f13.net

Played this for ~45 minutes during lunch.  I got gaming wood.

Game Of All The Years.

I'd love to read a more thorough review after ~ 20 hrs.  I've been contemplating buying this.

I'm sure someone has been playing this constantly since it released but if no one steps up, I'll be your huckleberry.

So far, the details are getting my attention, such as world lore (yes, Tokien, I know) which isn't canon-breaking to any degree that I care about.  Combat is good.  I like it very much without even exploring the Nemesis system yet.

I have no idea what this is.  The limited press I've seen makes it look like Dynasty Warriors, Middle Earth edition.  Is that even remotely on point?

So, get it at the Steam Christmas Sale.

No it's more like Batman: Arkham meets bits of Assassin Creed in Middle Earth.

It's been more closely compared to Batman: AA or AC.

Haha wow that sounds terrible.

Yeah, which is why it's all about the Nemesis system:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/10/01/shadow-of-mordor-succeeds-because-it-makes-death-matter/

It's not terrible.  I played all the Batmens, and I like this better.  Give me 45 more minutes, but so far so good.


#pcmasterrace , yes.  Get every thing at the Steam Sale, I say.  Personally I need something to play that isn't Destiny or Fallout so I bought it at Target and got a $10 store credit.

Wow, I kinda want that system in Bloodborne and not a fucking LOTR licensed piece of crap.

Edit: Yegolev, for reference, I hated the Batman games. They were just 3D Final Fight and I'm not predisposed to caring about comic book characters.

I'm not sure how much it will annoy you to stalk orcs, then.  I beat up one or two, but the third one's brain became food for my scheme of vengeance.  The head-lopping is satisfactory.  Batmang never decapitated anyone.

I also freed a slave, so you can get your Moses on.

I figure this relates to Batmang the way Destiny relates to Halo.  Replace engrams that dryfuck you with the Nemesis system.

Field reports are that the orc bosses are indeed randomly generated, which makes my mouth water.

I'm not saying that you should not wait for the Steam Sale.

]The third thread I will chime in on this - it's good, it's really, really good. Love how the combat flows and how visceral it is and the nemesis system will be copied and copied and copied in many, many games to come. It's absolutely excellent.


Randomly generated and when some Orc peon gets a killshot on you, they randomly level up too.

Just watch the GBQL, the Nemesis system with random orcs is really really cool. The main character pales in comparison to the bad guys.

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor/2300-9514/

GODLIATH!!  :why_so_serious:

I have been eyeballing this since I heard it was worth at least a look. Might be worth a Thanksgiving/Xmas buy.

Turns out the drama over this game is interesting too. Here's two articles about the game, and they're already gathering hate from the internet's freshly converted SoM believers.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/1/6880061/shadow-mordor-kissing-design

http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/1/6881161/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-torture-terrorism

As a bonus, something that would've fit SoM like a fist in the face. Would have, becauset the games industry is already irreversibly dumb and shallow in its quest to woo the lowest common denominator.
http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/

Well Zach Gage can fuck right off.

Won't somebody think of the orcs?  :sad_panda:

That's one of the most interesting avenues to explore in fantasy, and only one shitty French games developer has even tried it. A pity.

Yes.  Dear god.  Fuck game 'journalism'.
Yeah.....no.  I haven't read it, so obviously I can only comment on all the various summaries I just read.  But it sounds like 'Spring Time for Hitler Sauron', the book.  Fitting perfectly in with current Russian ideology that portrays the decadent and gay loving west as the true bad guys who oppose the fascist morally, culturally, intellectually, and physically superior Slavic race.

Wicked sounds like it does a much better job at the sort of thing its attempting, and wicked really isn't very good.  There IS potential for something of that nature to work out well in games.  But please not that particular example...

Somebody's reading a leeeeetle bit too much into it.

edit: I mean this shit is delivering already. You guys are acting like a bunch of fucking drama queens. Over some video game opinions. And some bonus Tolkien, but I guess Tolkien blasphemy is its own can of worms.

Maybe.  Sorry, been drinking.  And reading reports on Russia political and ideological movements for the last few weeks.  Probably a bad combo.

But man........that thing reads way to closely to a ton of 'New Russia' propaganda narratives.

I don't think Novorussia extends to bad Tolkien fanfic written in the late 90s. In any case, who knows what the author really thinks, but the idea of victimized orcs is pretty great anyway. Because Tolkien is just a bunch of unwitting White Saviour allegories.

I should read everything instead of replying when I see something. Just reiterating that this game is great, in spite of being a Lord of the Rings game.

i wantssssss it my precioussssss i wants it but we are patient yes we waits for steam sale preciousssss

The first link is awful, the second is pretty reasonable though.

Anyone have or plan on getting it for a console? I'd buy it for PC, but there is zero chance mine will run it well.

Probably for the PS4 since I need to grow my collection. Will have to wait till November though - need shit for my car.

Yea been eyeing this one. Quick look looks good. Slightly more AC than AA vibe to me, especially AC4. Definitely want, but not until I'm done with Divinity. Which at my current rate is gonna be sometime next year... Or in time for Steam Sale :-)

Breathing extremely fucking intensifies.

Yea, this looks like an amazing game for $20 or less so I can ignore the fact I only care about one system.

I think I actually like this game.  I tried to take out a few guards, but somehow a local captain found me first.  I almost had him beat when I was hit and killed by another captain that was throwing fire bombs.  Four captains leveled up because of it, and I didn't.  Neat.

Good lord.  It's everywhere. :facepalm:

Anyway, the game.  It's a lot of fun so far.  If you don't like Assassin's Creed and the Batman Arkham series of games, you probably won't like this.  That being said, there's lots of side missions and captains to kill and the nemesis system works pretty well.  I died a few times and captains leveled up and became more difficult to kill.  They even remembered beating me earlier and, rightly, mocked me before the fight.  I had a few random orcs that killed me who then became a low level captain.  There's different ways to tackle combat.  You can brute force your way in but expect to be overwhelmed quickly.  Stealth works well and is usually your best bet.  I actually defeated the 1st warchief by shooting an exploding barrel near him and his henchman, killing all the henchmen and reducing the warchief's health to almost zero.

Agree. The violence, domination, etc, in the game is brutal and mean-spirited, hard not to notice. Whether that bothers someone is another question but to me it's a turn-off. I don't mind extreme violence if it's over the top or tongue in cheek but played completely straight it does rub me the wrong way.

First link is idiotic.

I wouldn't mind a protagonist who is a bit more reluctant to emulate the orcs, but...on the other hand, it's Mordor, where even the purest of spirit succumb to despair and all that.

Plus if the elf wraith is who I think it is in terms of lore (he's got to be one of Feanor's brood, I have some guesses as to which one) he's done worse shit than terrorize some orcs.

Anyway, it's a fun game. At about 3 hours of play in, it sometimes feels a bit repetitive, the open kinds of play, at least. It is very very much Assassin's Creed: Mordor, borrowing some of AC's gameplay conventions very, very directly. (Improving on them, too--I really like that you can run at stealth pretty well and plow right into an orc to take him down.)  But the Nemesis system is really the hook, and it is kind of astonishing how powerful an emotional device it really is. I had the bad luck in my first "oh, let's see how this game works" fiddling around to run into an orc who had a poison bow and that fucker has now levelled up about six or seven times on killing me--he often shows up when I'm working on something else and by the time I can close on him, I've already got a poison arrow in the face and no easy way to fight off the poison, which usually means that the other orcs I was fighting manage to take me down. Plus the game's AI has a pretty good system for giving the Nemesis orcs a kind of memory of previous encounters--the taunts they make are actually somewhat specific to your shared history with them, at least in a few cases I've seen.

You guys need to stop making this sound awesome, otherwise I swear to God that I will go buy it!  Don't make me!

(http://i.ytimg.com/vi/00Jjj6oI5fg/0.jpg)

Already have it on the PS4.  The controller whispers to you.

Time to play it?  Another story.

I'm really enjoying it. The combat is much better than AC (Arkham combat + swords and quasi-spells) and the game doesn't bog you down with loads of exposition or shitty side-quests that have you doing stuff totally unrelated to the main game (crafting chairs or running messages between lazy npcs, etc.). The nemesis system is pretty amazing as well, but IMO your enjoyment of the game will depend almost entirely on whether you enjoy the combat.

