melmer

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

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Wooo! Thank you steam cloud. I'm pretty sure it kept me up to date, if not, pretty darn close. Yay!

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Good to hear. I'm really glad I'm running parallel drives (A small 128GB SSD C drive, a 500GB SSD G Drive and a 1TB HDD X Drive for mass storage).

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Nearing the end of the first map and boy, you guys weren't kidding, that difficulty curve drops like a rock. I think I heard Dead Rising 3 had the same issue, if you go around the side content too much you become way too over powered.

 

Batman always felt a bit balanced, but after upgrading a ton of abilities in Mordor I can't even think of how many Orcs and captains you can slice through. I hope there is someway they ramp up the difficulty.

 

My initial trouble on executing wasn't understanding the hit streak system, after that I cut through a ton of captains, I don't even think any of them try to follow me around anymore, I haven't had a guy come back in awhile.

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I wish it had a difficulty setting. I was jazzed to jump back in and play at a higher difficulty.

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Yeah it's funny, I don't normally like games that scale, but at this point, I feel my dude is a little too over powered and kind of wished the orcs were a bit tougher now. I know it's entirely my fault for side missioning it so far, but I'm sure the developers could have come up with something to tune this, but it is probably more complicated than that.

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I barely did any of the side missions and I still feel overpowered. I think it's mainly due to familiarity with the Batman combat system along with the fairly forgiving button timings.

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Are you sending death threats? They're par for the course for me - I ensure everyone in the army has a red X over their head just as consistently I have intel on all of them. That increases their power by a not insubstantial amount.

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I barely did any of the side missions and I still feel overpowered. I think it's mainly due to familiarity with the Batman combat system along with the fairly forgiving button timings.

 

That's my situation as well.  I replayed Arkham City less than a month before getting this.  I did a bunch of the combat missions too so I got really familiar with the system.  There are some slight differences to the system in Mordor but nothing especially significant.  I would also like for there to be a hard mode like in Arkham City where it turns off the button prompts for the counters, kind of like how poison behaves in this game.

 

 

Are you sending death threats? They're par for the course for me - I ensure everyone in the army has a red X over their head just as consistently I have intel on all of them. That increases their power by a not insubstantial amount.

 

Every captain I currently have is either dominated or I sent a death threat (in a few cases both) and I'm still finding it pretty easy.  My goal at this point is to dominate all of Mordor then run around and make all their heads explode with a wave of my hand.

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Actually, you can turn off the button prompts in the options, but the little I toyed with it I didn't feel like the character models in this gave as many tells to counter as Batman did.

No, I never unlocked the Death Threat ability, I'll keep that in mind next time I play.

I guess what I really want out of a harder mode is make it more difficult to run away, keep the regular orcs the same difficulty, but have even more of them. Make the captains more challenging across the board (more damage, more armor, more intellegent.) Turning off button prompts will certainly make the game harder, but not in the way I'm look for.

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I spent a huge chunk of my weekend playing this, I mean really sunk my teeth in in a way that I haven't done with a game in a LONG time and I am absolutely hooked. Maybe it's because I've had an amazingly cool Nemesis experience and been surprised by my own reactions TO it. How something so SIMPLE as having an enemy both remember you and make specific references to your past encounters has enriched my feelings on the game and that character SO much.

 

The world's not terribly big, but I'm actually very, very okay with that. I'd rather have a small world filled with content than a vast one that feels empty or takes forever to traverse. I think the combat is simplified enough over something like an Arkham with its myriad gadgets that I almost never use. I'm about 50% through the story content and 40% through overall and while the ambient dialog hasn't been as customized as I've hoped, I find that I can't stop playing.

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Actually, you can turn off the button prompts in the options, but the little I toyed with it I didn't feel like the character models in this gave as many tells to counter as Batman did.

No, I never unlocked the Death Threat ability, I'll keep that in mind next time I play.

I guess what I really want out of a harder mode is make it more difficult to run away, keep the regular orcs the same difficulty, but have even more of them. Make the captains more challenging across the board (more damage, more armor, more intellegent.) Turning off button prompts will certainly make the game harder, but not in the way I'm look for.

 

I didn't actually poke around in the options.  I might try that.  I still mostly counter based on visual cues rather than the prompts.  I'm not really sure what would make the game more challenging for me in a way that still makes it fun besides removing the prompts.

