGee's Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 2

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor: The Sequel

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 2: Jedi Knight

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 3: Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 4: Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Outcast 2: Jedi Academy

Dark Forces 5: Jedi Knight 4: Jedi Outcast 3: Jedi Academy 2: Middle-Earth: Shadow of War

Dark Forces 6: Jedi Knight 5: Jedi Outcast 4: Jedi Academy 3: Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 2: Shadow of War

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 2: Bilbo's Revenge

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

Middle-Earth: War's Shadow

Middle-Earth: Reloaded

Middle-Earth: Attack of the Ork Clones

Middle-Earth: Sauron's Empire Strikes Back

Middle-Earth: Jaws 2

A Middle-Earth Tale: Sauron Goes West

Middle-After Earth: Shadow of Will Smith's Career

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23 minutes ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor 2: Bilbo's Revenge

 

Middle-After Earth: Shadow of Will Smith's Career

 

A game where you play as a pissed off Bilbo wrecking Mordor's shit up would be amazing.

 

That last one made me laugh.:tup:

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Hmm, I never did play the DLC much in Shadow of Mordor. Maybe it's time to refresh myself before this comes out. So many games coming out mid year this year.

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@Dewar I don't think there is a ton to get out of it, and considering the rich bounty of good new games we are in, one's time might be better spent elsewhere, imo. 

Thought I'd post a gameplay video here in case someone comes to this thread not having seen it.


I'm pumped! 

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I was deep into the first one, but the gameplay vid left me ambivalent. Maybe it's because I'm occupied with Horizon Zero Dawn currently, or the tech looks a little outdated (to be fair, it is an alpha), I'm not feeling it yet. Building up an army to take on raids is pretty cool though, but I'd like to see more of the filler stuff between the showpiece battles.

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One thing I'm not especially hopeful for is the introduction of a loot system.  The runes in the first game were sort of loot but I honestly never found them to have a significant impact on how I played.  For the most part they acted as mini-boosts rather than straight up stat changes.  I'm worried that introducing leveled loot is going to be a grind or make it a reward based loop rather than just straight up gameplay.  I want the enjoyment to come from playing the game, not from getting a marginally better sword.

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Ugh, is anyone playing this?

 

I found the first one pretty fun, the world was neat, the combat was neat, the story was awful, but whatever.

 

Shadow of Wardor seems to just be a complete nightmare for me. While the first one felt "light" on various features, the sequel seems to have added just too much. It's tough to keep track of. 

 

One of the things I could never quite get right with the batman games was eventually the enemy variation and keeping track of the way to kill them, SoW seems to have taken that way too far, I'm constantly pausing the game, looking in the menu to see whatever random important orcs class, weak points, etc.. 

 

This is very particular example of things that bug me; I can't tell if this was by design or if it's because I'm still early on and this is like a training wheels feature. I had this one orc captain that was just impossible to kill for some reason. He didn't have anything particularly special in terms of being immune to anything, like the way the first one would level up an orc, but he just didn't seem to want to die. So I kept trying and trying, eventually he was about to kill me for a third time and some random human npc walks up, executes him instantly. No named character, just a gondor soldier flys in to save the day. What a deflating moment. I couldn't even kill the dumb npc because he took away the whole purpose of the nemesis system which made me shut the whole game off right there.

 

I'm not far into the game, but so far the story took the all the stuff that didn't quite work in the first one and made it even worse. I haven't gotten to that point that reviewers say the game opens up, but geezus, it's hard to even get to that point with a set up like this. Just too much story too many cut scenes, it's really just terrible. The whole peter jackson lotr presentation is way over done at this point and this takes that and goes to new heights of fan fic which is obnoxious even to me, who gives zero faps about lotr.

 

It feels like the same game as the first, but what they have added doesn't feel like a great improvement. I figured more skills, more zones, more orcs, loot, gems, etc... would be great, but maybe it's the way the game unfolds, maybe its the presentation, but I haven't outright disliked a sequel, that while on paper, improved/added to everything from the first in a long while.

 

Just too much going on and never really allows me to interact with the world in interesting ways outside of predefined quests. Maybe I am still burnt out from the original or whatever extra ingredients they added to this just didn't do it for me, but I can't say I am enjoying it.

 

 

 

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I'm starting to develop a morbid curiosity about this game. The new nemesis system sounds pretty great, but just about everything around it seems mediocre to awful.

 

I really wonder how it would work with a new/different IP -- it seems like the LOTR mythos is an awkward fit for what they're trying to do.

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This game's awesome. You're basically playing batman: crackdown. They establish up front that you can elf ghost jump and elf ghost sprint and the regular orcs will notice you but mostly after you've run past them. The feeling of danger in this game is extremely low, except for situations you create willingly. You're a goddamn undead man elf superhero with a ring of power. At one point I felt like I only wanted one sub-power from each ability, but now I'm at the point where I am sometimes swapping them depending on the fight. The gear is interesting, and the whole thing is far less overwhelming than the demo videos at E3 made it look. The fortress assaults are kind of fun, but I'll be frank they're a little too straightforward for my tastes, counter to a lot of the discussion about them.

 

I'm at the point in the story where the "grind" begins. I am as few as 1 story mission from starting that. We'll see how it goes from this point forward.

 

I commented in slack, but I find parts of the story way more interesting than I've seen any reviewer give credit for. There's been a lot of fuss that Shelob is a pretty lady and not a huge spider, but the story they tell with her, while a liberal (though technically plausible!) interpretation of her history and backstory is a creative way to hold your own actions up to a broken and warped mirror.

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I'm trundling towards the end of the game, and I think the way it's going to end is

 

Spoiler

Talion becomes a ringwraith?