AFAIK the Tolkien estate has never licensed anything from the Silmarillion to be used in a game or even in movies - this has been a long-standing headache/obstacle for Turbine - so take that into account when you're guessing.

No spoiler tag?  :heartbreak:

Yeah, man! That wasn't who I was guessing actually.

Oh well. Since I was already dialed into a pretty proximate kind of lore space, no biggie.

Which one of you guys is The Angry German on steam? I've had a few side missions to avenge you. Do you get any notification or anything on your end when I avenge you in my game?

I already have this ordered - I'll have to let people know when my PS4, the game, and my TV all get to me down in Mexico.  :grin:

Yes.

I was killed by a particular Uruk who was promoted to captain, naturally.  Gunzda, a skinny guy.  Crossbow archer.  Nothing unusual, I suppose.

I run across this guy while trying to sneak somewhere.  Having done my "research" on known captains, I know he is vulnerable to stealth attacks, so I should be able to take care of that clown.  Except he and his twenty-uruk entourage see me in the bush and we get into a fight.  I eventually run after wailing on him a few times.  He is searching for me on a scaffolding, I botch the stealth attack and we trade blows quite a bit before one of his boys cuts me down.  Shit.

I see the guy again in more or less the same place.  This time he's alone, so I run up and stab his ass.  Suck it, Gunzda!

Welp, in another area I find another captain... Gunzda?  I manage to kill him again in an unmemorable way in a dark corner.

Shortly therafter, I'm sneaking to something and suddenly I'm taunted.  Gunzda!  Only this time, he's got a cloth bag strapped over his head and his lips seem to be missing.  He's ugly as fuck and pretty pissed at me.  Seems like he's also gotten himself some exploding arrows.  This fight goes pretty badly for me, although I almost win it.

Now I get to see my new Nemesis every time I go into the menu.  He's awful!

That's pretty awesome. I really dig integration like that. Sleeping Dogs was really good in that respect.

I think that's Der Helm.

This thread makes me want to buy a new computer.

I avenged Hawkbit tonight.

Thanks!

I've been stuck in stats homework hell for the last four hours; I hope to get in soon to kill an orc before passing out.

I tried to avenge Angry German, but died.  Stupid Uruk's with poisoned weapons.  :heartbreak:

I picked up the game on a whim (rare for me these days.. I almost always wait for Steam Sales) and have been enjoying it more than I figured I would -- despite a complete dislike for the source material. The combat is fun, a bit difficult without being frustrating (despite using keyboard/mouse rather than a gamepad -- if it involves aiming, I default to mouse/keyboard) which surprised me. Camera can be a bit annoying to control at times, though.

Nemesis system is pretty interesting and is something I hope becomes far more common; I can see it being very useful in a number of other games.

Only times I've died so far;

Big, bad monster thing near where you start the game. I did not dodge well enough and had my body pulverized. I now simply avoid those.

Once to a pack of Caragors, as again.. I sucked at spacebar dodging as I would get too greedy in attacking.

Once to an archer during the bow quest where you have to headshot 10 archers.. and a captain showed up. Got a bit stuck on terrain pieces, lost a lot of health and failed the Last Stand mechanic (I wasn't expecting it and took my hands off the controls) when a no-name Uruk archer pegged me. He got promoted.. annoyed me a great deal. Right now the bastard is trying to duel another Captain for more power..

Almost died when I tried to interrupt a Game Hunt mission. I was late in attacking (he two-shot the Caragor), got him to almost dead before I had to flee due to being poisoned and surrounded by close to 40 Uruks. Survived that one with a sliver of health. After healing up, immediately went back and one-shot him from stealth due to his weakness and felt... tremendous satisfaction.

If it weren't for having to unlock certain powers via main quests.. I'd almost utterly ignore the actual plot.

I'm not sure how the Nemesis system holds up long term but it really is a great idea. Open world games often have a problem with difficulty pacing - enemies scale with you, which is stupid, or they don't scale and then it becomes too easy, or different zones have radically different difficulty levels and the open world functionally isn't so open any more. This is a very clever way to do scaling enemies in a way that makes sense.

The idea of introducing essentially mirror images of the main character that also go through the game and level up at a similar pace is very smart. Really smart high level ideas are rare, so kudos to them.

Tebonas! ;D

(I believe it's Helm as well.)

Picked it up. Haven't even delved into main plot line. Game is hard! I seem to spend more time running away from crowds of angry Uruks than anything else.

Unfortunately my son caught me playing this and is now angling for PC time so he can play too. (go back to Destiny ya brat!).

How exactly do I initiate a vulcan mind meld with an Orc? Tracked a cpl who have intel but I get a little too stabby before I get a chance to go all Jack Bauer on them..

Damn you all... Moment of weakness.

So far... this game is pretty tasty. Executing orcs is quite visceral and satisfying no matter how many times I do it. The sneaking thing is a bit of a stretch, but everything else is damn good. Died once to some troll that I decided to try out. Got wtfstomped. Died again to that damn dog while I was on some stalk Gollum mission. So far, this seems worth the coin.

I have never bought a 'season pass' for any game, but I went back and bought it for this. I am really, really enjoying it.

The tutorial pages will show how to do things as long as you've seen the tutorial already.  Grabbing a uruk and holding the "grab" button will give you additional options.  Interrogate will be one of these sometimes.  Regular jerks will just give you names of leaders.  Worms (green highlight) will give weaknesses/strengths, or you can find intel laying around on the ground sometimes.

I die a lot in the final moments of taking down a captain because I inevitably try to grab them and do something cool.  I really, really need to just stab the shit out of them because the uruk ranks are getting a WEE BIT out of control.  I'm actively avoiding my nemesis.

Rode a carragor today.  Hard to control.

Edit to say that I still get a rush when a captain yells something specific at me.  Usually it's something like "'Ow many times do I 'afta splatter yer guts on the ground 'efore ye learn?!"

ahh the grab button that's right.

It is playable with a keyboard and mouse but a pita. Think I'm gonna try my controller tonight.

Damn you people. I promised myself I'd stay away from this thread. My kids need clothes dammit!

Or, as it turns out, $50 less of them right now  :grin:

Downloading.

Protip: Don't pick fights with captains that you don't have intel on.  Obvious?  Yes.  Do I take my own good advice?  Sometimes.

While true for the most part, I accidentally started a fight with a captain last night while roaming around picking off random orcs walking about. Luckily, he was weak to executions which I managed to get off. He actually wasn't that much of a challenge, however it did unnerve me that all the sudden during the opening of the fight it dropped into the close up dialog screen and he started taunting me. I then realized I probably should rethink the fight, but it was going so smooth and well that I let it carry on. Definitely got lucky and it was pretty satisfying.

The game says you can't exploit weaknesses or vulnerabilities that you haven't discovered, so I find that interesting.

I managed to find out the hard way that Whatshisname the Angry requires me to parry multiple heavy blows in quick succession.  That's something that requires a bit of a heads-up. :oh_i_see:

If you can manage to isolate a captain, I think almost all of them can basically be battered with chain sword attacks, except for the guys you have to spacebar over. It just takes a long time and you need to avoid giving most of them the room to open up with whatever it is that they do. I do find that almost nowhere stays clear of regular grunt orcs for too long, which is another nice element in the game--the coming and going of orc forces feels pretty organic, there isn't the artificial game-y sense that you've cleared out an area so it stays cleared.

What's also fun is if you've almost got a captain down but he manages to open up enough space to run away and you don't have any elfshot. I chased one guy pretty much across the whole map and straight through a stronghold, trying to keep from being brought down by the army of guys following me.

I have a bad situation right now on the map where for whatever reason, at least three captains are hanging really close with each other all the time--even if I get one of them alone, the other two coming trotting up pretty quickly.

I had a pretty bad situation earlier today where the captain I wanted dead (had spent an hour leveling him up for a shot at a good rune) was close to three other captains, in a Stronghold filled to the brim with uruks. Found some caragors a bit away and lured them with the elfshot attract until some of the uruks noticed the caragors. Entire stronghold descended into chaos shortly thereafter as three caragors occupy masses of uruks and a couple captains pretty well (unless if one of them is strong against monsters, which one of mine was). Bought me enough time to go in, insta-stealth kill the target captain (the reason I used him as a farm target), and managed to mostly bring down another captain before the caragors were dead. Focused on the wounded captain and got the hell out of dodge after he dropped and I'd gathered the runes.