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For whatever reason, I have an impossible time with the rhythm-based combat in this and the Arkham games. I feel like I get helplessly knocked around by the big, heavy-type enemies, and always miss every prompt other than the block prompt ("triangle" in my case). Years of gaming have instilled a frantic need to button mash through combat encounters, and I need help correcting this. Anyone have any advice other than maybe don't take up the drums? 

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It might be useful to you to wander around the world until you find a small group of enemies who won't be too much of a threat. Then really force yourself to take your time with them. Only counter when you definitely have to. Try to get used to evading. Attack once, pause, see how long you can wait before attacking again while still being in the streak and not in danger.

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Not played yet, but I have a quick question:

 

I saw the video of the guy who mind controlled 25 or so captains then killed them all at once. Is that easy to do? It seems kinda over powered if you can just mind control enemies and kill them instantly. 

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Branding (the mind control ability) is unlocked about halfway through the story missions.  After that, there's another ability you can unlock that lets you instantly kill anyone being controlled (with a nice juicy head explosion too).  Normal enemies are fairly easy to brand either in stealth or combat once you gain the combat brand ability which lets you instantly brand enemies once your combo meter is high enough.  Captains can only be branded if they're in a weak enough state to be grabbed or killed and you have the time to finish the branding before getting hit.  There are some slight variations to that such as the ones vulnerable to stealth finishers which can be stealth branded instantly or some warchiefs which will simply give you a prompt when they're weak enough.

 

In general I think its fairly easy to do (I currently have every captain and warchief branded except one) but killing them isn't usually the best option because then you can't have them fight for you.  The branding is permanent so there's no chance of them turning on you later if you leave them alive.  Honestly I've stopped using the instant kill because I've accidentally killed captains I didn't realize were nearby.  If you just want to kill them, branding is probably the least efficient way to do it.

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Apparently you don't learn the mind control until the last third of the game, so about 20 hours in. i havent got it the power yet. id imagine it would be a lot of work to set that all up

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Ah ok, that sounds more reasonable, the way it was presented in the video was so matter-of-fact that I thought it was stupid easy to do. 

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Ah ok, that sounds more reasonable, the way it was presented in the video was so matter-of-fact that I thought it was stupid easy to do. 

 

To be fair, it is pretty easy to do.  Its just time consuming to amass a large army and not a terribly efficient method if your only goal is to kill them.  You're usually better off leaving controlled enemies alive. 

 

If you simply want to kill a lot of orcs there are much faster ways.  One of my favorite methods for mass killing is an upgrade that lets you do two combo finishers in a row, a finisher that stuns all the enemies around you, followed up by a finisher that instantly kills stunned enemies.  It sounds like a lot of work but by the time you can unlock the ability to kill your followers you've probably unlocked those abilities as well.

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For whatever reason, I have an impossible time with the rhythm-based combat in this and the Arkham games. I feel like I get helplessly knocked around by the big, heavy-type enemies, and always miss every prompt other than the block prompt ("triangle" in my case). Years of gaming have instilled a frantic need to button mash through combat encounters, and I need help correcting this. Anyone have any advice other than maybe don't take up the drums? 

 

Dodge over people heads a lot. Whenever I see a prompt I don't understand or don't have time to respond to, i just dodge in a different direction and go over another ork's head. This will get you out of the way of the spear and shield guys, arrow attacks, caragors, pretty much anything. Once you get the skill that stuns orks when you flip over them, it's especially good.

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I finished up the story tonight.  It feels a lot to me like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in that its a weird side story with lots of familiar characters featuring a plot that clearly never happened but is implied to have occurred anyway.  Its a dumb story with characters that go nowhere and an unsatisfying ending, but its so much fun to play that none of that matters.  A few things bugged me throughout.  I wish there were more fast travel points (although you can get around pretty fast so its not a huge deal) and I wish there was an easier way to inspect the captains you encounter in the field.  Its sometimes hard to select the right captain if they're all next to each other and entering wraith vision in the middle of combat is annoying at times.  I also wish you could cycle through the captains in the vicinity instead of having to look at them one at a time.  I kept forgetting what my survival and hunting challenges were so it would have been nice of those were on the main HUD instead of in the map.  Those are all minor complaints though.  Its definitely one of the best games I've played this year.