 

I hope that's true, because that is exactly correct for the arc of the game and would be a fantastic payoff.

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After 30something hours, it still feels like more of the same from the first game (not that I was expecting anything drastically different.) The only real complaint I have is that defending fortresses is way, way more boring than attacking them, to the point where I'm kind of surprised it released with this part of the game in the current state. Despite the various loot box drama, I haven't reached a point in the game where I felt like purchasing them was necessary, or even would have added to my experience if I had the money to drop on them. 

 

I will add that this game is great for numbing the pain of a really hideous day though.

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It's been pretty interesting how the game has slowly begun to show it's working as you enter Act 4. I suppose some mechanical spoilers follow.

 

Spoiler

Despite the promise of the Nemesis System, so far most of the memorable orcs and encounters I've come across feel like they're bespoke strings of events that have a chance to happen, rather than a confluence of systems that brings something cool to the fore. For example, there have been a few times when an orc has continued coming back in one form or another, the most memorable of which was So-and-so The Machine, an orc who had different parts of them replaced with mechanical bits each time you killed them. It's a fun story, and one that I enjoyed enough to turn him and turn him into a warlord, but it's not really 'created' by the Nemesis System so much as a short story contained within it. 

 

Of course, these things do erupt occasionally, when certain aspects of orcs come together to make something pretty memorable. Shaming a particular orc who has been dogging you for a while, only for them to become manic or deranged is a nice touch. As is rescuing a bodyguard who's saved you countless times himself. But by and large it feels more serialised than systemic, really. Interesting encounters and happenstance that occurs during the methodical disassembly of the orc army in the area. Which puts it a lot closer to something like Sunless Sea than Dwarf Fortress, in my mind. 

 

The other fun comparison I've been doing in my head is comparing the combat in this with that of Batman, which it cribs from in most conceivable ways. I've been trying to think about why Batman feels so damn clean, where often in War-dor I've been much more overwhelmed, and I think it's a mixture of things, chief among them being that Batman does two things that really help with clarity. The first is that the camera scales back based on how many enemies you're engaging, and the enemies themselves spread out quite a bit. You have goons charging in to attack you, but they're rarely right next to you before they begin their attacks. The other is that any fight over a certain amount of enemies has the arena chosen and designed by Rocksteady, whereas Monolith just throws orcs at you wherever you are. It can lead to a lot of messy scraps where it's really hard to see what's going on, or anticipate attacks before they come in. War-dor could never do the thing Batman does where it removes counter notifiers at harder difficulties. 

 

Which is one area where you can actually tangibly see the design concessions in War-dor. Whereas Batman just has little alerts above the heads of enemies (blue for counter, yellow for counter dodge, red for dodge), War-dor has to throw the actual button up beneath the notifier because you can't read the animations due to the camera being so damn close. 

 

It sounds like I'm being down on the game but I actually do really enjoy it, just find it interesting where the concessions Monolith had to make are, and how I feel they're much closer to the surface with this game, maybe because they increased the scope without having a chance to increase the depth with it. 

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Shadow of War is the worst game that I cannot stop playing. It is one giant Orc-Murder Soap Opera. Every time the game isn't about that (all of the story missions) the game is deathly dull. The combat sucks, the platforming is atrocious, but, but, but, that Soap Opera is so moreish.

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10 hours ago, twmac said:

Shadow of War is the worst game that I cannot stop playing. It is one giant Orc-Murder Soap Opera. Every time the game isn't about that (all of the story missions) the game is deathly dull. The combat sucks, the platforming is atrocious, but, but, but, that Soap Opera is so moreish.

 

"Soap Orcera"

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After watching Jeff Gerstmann run Cheat Engine on this game, I might have to eventually pick it up and cheat my way through the back half of the game if it gets too grindy. It could be a lot of fun (albeit totally game-breaking) to essentially roll your own orcs and pit them against each other.

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This game is amazing, ignore the haters. Tips:

  • Skip every cutscene. Every one of them. Every second of one that I've caught I've been bored crazy by, so I've skipped every second possible. I've played for 7 hours and ALL of it has been orc-blenderizing madness.
  • Try out Nemesis difficulty. It makes things feel dangerous. I also do a lot more hits-and-runs, and victories feel great.
  • Leave on the combat prompts, if you're on Nemesis, especially if you're like me and don't know the PS4 controller well enough yet. : (
  • Turn OFF the combat prompts on Easy or Normal if you're at all good at the game. Then pay close attention. It works!

Try to stop playing, I dare you. I haven't even unlocked the Dominate ability, and I can't stop running around trying to cut off Captain's arms. And the relationships I've formed with some of them! I love them!

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8 hours ago, DoomMunky said:

This game is amazing, ignore the haters. Tips:

  • Skip every cutscene. Every one of them. Every second of one that I've caught I've been bored crazy by, so I've skipped every second possible. I've played for 7 hours and ALL of it has been orc-blenderizing madness.
  • Try out Nemesis difficulty. It makes things feel dangerous. I also do a lot more hits-and-runs, and victories feel great.
  • Leave on the combat prompts, if you're on Nemesis, especially if you're like me and don't know the PS4 controller well enough yet. : (
  • Turn OFF the combat prompts on Easy or Normal if you're at all good at the game. Then pay close attention. It works!

Try to stop playing, I dare you. I haven't even unlocked the Dominate ability, and I can't stop running around trying to cut off Captain's arms. And the relationships I've formed with some of them! I love them!

 

I am playing on Nemesis difficulty and skipping all cutscenes, it is still the worst game I cannot stop playing (that I stopped playing because Dragon's Dogma is out)

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