Of course, later on I ran into one of the two captains I hadn't killed and was taunted for running away.. which made killing him all the more enjoyable.

The cave troll hanging near my starting tower has killed more Orc captains than me. :P

Damn, I missed the discussion on the 'outrage' of this game. Carry on with your fanaticism! I might pick this up based on the praise, putting aside the standard fantasy racism trope and justifying morally-dubious actions because 'they're the evil ones."

Man, I could watch that benchmark video a few more times. Gorgeous, and like Ezio transplated from Italy to Lara Croft's most recent island.

Jeezus, openiing sequence, awesome. Rest of the game could suck and I already love it.

Yeah -- was pretty impressed with the whole opening backstory fusion of past/present/whereami?  Need to remap the key combos or something -- don't like playing Twister on the keyboard just to do necessary combos (and I refuse to use a controller on my PC).

This is just plain orc killing nemesis hunting huh there is a main story? fun.

The thing I really liked is how fast it was before it dumped me into the actual game.  I'd have to time it, but it felt like a 15 minute tutorial, max.  Compared to Assassin's Creed, where the tutorial is chapters 1-10 of 12 total. 

Definitely enjoyed that I got to play as the main character in this game without spending 6-8 hours playing as some other douchebag (thanks AC3!)

For me, this is an orc holocaust simulator.

I think it's funny there was some type of controversy about this game. Most of the most popular games of all time have largely been murder simulators. Orcs and their proxies in other themes have continually been portrayed as the only-ever-doing-evil-ever-and-always bad guys since they were written.

And yet THIS is the game people point at. Not CoD, not Arkham Asylum, not WoW. I can't say I blame them though.

I wonder if it's because of two converging factors:

• The behaviors. Not just the graphics, but how the designers built in the emotions. They really nailed it so well, you see the rage, fear, love. They're past the uncanny valley.
• Wierd entertainment trope where every bad guy of old is being recast as either misunderstood or doing bad in the name of good. Palpatine was really just fighting corruption. Dracula just wanted to save his people. Shit, someone's bound to make a movie about how Stalin was just trying to prevent the spread of a deadly virus in Stalingrad. Maybe they're programming us for a return to an age of enlightened despotism /politics :-)

Anyway, I can see what some are saying. It doesn't mean I feel it personally. As a character, the bad guys of the ages killed my wife and son, and left me in purgatory, for literally no reason other than conquest. I'm not going to feel bad about them just because they realized they bit off way more than they can chew.  :awesome_for_real:

Ha, yea I know right? AC4 did it much better, but still, tutorial was like half the game. It's not necessarily all that bad, and SoM (that an acronym for this?) does it too. You just sprinkle in what the player needs to know only when they need to know it. Much better than the old days of reading an entire manual before launching, or doing hours of JUST tutorial stuff before starting to achieve real progress in the game proper.

Actually people did have an issue with WoW for one of the exact same reasons - the torture quest in one of the opening Lich King zones.

I wrote a long passionate letter against the inclusion of that quest to Alex Afrasiabi, a.k.a. Foror. That quest took the self-image of the player character from "I'm doing the right thing to help people" into Jack Bauer territory.

I wanted the option of "If torturing this person is so important, you do it." Not much better but a compromise.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/39720/LEGACY/smilies/10ic3t2.png)

I read the 360/PS3 versions would have a scaled down Nemesis system -- but no actual hard facts on what "scaled down" actually means. Only source for that seems to be an interview eight months ago...

wat?

I'd forgotten about that one. Had to look it up, but now I remember it. I wonder if it was a "clever" comment on the US' use of "torture states" in the ongoing War on Terror? Let's face it, though - In the context of a game like WoW where I lay genocide to whole populations of sentient <whatever lives in this zone> humanoids and animals alike - many of whom are just existing and not bothering anyone - I'm not too fussed. MMO characters are just slaughterfiends. I'm just going to kill hundreds of not-African animals in Nagrond "to help people"? No, it's for the characters's own selfish ends. And that's without even mentioning the Nesingwary quests.

I have similar views on it in GTA5, and I expect, will have here. The actions of the characters we play in these games are already hideously ugly.

Daughter wanted a new game and likes arkham  and assassins creed so I bought this yesterday.  Installed it on my machine today and oh look it's 3am. Damnit. 

Yeah.  Your Daughter.

Yeah.  That'll work.

 :grin:

According to the video review above, it doesn't exist at all in those versions.

without the nemesis system you may as well toss this game in  he bin. It's an alright game but it really needs the nemesis system to make it all hang together.

So "the shadow of mordor" is me right? not like sauron or some shit.

Ha.  I was tempted based on this thread, yes, but had resolved to wait until a sale. Then on Friday evening she asked, "Dad can we buy a new game? I'm bored of Skyrim and Fallout and Sims 4 sucks." I knew what had to be done. It was fate.

Ha I know right? 2am on Friday "night", and I was aggravated because that meant I couldn't stay up stupid late last night. But did anyway. Fucking game. Last time I played this obsessively was GW2 launch, and I got double pneumonia for my troubles  :-P

Been enjoying everything else as well -- voice acting, writing, the constant uruk smack-talk, the environments, the unlocking of 'memories' -- the whole bit -- truly greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, the Nemesis system adds a lot for those who've played the stalker/dark-crusader style game before, but if the rest of it were shit I'm not sure the Nemesis system alone would save it.

Add to all this, at 10 hours of play I've seen ZERO bugs on the PC version so far. Not a single "glitch" or clipped piece of gear or messed up cut scene or bugged ability.

Plus riding a Caragor and using it to wiping the ground with uruks. After sneaking around for most of those 10 hours it was a catharsis to be able to let loose and just go ape shit on the uruks.

Fine fine, I'll buy a new PC so I can play this. You guys don't have to be so pushy though...

I very badly want this to go on sale. I can't rationalize spending $50 on a licensed LOTR game.

One of the boys snuck up and caught me playing this and now is 'popping the heads' of his toys like Daddy does in his game.

But at least you ended up with more time off to 'recover', right? :awesome_for_real:

Heh yea. Capped my second character while taking some time off from work while I shoulda been taking time off from the thing that caused it! Hair of the dog moment  :awesome_for_real:

Eh, this is about as much a "licensed LOTR game" as Arkham Asylum is a "licensed Batman game". That wouldn't be a reason not to pick this up.

You not liking the sounds of Arkham Asylum and Assassins Creed now, that's a good reason to not spend $50 :-)

All of this. I keep expecting it to crash while we're in pre-first-patch phase.

But also: saying only the Nemesis system saves this from the bin is kinda like saying only destuctable buildings saves Battlefield 3 from the bin :-) It's core to the game, not some tacked on badge system.

I watched a few videos. Looks more Infamous than Assassins Creed. I actually finished Infamous. Enjoyed it.

While you can play it like Assassin's Creed if that is what you enjoy you can just as easily wade into every pack of orcs you see if you feel like it.  Most of my fights are a lot more like the crazy 88 fight in Kill Bill than anything else.

My problem is I only seem to get into those kind of brawls in the middle of Strongholds, which have a neverending supply of orcs.  My fingers hurt after a while and I have to run.

The combat gets dead easy once you get the blink strike ability.

It's probably the best tech demo (for the nemesis system) I've ever played.

It's fun, but it's not $50 fun. The story is tacked-on garbage.

So much like for what this does right.

No "must kill rats" opening. (Though you can kill rats as a later side quest!)

Tutorial is very easy, ability gain is stretched out very naturally.

Just about the right balance between "ok, I'm bored now with the side quests, time to go on" and a main questline that's actually interesting. Even after you find out who your wraith partner is, there are plenty of things to discover.

Gameplay is very forgiving and yet there are benefits to some kinds of high-skill work with the mechanics. I can level up the dagger and bow easily enough but the sword is hard work until you've levelled a while--unless you're really good at the block and fatality mechanics.