 

I completed all the side missions too.  I only have 5 achievements left so I'm going after those, then I might start over again.

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Got to the second map.

 

So far I'll mimmick everyone's comments on the story, I knew it wasn't going to be great and it's not what I am here for, but yeah, it's not interesting at all. I like your wraith pal though, he seems cool.

 

So the second map, not entirely sure if I agree with the idea to have it, unless there is a significant plot or game design reason, I'm just not digging it. I'm on a lower graphical setting and lets just say the nature of the biome doesn't hold up as well as the rock, brick, and mud of Udun. 

 

From at atmosphere point of view, it just feels off. Granted I am not a Tolkien scholar or anything and most of what I know/remember from Lord of the Rings of the film, but from a gut feeling, I want Mordor to be desolate and imposing, I think the first map did a good job at doing this. I understand and accept the game is a bit repetitive in it's environment and it would be difficult to get different looking desolation/rock/brick/mud types and have it feel different, along with the fact this could have been production or budgetary constraints.

 

However, looking at what they have done with what they had in the second map, it just doesn't feel right. Even starting with the idea of doing a different biome, I think they could have done a better job with the direction, what is presented here feels kind of like generic video gamey jungle number 2. Also, the context of a different map that is unconnected with the first one also kind of breaks me out of the immersion. Open world games never serve themselves well when they do this.  I understand this could have been a technical constraint. However, if they go forward with a sequel, I'd keep it in mind to stick with one map, even if it means to sacrifice a variety or biome and just try to diversify what they had. Though understandable this would post a lot of problems on how the nemesis system works and such, but I think those design issues should be solved for future titles.

 

Also, there is a bit of narrative dissonance now between the caution people keep telling me to take and my actual capabilities. Not to reiterate the balancing issues of the game, but they are pretty start, I feel like I am end game, but I'm probably only half way. 

 

Again minor things since I am still enjoying it, but the gaps/issues/gripes are pretty apparent which makes me hopeful this game sold very well to have a really well thought out sequel as I am sure it can have.

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Having the second seperate nemesis pyramid is handy, but I agree I'd rather have one larger connected map. Still the greenery of the second area didn't bother me. The story takes place as Sauron is returning to Mordor after a long absense. It makes sense that some actual livable areas would have appeared while he was gone, and it's able to tell the story of the orks spoiling the land all over again.

As far as the narrative dissonance, remember that most of the characters in the game don't know you have a wraith buddy and really haven't seen you ripping through orks the way you're able to by the end. It makes sense to caution you, you're just one human afterall.

I did like the story, even though it seems a lot of people didn't.

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I think it's more the direction of the greenery, rather than the idea of a more lush Mordor that isn't sitting with me. Just feels out of place and (to no fault of the games) doesn't hold up as well on my low settings, so has kind of detracted from the game experience. I think with a slight color adjustment and direction change to make it feel a little more gnarly and dark, it would have fit the vibe of the game a tad more. The muddy, puddle ridden terrain of Udun just look far more impressive than a green grass texture with little bits of low poly mesh swaying. Again, just a directional shift with the same concept could have looked cooler.

 

The strongholds on the second map are super cool though, I really enjoy that. 

 

And oof.

The white girl with the dreads, god damn, that is some horrifying hair decisions in this

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And oof.

The white girl with the dreads, god damn, that is some horrifying hair decisions in this

 

Yeah that seemed weirdly out of place to me too.  I mean, if people in real life want to do that then fine, I have no problem with that.  But in this game it feels strange, like she should have been wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jeans with it.

 

My problem with the story is it feels really disjointed.  I'm not even sure when this game is supposed to be taking place.  It has to be after The Hobbit and before The Fellowship of the Ring because of Gollum and Sauron but then I feel like some of the details seem to contradict that maybe?  I'm not super familiar with TLotR mythos.  I read and seen the trilogy (though not The Hobbit) and I started reading the Silmarillion but didn't get very far.  I know a bit about the background (like who Celebrimbor is and who the two wizards various artifacts refer to likely are) but not enough to really have a good understanding of everything in the game.  The whole thing feels like a fanfic to me.

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Are you sending death threats? They're par for the course for me - I ensure everyone in the army has a red X over their head just as consistently I have intel on all of them. That increases their power by a not insubstantial amount.

I opened a bunch of tabs and read this without context haha.

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