Orc dialogue is remarkably varied and situationally aware. They really switch to a different tree when you've been spotted but not located, when you're skulking around in the bushes, when you're up high and no one knows it--and it almost never repeats in a simple or obvious way.

Udun feels 'organic' in a sensible way. Orcs come and go in a way that makes sense.

So is the story interesting or tacked on garbage, you guys need to come to a consensus!

Combat is more like the Arkhams. The Assassin's Creed combat systems are incredibly simplistic (supposedly the upcoming Unity is more complex). The Arkhams and this game have much more variety in moves and things you can do in combat. It does have the "whistle", bushes, and stealth kill mechanics of the Assassin's Creeds so it does borrow liberally for both sets of games.

I have been playing my game more in the AC-style with mostly stealth kills since you get more XP that way and for some reason most of the games I'm playing right now on my PS4 are stealth games -- The Last of Us, Assassin's Creed 4, and now Shadow of Mordor -- so I'm in that mindset.

Well, this might push me into the PS4. My wife still wants an Xbox One (we chose Xbox 360 over PS3) and I have no idea why. I've got a spare HDMI slot on my tv, so I can leave the Xbox 360 in.

I'm about 1/3 through and I think the story, while simplistic, is fine so far. And there's a lot of Middle-earth lore baked into the game which will likely appeal to Tolkien nerds.

My only trouble with this game so far is that it's too easy, and it doesn't have a difficulty setting to make it harder.  Common orcs are shit easy to kill once I've gotten used to the combat system.  Bosses are no problem anymore either, even if I don't know their mechanics; wound up getting into a huge fight in a stronghold, it attracted 3 captains, none of which I had intel on at the time...I killed them, along with a couple hundred more orcs, and didn't die, I eventually just ran off from that.  Game would be much better if it had a difficulty setting that I could turn up to keep it challenging.  It was difficult early on, but that was pure unfamiliarity with the mechanics and still getting used to it.  If I could keep that difficulty level throughout the entire game even as I become more familiar with the mechanics it would be great.

I should probably note that I don't give a shit about middle earth lore and never have. My eyes just skip over names and places with too many vowels that all sound the same. I give Tolkien his due for the influence / creation of the genre, but I'm not a linguist and I don't think he created a particularly compelling world. The game does nothing to bring what little world he has to life. Names seem sprinkled haphazardly in. Look, MORDOR. You recognize that one, right? Gollem is wedged in for no good reason. And they constantly drop quotes from the book like sage wisdom and I just have to groan.

Blah blah somethor did a thing in tothien and it made the murdrocs mad and they had been guarding the wall of holtrash for thousands of years ever since the llithids appeared and oh my god I just don't care.

And the hero? I smoulder with generic rage (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/12/03) might as well been made for him. He's a completely uninteresting cardboard cutout who lost his wife and son to orcs who were cut down / sacrificed in front of him and oh my god I still don't care. A dwarf sidekick who's all bluster? How original! What really, adding the 'number killed competition' from the movie? Lathering it on a bit thick aren't you?

This game is a great orc murdering simulator, though. A++ would murder orcs again.

The combat is really easy, except for when it isn't.  There was one side mission that I died on a bunch of times, and I just got the living shit kicked out of me by one of the warchiefs because he had an ability to attract more bodyguards, and was also stationed in the middle of a stronghold so I got swarmed.  His only weakness was combat finishers, and I find it pretty hard to aim those at a specific guy when there are 30 of them right on top of me.

Well, you do have two "I Win" buttons when things get rough - infinite execution and infinite stealth execution. And the arrow one I guess which I've never used.

I propose we of f13 begin wearing green ribbons to signify our support for our fallen orc brothers in these bleak times of genocide.

(trying to wait for steam sale)

This is my take, too.  It's not going to be some deep moral/ philosophical tale.  You're a ranger who can't die and is bound to a mystery elf spirit. You kill orcs. Along the way you have story-based adventures with a bumbling orc in a mutually exploitative relationship with you and some refugees.

These guys are focusing on the story, apparently, and I'm not. I haven't even made it past the first section of the game because I'm killing shitloads of orcs.

Those three "I win" powers take a ton of Mirian (M) to acquire. They also don't work against bosses like this motherfucker in my game:

(http://i.imgur.com/UKRepuA.jpg)

I'm not far enough to have unlocked the Fire Arrow tier yet nor do I have brand so he's basically unkillable unless I somehow manage to blow him up in multiple campfires/barrels (a single one likely wouldn't kill him even with his vulnerability).

Holy fuck, but I'm sick of shit like "I hate Tolkien lore and don't like Lord of the Rings and don't like Assassin's Creed and don't like Arkham Asylum, so I'm really bored with this game and it seems too easy, it should come preloaded as much harder and also with an option to turn off all the visuals and cutscenes so it's just wireframes beating on each other" stuff. If this is "gamers", let me out.

Actually you just have to hit him with one barrel, once he becomes "terrified" all the other immunities go away.  Except ranged immunity.

Oh cool, thanks for the tip. The other issue is he's level 18 :oh_i_see: He's not a Warchief, fortunately, but he is a bodyguard. I was planning skipping that Warchief but maybe I'll try and kill him cause that Warchief has an easier draw out task than the other two.

I'm in the "interesting" camp. It's there - it's engaging to me (as a casual Tolkien fan). And for anyone not interested in it, it doesn't require you to pay any attention to it if you just want to enjoy the stories that unfold as you make/break your various nemeses.

Some reviewers are doing a great job of telling us their own stories (this review comes to mind: http://kotaku.com/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-the-kotaku-review-1639361008 (http://kotaku.com/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-the-kotaku-review-1639361008)). Unlike Destiny's claim that players will develop their own stories in the game, this game actually delivers on that idea. In spades.  My own tales in the game revolve more around how many times I've been eaten by Caragorns and less about getting killed by Captains. I definitely spend most of my time in stealth and the orcs talk about it all the time -- referring to my tendency to strike unseen and kill them before they even know what hit them. They also call me a coward for skulking about so much. Fair enough.

So I planned on picking up a PS4 early next year when Bloodborne came out, but in a moment of weakness I got one this weekend along with this game.  I'm not disappointed.

You're right about the stories, Sobelius.  The first orc captain who killed me has become my nemesis as we've killed one another back and forth.  First, he killed me.  Then later I spotted him at random while in a stronghold and managed to kill him while being swarmed...I wasn't going to let him get away even after the alarm sounded and I was surrounded by ten+ orcs.  I actually yelled at the screen as he died and fell off of a cliff.  Later, while I was hunting down another captain, he returned and said something like "You left me for dead!  Now it's time for you to pay, yada yada" and he kills me a second time!  Now he's stronger than ever and a bodyguard for a warchief.  It's going to be delicious when I finally track him down and finish him...


You're not wrong.  The climbing/running around vibe really is more Infamous than Assassin's Creed.  Which is a good thing.  I was OK with the parkoury stuff in Infamous, but never enjoyed scaling walls, etc in the AC games.  The only other comparison to AC I can think of is the stealth element, but that's so generic that I don't even compare it to AC anymore, and you don't have to stealth all the time anyway.  The combat is definitely like Arkham Asylum/City though.

Dammit almost had him. Got him near a campfire and managed to do some damage to him but he outran me cause of his Fast Runner skill. I knew I should've put a point in to Pin In Place.

Doesn't work if they are immune to ranged unfortunately, even if they are frightened of burning and on fire.

I find I use shadow strike/execute way more now than pin. YMMV though. For me, unlocking shadow execute is making me take all the bow skills next for more arrows and longer focus... that ability is too much fun.

Also won't work on guys immune to ranged.

Immune to ranged is the biggest PITA from that standpoint, which is why I went for the "20 seconds of executes" skill and abuse the shit out of the "do x to stun" skills.

Throw a guy out of the melee, E to stun, then flurry him to death.   If you try to do this in the middle of a pack you always get some fucker that comes up behind right before the flurry execute that needs to be parried or he'll interrupt you anyway.   Taking Blademaster for the 5-hit instead of 8-hit execute has made ALL the difference here.

The game takes place between the hobbit and the trilogy. Gollum already knows exactly where the ring is because when they torture him, he screams out Bag-end which sends the ring-wraiths hunting there and starts the entire lord of the rings trilogy in motion. He was added because they were throwing things people would recognize into the game, sense or no. I don't begrudge it; if you're playing a x-men game you'd better have Wolverine and Storm lined up for the player to interact with and if you have a wild west game, you'd better believe Wild Bill and Wyatt Earp show up at some point.

"Not all who wonder are lost" was there. There were a couple more but I don't remember them, except that they didn't fit the mood or tone of the scene at all and were clearly inserts.


The biggest disservice plot-wise was the grim-faced protagonist staring out at you from a loading screen while musing about his past. There was a lot of meat there and I might have enjoyed it in a different format. In terms of combat, though, I picked up a rune that gave me +elf shot for branding. So you can just shadowstrike + combat brand the adds until they're all gone. The combat is very lopsided; it starts out quite difficult but you end up an unstoppable juggernaut by the midpoint of the game as you get some of these abilities. I'm also not a huge fan of the branding, since branded chiefs don't randomly show up - I feel like branding should have been kept to plot missions because it makes the whole nemesis system a bit less fun.

Actually he says "Baggins" (and "Shire") in movie.  All he knew after leaving the cave was that it was stolen by a guy named Baggins from the Shire.  He had no idea where that was (else he would have gone straight there), and went out searching.  Eventually he was drawn towards Mordor by the growing power of Sauron, before getting captured and tortured while looking about.  He then gave away to the only two pieces of information he knew.

I wonder how playable/enjoyable the game is if you never spend points on abilities and/or upgrade weapons with runes. Might be these two systems are the game's idea of difficulty tweakers?

Not Uruks in the Mist, Cave Trolls in the Mist. I travel around Morder observing the Cave Trolls as they decimate the local Uruk population. It's hilarious.

So the consensus is... well worth $20 as a mass scale murder simulator, wait for the Steam Sale?

The Elf buddy definitely yelled "fly, you fool" at one point.  Rough edges, but fantastic game overall.  I need to get the unlimited finisher ability next.

Consensus? How long have you been around these parts?

I have no regrets buying this at cost. But if you are on the fence, yeah, wait for a sale after the wave breaks.

I don't have any regrets paying full price for this.  Besides the perceived value, I'm happy to encourage development of this type of game.

They are but because of the random boss skill generator you can get into a situation early on where some bosses are simply unkillable if you don't spend points on certain abilities.

If you somehow manage to get far enough in the story to unlock brand you can in theory kill all bosses that way cause none are invulnerable to orcs attacking them.

http://youtu.be/YCjQrBT51Hg?t=1m8s

Spoilers maybe? Shows a possibility for later gameplay.

Nope, i paid 75 bucks for the game and the season pass and don't regret it a bit.

Yeah that's an ability you can get after you get brand.

Ugh. Maybe I'll buy it at full price. Fuck you, internet people. At least it's an arbitrary $10 less on Steam.

Yes, fuck the internet.  I'm very close to purchasing this as well.  I didn't want to do this.

I got a $10 gift card when purchased at Target.

It's really boring but if they are alone you can drain them over and over to kill them, even without brand.

Me too.  

It's worth full price even without the gift card.

Yeah, it's good. I'm really, really bad at the Batman type combat stuff and I'm still enjoying it.

I have a couple more obstacles -- last-last gen PC, no consoles, living off student loans. Otherwise I'd jump on this bandwagon. It does look fun.

TotalBiscuit shows off some gameplay (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBPmkfu_zs8).

I am concerned about the sharp decline in difficulty once you get to late game. Does the game continue in sandbox mode after you finish the 20th Story Mission?

I think this is Steam Sale material for me. It'll only be like $10-20 off tops by then but eh.

PC is typically $10 less than console versions.

Addressing only the difficulty: i haven't tried this but have read you can disable prompts for countering and dodging. I know I'd be in much worse shape without those.

I'm just grabbing it on the PS4, fuckit. I'll get $15 back when I buy Evil Within next week anyway.

Scratch that, PC. I forgot that consoles price shit the same as retail boxes. Morons.

no dont this game is awful

These words totally fit the expression on your forum avatar!

TOO LATE, NERD.

Main thing holding me back is the lack of 970s and 980s.

Ugh. Ok. Game might be awesome. Feels better than Arkham Asylum, but that might be due to the fact you're not always in cramped quarters and the camera angle is slightly more forgiving. There's nothing I hate more than Left Control for important shit though.

This is definitely a gamepad game, even on PC.

It continues in Sandbox mode and Sauron's army is replenished with Uroks that seem to have post-game appropriate higher levels. I died a couple times while trying to finish post-game stuff.

You can always "Accelerate time" on the map screen if you think things have gotten too easy too. The Uroks will continue to level up each time you do it.

As discussed above there are "easy mode" ability combos that become available at the later ability tiers. You can choose not to use them/pick them.

Not for me. I remapped keyboard to accomodate my typical layout and it works well for me.  I also suck using a controller.

Where did you rebind L-CTRL? I don't know enough about the other abilities to really start randomly rebinding.

Another thought on increasing game difficulty: at start of a new game, force time to pass for a while before setting out. Give 'em a two year head start on you...see if Nemesis will build up a wall of worthy opponents before you get your first ability or rune...

Here's what I know I changed (Not at home so not sure of original keys. )

Left shift for sprint and associated abilities.
Spacebar for drain.
Left ctrl for climbing.(I think) Left-CTRl is just combat drain -- don't use it much
 'e' for object interaction.
 'c' for stealth. (yes, c is always crouch)
mapped a side mouse button to daggers

I remapped just based on basic moves.

Hmmmmm, that sounds good. Probably gonna swap how you have drain/climbing, as spacebar is naturally a movement thing for me, but yes, I like this. C means Crouch. ALWAYS.

The mention of Ewoks in the Star Wars thread crossed wires with my search for Shadow of Mordor on Steam, and, well...

Shadow of Endor. Come on. It's fucking brilliant. Mass Ewok Genocide Simulator.

Boring?  It's my favorite way to kill lone orcs. 

I always think "I'll swallow your soul" as I use them to refill my elf shots. 

There is also a sandbox mode on the main menu. No story just killing orcs and captains over and over.  It has ladders and ranking apparently but I haven't tried it yet.

This is the first game that's come out that my crappy old PC is too feeble to run.

Sigh. I guess it's finally time for a new rig.

I rebound l ctrl and shift to my mouse, helps to have a razer i guess.

I'm waiting for Steam sale; not because I don't think it's worth full price but because I've already got a lot on my plate and Borderlands 1.5 is dropping next week.

 :dead_horse:

Bah. I tried it and nothing seems to happen. I had intelled a couple of orcs to reveal some of the army captains, but after a dozen "time passes", I could see no change in the power structure or power of any individual captain. 

Now that I think about it, it's probably a good thing. Monolith probably anticipated the possibility of a "new" player actively passing too much time early in the game and didn't want the captains to grow too powerful too early. Shrug.

So, as a more "fun" sounding game. This is the movement of Infamous done right in the butt by a more refined Dynasty Warriors. I keep wanting Lu Bu to stampede out of a castle.

This is a very good game.

Arkham was terrible. Let's stop comparing the two.

We're not comparing it to the game as a whole, just the combat system.

I really don't like this as a method of controlling difficulty, because abilities are fun to use.  In order to do this to increase the difficulty, I'd have to skip out on the fun of using cool abilities.  I'll probably try and play this way once, but I figure I'll get bored since it'll come down to slashing, countering, and shooting in order to not make things too easy.  Also, I think orcs cap out on Power at 20; I nurtured a couple orcs to that level by helping them in their power struggles and intentionally letting them kill me, and they didn't seem to go any higher, then I killed them.  The only enemies that seem genuinely dangerous to me anymore at all are ranged users, because their shots are a little hard to avoid sometimes.  If they're strong enough they can take me down in two hits, so I have to be careful with those.

This game, while good, would be so much more awesome if I was actually worried about the orcs that kill me and felt threatened by them.  I wonder how the moddability is and whether we're likely to eventually see a difficulty-increasing mod...

Gollum almost immediately ruined the game for me. I've decided to just try my best to ignore this utter shit character.

This should not have been a licensed game, but new IP. It's certainly better than Mirror's Goddamn Edge.

The only real negatives about the game for me are the Lord of the Rings aspect (though it isn't as bad as I figured) and the gating of abilities and warchiefs behind the plot.

Still, almost 30 hours in.. I'm enjoying the game. A lot more than I did Assassin's Creed or the Batman games (neither series which impressed me much).

Also, I've had one crash. Just one. Cost me almost 4 whole minutes of gameplay.

WBPlay is bad, though. Half the time it doesn't seem to connect.

Gollum's inclusion is entirely redeemed by the Gollum song.

Have not even clicked the WBPlay button. Is there a reason to click it?

Me neither. I tend to avoid these specific company "game accounts" because it is basically just there to get your email and autosubscribe you to shit. Does it actually provide anything?

I think it gave me the alternate outfit.

The Dark Ranger outfit was a "preorder" bonus but was basically just packed inside boxes/bundled with purchases. Supposedly you get an Bow rune for signing up for WBPlay.

With WBPlay you get a rune that makes Orcs flee "more" when you Brutalize an enemy.  :headscratch:

Presumably it just increases the radius of the flee effect on Brutalize.

1. My computer runs this flawlessly.
2. This is the most fun I've had since Demon's Souls with an action game.
3. Middle Earth fucking sucks.

If WBPlay's extra skin had been the WB frog, I would be all about it.

Welp, guess I'm picking this up on PC. Is your machine high-end, schild? Based on TotalBiscuit's review, the strength of the gameplay makes up for any lack of graphical splendor.

Game is actually gorgeous.

i7 870@ 2.93GHz
GeForce GTX 760 (4GB variant)

Yes. Yes it is.

A few reviewers out there seem to be grasping at straws for something negative to say in a review by stating the game is visually "ho hum".  I'm running on full HD ultra textures and getting avg 103 fps (Radeon R9 290X 4GB) and there is simply nothing ho-hum to me about the visuals in this game. The *only* thing I have not liked so far is the default key mapping for the PC port.

The only thing I don't like about the game is sometimes it's hard to see where you're looking if you're in wraith view at the edge of a tower. A small gripe, since I could easily drop halfway down the tower and do the same shit I'm already doing.

Well, that and the fact it's a fucking LOTR game. Goddamnit I can not get over that.

The Tolkien estate thanks you for your patronage.

Out of curiosity, why is this such an issue to you?  You've been raging against that fact all thread.

schild requires a requisite level of rage in order to maintain power throughout the day. Hyper love fests have proven to be his undoing in the past (I Am Legend, Hellgate: London), and the later model schild is careful not to fall in to this trap (Demon's Souls is the exception that proves the rule).

It's too bad the name orcs must die was already taken.

This is really good.  I don't mind the LOTRness, it beats some hack calling everything Orx or Dragyns and pretending they're being original.

I'm using a controller and everything's fine with that except for my aiming with the bow.  :awesome_for_real:

Because for every one good game we get from a license, it gives the license holders and publishers the idea that HEY, IT'S SUCCESSFUL BECAUSE IT'S LOTR and we get a run of absolutely shitty LOTR games.

No.

This game would've gotten 10s across the board had it been new IP. Guaranteed. It would've been praised as the second coming of Christ's Lord, Rockstar. Grand Theft Medieval is something everyone has wanted for fucking YEARS. So much so that people pretended Mount & Blade was a good game (no, fuckoff).

And finally, it wouldn't have had to be filled with LOTR tropes and they could've gone hog wild on cooler shit. They managed to make Middle Earth kind of cool here. The amount of emotion coming from these orcs is fantastic.

But at the end of the day, they're orcs. I hope someone lifts the Nemesis system and makes a vastly superior game with actual loot and shit.

If this game had a baby with Dead Rising(and removed all of the Japanese influenced bullshit), I'd never stop playing.  So yah, I guess loot or at least a wider variety of weapons and character visuals could improve it.

This could be one of those instances where a very good game turns into something completely fantastic as a sequel.  There's so much to build with here.

I think i just got hit on by a gay orc.  Something "the friendly", when engaging he went "we don't have to fight, I'm not like those other orcs!"  and when he ran off "we are destined to meet again under different circumstances".

The positive reception not only from critics but from players could make this Monolith's Assassin's Creed.

Hopefully without an increasingly convoluted story to justify the mechanics.

Love it. Haven't heard that one yet.

I think I see your point. The game "Styx: Master of Shadows" was released on Steam today. Half the price of SoM, it's a stealth/thief/AC/Arkham game but heavy on the stealthing from the little I've played so far.  AFAIK the IP is new, the goblin dude you play is a foul-mouthed little monster with no compunctions about stealth-murdering a librarian (he mutters to himself as part of your not-so-sublte tutorial, "jump on the carpet to land softly, especially when the fucker you're going to kill is twice your size").

If the graphics and animation were the caliber of SoM, and if the elf and human enemies who control the prison/vault the goblin is trying to escape from/into had a chain of command like the nemesis system, it would be hailed as you indicated Schild. Instead, while it's a competent game so far (hey -- they mapped crouch to "c" by default!) , the unknown IP and slightly less than AAA graphics may mean it won't get noticed at all.

Those circumstances involve no pants.

Also, Styx was released by Focus. A company that is doomed to mediocrity forever.

I may steal this for a band name.  Or possibly my firstborn.

And it was developed by Cyanide, which has a pretty poor track record as well.  They almost managed to screw up Blood Bowl with an incredibly shitty UI, among other things.

As it happens though, Styx is not a new IP.  It's a prequel to Cyanide's Of Orcs and Men from '12.  It might as well be new though considering how many people actually played that game.

Your commitment to loot=better game knows no bounds. As long as it's not random Diablo crap with 500 different types of modifiers I'm all aboard this time, though.

Loot in this case is more of a Demon's Souls type of affair in which case "things that look neat as shit and have stats appropriate for different things in the game."

Not some random bullshit. I got really peeved when a dude became a captain and he had this kickass looking crossbow with skulls and shit shoved onto the pointy bits. And I'm sitting here with elf crap and Generic Sword With Bullshit Runes. I'd blame Tolkien but really this is a place where the designers could've taken some license. It doesn't help that most of the runes suck and that's the only "real" loot. Even some of the epic ones blow.

Runes blow? Sorry i cant hear you over the sound of my +10 seconds to the sword "I win" button and another rune that makes it charge up 2x as fast.

I said "most." l2r.

I have an inbuilt prejudice against LotR games, I just can't make myself care about playing in that world.  I got over it a little bit in LOTRO to try it but never really got into it mostly because of the world.

Maybe next steam sale I'll try this but I never even would have given this a second look except for all the buzz its getting.

As someone with more hatred for Tolkien than is even reasonable, let me just say: They took lemons and made fucking kickass ice cream.

Clearly this needs a Star Wars version.  :why_so_serious:

Hex.

Given the way people are splerging over it, I think it's going to be a new reasonably commonplace feature in open world games.

God-willing.

Shame I can't think of a current open-world game that could adopt the system that I'd want to play.

Except Pokemon.

Just sayin.

(Edit: Scratch that, Bethesda should shove this the FUCK into Fallout 4 so fast heads spin)

I was hoping Star Wars 1313 (the game set in the underworld of Coruscant) would have been this game. In fact, now that I think of it, I *really* want to play that kind of game. Full on hunter of bounty hunters (with equal viability in stealth/ranged/melee modes). Coruscant's "verticalness" would have been rich for platforming, mixed with underworld and offworld political figures ripe for the nemesis system... damn you, Disney, and your money grubbing Mickey Mouse paws...

Also would have loved to see this style of game set in the world of REH's Conan. That IP (yes, I'm ignoring whatever FunCom did with it), would be perfect for an SoM-style franchise -- a ready-made setting replete with political states, kings, armies, sorcerers, stygian magic, death cults, monsters, and, uh, barbarians.

No schild had it right. Put in a Bethsoft RPG. Fallout, Elder Scrolls, whatever. Would be fucking awesome.

Put it on fucking everything, its not going to make any game worse.  Fucking pac-man would be better with a nemesis system.

I thought it already had one, since Blinky always chases you. That asshole.

Just got done last night with the first area/map. Prior to finishing the missions here, I systematically eliminated every captain and warchief till only that Ratbag was left. It was so satisfying seeing that army page completely wiped out.

The only thing that peeves me are the mini-cutscenes you get when a Captain spots you and calls you out. Breaks my rhythm completely, especially if I am assdeep in orcs. Everything else is shiny.

My initial experience has been positive. You'll want to have a powerful enough system to run this on at least Medium graphics settings. My system defaulted to Low which made t look like a PS2 game. I have a GeForce 560 Ti, so I could at least get 1920x1200 @ 60fps which is about PS3 or slightly better.

It took a little bit of adjusting to the character and the environment. The camera is *damn* close to the character, and aiming / camera with the gamepad isn't as smooth as I'd like due to acceleration.

Combat is more forgiving than Arkham -- if you do a counter early, the game doesn't penalize you with a broken combo or a miss, so you can spam it when you expect an attack. However, the enemy attacks don't come when I expect them to -- there's about a second delay from Arkham, which isn't terrible, but it is a bit jarring to the flow.

One downside of Arkham is how complex it got late game. So far, that hasn't been a problem. The style of combat is different. I enjoyed Akham's more physical, visceral martial arts combat, but there is something extremely satisfying in the swordplay visuals here.

Nemesis is great. Lots of variety. I was surprised to see some Orcs track me down in Open World and catching me by surprise. I'm waiting for the difficulty to go up.

Only real gripes I have so far is that the Tutorial for Flurry isn't available, and I don't feel an value added from the sheer amount of lore. Story sort of drops you in, with an unbelievable amount of acceptance from Talion of the presence of his Wraith counterpart. Beyond that, things have been good.

How do you do those lightning strikes?

Yeah I had that problem last night.  I'd shadow-killed a patrolling orc to get next to his captain, and right as I was swininging, mandatory interrupt scene.  Ugh.

I haven't been able to wipe-out the army yet, though.  As soon as I get down to 3-4 orcs left it seems some bottom-tier captains are always recruited.

The two most most obnoxious things to happen so far both happened to me last night.

1) Hunting the last warchief left alive, he's patrolling with 2 high-tier captains who are ranged immune. I use the "godmode multi-kill" skill and mid-fight 2-more captains come wandering in.  So there I am trying to kill a warchief and four captains  along with all the orcs that were following them.  I fled, having only killed one of them, who was arrow vulnerable.

2) Captains must have something in their AI routine that warps them across the map if a fight goes on "too long." They're always wandering up on me when I've scouted and made sure nothing was going on.  After finally killing the warchief above, I was engaged with yet another "must melee him" captain when out of nowhere a guy shows up, who I have no information on.  It's like the game said, "oh, this fight's gone on for over a minute, the army's empty so let's promote joe jackass here to a captain since he's wandering up."  


Which lighting strikes? Flurry?  Hit E to stun, then click fast on the orc while he's got the blue glow. It's a kill if you get through the whole combo. The problem is that in a melee someoene will always need to be parried about the 3-4 swing, stopping you and not having done much damage to the orc.

I bought this a couple days ago due to peer pressure  :x and I have to say I've been having a blast.

The nemesis system is great and I was doing fine until I died due to poor planning. So this one orc started snowballing until he became a level 22 legendary captain....needless to say I had a vendetta against this guy.  Last night I finally took him down even though he was immune to literally everything and it was so, SO satisfying.

Screw you guys, I don't have time for another game... I'm still catching up on DA:O ffs. 

I got lucky yesterday. The day before I eliminated all the warchiefs and the row right under them. Yesterday there were 4 duels on my map so I was able to kill 8 straight away, 2 at a time. Shadow strike/execution is a godsend for the runners. Even if immune to range, it still teleports you over to them so they don't escape. I have pin, but that is too much aiming for me on the run and with little to no focus left in the tank - not to mention pin doesn't work on range immune. I think 2 orcs got promoted as I was getting close to killing all the captains, but luckily they were both in the same camp.

Combat master captains are rough going, especially if you can't vault over them with the stun. Fun though. Only drawback is that after I killed my first nemesis early on, I started decapitating every captain so none of them came back. Not that decapping takes them out completely (I don't really know actually), but I haven't had one since 'the Puny' and I went back an forth killing each other early on.

It seems that decapping and animal kills do take them out for good.  I've several I'd stealth killed, drained or burned to death come back and can't think of a decap. The funniest one was Gorak the Tickler? Laugher?  I dunno. 

He was the first one I saw come back, with an eyepatch or something and how I learned the could be rezzed. He had the misfortune of being susceptible to ranged, so he died again pretty quick.  Two missions later, he jumps me near a wall. I melee with his buddies for a few minutes, climb the wall and kill him.  While I'm collecting the rune from his corpse he spawns right behind me, more machine than orc. 

I laughed out loud to hear a line that went something like, "You thought me dead but I'll have my vengeance now!"   I was full on focus, he didn't even finish the charge to get into melee.

I haven't seen him since, I wish he'd write.

I'm liking that this game delivers on the idea of players coming away with stories to tell, like yours. It's unique to you. I will never have that exact same scene, even if my scene has some similar elements. It seems these stories are born from a game that knows how to add the variable of 'player behavioral history' into it procedurally generated enemy engine.

Would love to have an orc captain offer me "cake or death?"

This is a creepy concept. It makes the ghosts bloodthirsty. I don't know if I like that.

Hah, I forgot about Stun. That would make sense.

When does the passive multiplayer Revenge System come into play?

Now that I think about it, the choppiness of UI interactions is something I'd like to see addressed in sequels. Combat's flow, as I mentioned earlier, could be tightened, but the executions and other sword animations are very fluid.

Oh, how do you decap? Random execution? x8 Combat Finisher?

Random Orc you have dominated somewhere can get promoted to a captain when time advances.  I did not expect that. 

Yes you have to decapitate them to keep them from coming back. On the Nemesis screen if they are lying on the ground they have a chance to come back. If in their spot their head is on a spike then they wont (head on spike is on far left side):

(http://i.imgur.com/ms5U7Gv.jpg)

I saw that but didn't realize that was happening. Some systems aren't fully explained -- and if that one was, then others (like Flurry) are blink-and-you'll-miss-it tooltips. So Decap is x8 Combat Finisher?

It's random. They will show up as a red box on the map like the other Captain sub-events. If you are just starting out, though, I would avoid those cause you can't get any advance intel on those Captains so you may not have the tools to defeat some of them yet.

Edit: note that you don't need any friends to actually get these -- the game will give you avenge events for random people if you have no friends.

Yes that's one way to decap. There are other abilities later on that you can get that will make their heads explode.

Strange, captains' heads never explode for me and I don't think I've ever had a combat finisher decapitate one, either.  They just wind up getting the few animations that don't decapitate, and when doing a move that would make most heads explode, they just...don't.  It hurts or kills 'em, but the head doesn't explode for me.  The normal orcs' heads explode though.

Not that I have seen many of them come back.  The only one that's done so for me is one I killed with a headshot relatively early on.  Killed him again later on, he hasn't been back since; pretty sure his spot has been replaced now.

Oh, man, I'd almost cleared my screen but they were all lying on the ground.

hahahahahahaha I never would've figured that out if I didn't read the thread. Would've assumed <<lore bullshit>> was bringing them back.

Confirming that. I get at least one of these a day and only Yeg is on my PS4 friend's list who I know has the game. I keep getting random people's vengeance missions. If I get to it, I end up taking that target out. Have yet to get killed by one of those missions.

I also like the fact that if you get overwhelmed, you can run away much of the time. I had a few 'tracking' or 'fast runner' captains tail me for quite awhile. I usually tend to head for the nearest herb and heal up and get back to it. I also get that odd thing where I'll be in over my head fighting a captain and not get the beacon orc who gets off the signal. I'll run away and hide and all the sudden that captain is on the other side of the map. And without fail they always taunt my ass for running away - the one even threatened to chop off my feet so I stay and fight. I relieved him of his head shortly there after. Love those guys that die instantly to combat finishers...especially if they talk shit.

And does anyone like the mounted combat? Damn warg (caragore...whatever...) is kind of a pain in the ass to maneuver in tight spots and with a lot of shield carrying orcs. I tend to dismount and have the warg fight alongside me...till I get overzealous and end up killing him too.

Mounted fights are OK. One attack, one Bite, good-bye boss.

As long as they are not enraged by Caragores or a beastmaster that one-shots your mount.

I got massacred trying to avenge Danny B once.  I will never forgive him.

Caps heads explode if you take the skill for head explode on drain and then interrogate them.  Now that I know they don't come back I'm going to start offing the ranged immune guys and keep the stealth & ranged vulnerables off the 'behead him' list.

I had a vengeance target kill me once; he was only level 15, but.. turned out to be stealth, ranged and martial immune, had block wraith stun and block jump abilities, poison, quick healing and power attack. His weaknesses were Graugs and guuls.. neither of which were around. Any time he would hit me he'd take off almost 2/3rds of my health, and his attacks required the spacebar to dodge.. and for some reason I suck at using the spacebar prompt for dodging, especially with catagors. I just never time it right and spamming it doesn't seem to work.

If I hadn't had such shitty luck with runes I'd probably have taken him regardless, or been deeper into the game, but I wasn't. Now, I'm been using various runes that give me health back largely because I hate poison. I need my prompts. So, I get ~35% health back on a flurry kill, ~98% chance for 10 health on arrow head shot kills, 38% chance for 5 health on any arrow kill, full health on a captain kill, and some health for head explosion kills. Been a few fights in strongholds where I'm fighting 3-5 captains, tons of orcs, see my health drop low and in relatively quick order I can get myself back to full even if poisoned.

Still hate berserkers though.

Speaking of the IP, why even use it if you are going to change the name of things? They are wargs and cave trolls damnit.

Not to sperg about it, but if you look in the appendices they talk about graugs being larger than trolls, and in the timeline they are about to start breeding the two.

I'm sure there's something about caragors in there as well.

I'm not sure I've died in any game as much as I've died in this.  Always when they work a damn shield guy into the mix. I have to remember to possibly push two buttons? Nope.

I should possibly advance the plot a bit.  There's a lot I seem to be getting locked out of.

It helps when/if you get the stun on vault ability.

I've taken the total opposite approach -- have done very little plot advancement. Spending all my time doing missions in the first map and getting as many powers, abilities, and runes before advancing story. I've almost unlocked every power on the first 3 tiers (except the story powers that haven't unlocked yet). Been very satisfying to see that I can play as fully open world as I want to experience almost everything so far -- just now unlocked seeing the warchiefs and haven't gotten the branding ability yet. I've already played 18 hours of the game and really enjoy the side quests, lore, and all the extra stuff. 

If you can get to the state where you unlock Shadow Strike (and Deadly Shadow Strike), it opens up more ways to play.  As for dying a lot, I think it's fully intended to be part of the experience. Really is no shame in running away from a fight -- circle around, find a plant to eat, stealth, come back and gank the fucker that's causing the problem in the fight (usually a spear-thrower in my case).

And is there nothing more aggravating than being low on health, almost having a captain in the green and/or down, and some other captain shows up and one shots you?? Argh!!! Nemesis indeed.

Just got brand and this became a Urukemon Orc politics simulator. Fucking GoTY.

Question, as I sill don't have my new pc to play: if the Mao character was an Orc and instead of magic elf powers to control people he just won their loyalty through being awesome / demonstrating he is the alpha male, would there still be the slavery accusations? Is it more from the white guy dynamic than anything else?

10 missions in. All Warchiefs nailed. There have been some interesting moments in the game, but the Captain patterns are starting to become more predictable. At least they aren't hurting for variety of orcs.

I haven't done a Captain over Difficulty 15 ... except for this one Vendetta that had a Lv. 19 Elite Captain. First time I got my ass handed to me. Second time I came charging in on a Chargoras that he was afraid of. He booked from his escorts and became easy prey for grabs and kills.

I had an elite captain at 20, mostly because he was a damn hunter and had poisoned shots.  That guy killed me an awful lot.  I'd be close to getting him and then, bam, lucky poison shot and down I go.

Once you get the jump stun + combo reduction + shrug off one hit, your power just goes through the roof.

Last time I saw a fervor like this it was over Skyrim, so I'll probably have to buy this at Christmas.

Early on I had plenty of deaths and several lvl 20 elite captains.  Now it would take an army of berserkers to give me trouble. I just wade in against captains without learning their strengths or weaknesses now to keep it interesting. I actually almost died last night when I jumped in a duel between two captains and the weaker one immediately machine gunned three poisoned bolts right into my gut without any warning.  It put me straight into "finish him" mode but instead of going for the finishing blow he got tackled by the other captain.

Oh I have some stealthy crossbow dipshit in my game that is power 35 now. When I'm low he appears on some fucking watchtower and gets a shot in at me. Never fails.

I'm gritting my teeth right now thinking about him.

Poison debuffs are a pain in the ass. Especially on ranged orcs. Fuckers...

I haven't ragequit a game in a LONG time, but the Captain who's immune to everything but explosions AND stuck in the middle of one of the 2nd area fortresses (which spawn orcs a lot quicker) made me do so.  Trying to kill him plus the 30 orcs from an alert got me low, then when I tried to escape I ran into a berserker who threw me down then finished me off. No "last stand" screen  because I'd already had 2 in the previous 5 mins.

Goddamnit!

You know I just realized this on my morning commute: Arkham does give you the strong feeling of being Batman and dealing with an assortment of thugs with martial arts and gadgets. This game gives the feeling of being an Aragon / Legolas hybrid (with some liberties) slaughtering legions of Orcs with expert swordplay and arrow skills.

I just unlocked Shadow Strike. The game's fundamentally different. Dodge + Stun, Flurry, Execute, Bow Bow Bow, Repeat, Mix in an instant kill Shadow Strike, A + B Wraith Absorb when I run out of arrows -- the runes and the abilities all interweave with each other to keep you topped off and moving quickly.

I encountered my first Ghul matron. Fuck that noise. Oh, thanks tooltip -- explosions, and after I've killed one.

The various executions and the *slam* of them doesn't get old.

The executions make me think immediately of the killing scenes in 300 in that you are in a flow and then to highlight the finale, everything goes slow motion in case you miss it.

The other most excellent thing I enjoy on the PS4, this game utilizes the controller speaker. That really adds to the wraith-speech.

Never even noticed. Did not know the controller had a speaker.

Yeah that little grill of 12 or so dots between the sticks and below the touchpad button. I didn't adjust anything on my PS4 out of the box, but I believe it might be tied to the earphone jack. No idea though.

I really like the way they've used.  You hear environmental effects like water through it, and anytime a captain is introduced you hear their name spoken through it.  The wraith sounds also.

And the bushes rustle if you are hiding in them. There's also some weird combat move that I can never consciously trigger (I think it's the chain kill one) that plays its sound effects through it.

If you have headphones on, though, you likely won't hear what's coming out of the controller.

Died to her on first encounter because I ran screaming out of the cave with her on my tail and smacked right into 2 captains. She started fighting them and I thought I could stealth kill her, but no. I suffered ignominy in the bushes as she and her ghul pack feasted on me. And the captains got promoted, of course.

Started a new game to experiment with things.  Not doing any intel, just death threats all around!  You need to do some story missions before day advancing has much impact.  Early on it only sometimes matters?  

Fantastic battle against the Guardian and his 3 captain posse right next to a fortress, endless reinforcements.. I got him eventually, but 2 of the other Captains yet live.  I did score an Epic rune that gives health when you parry, so I might turn off prompts and see what happens.  

There is a story mission in the 2nd section that teaches you about her vulnerability but if you've been spelunking in the first section on your own then you have to learn about it the hard wary.

Man, when I finally build my new PC (And get back from the  week long trip to Croatia I'm about to take), I'm going to buy this outright.  Even you picky assholes who hate games I love enjoy this.  Sounds like a lot of fun from what I've read, and unlike many of you, I like the LOTR setting.  Though seriously, I never realized there was that much hate for Tolkien till I read this thread.  What gives!

I really want to see RK47 do one of his special Radicalthon's for this, since I'm sure a lot of comedy could come out of him and the nemesis system.  But I'm afraid he'd also just hardcore power game the entire thing and never die.

Picked this up on Wednesday for my PS4. $10 cheaper than everyone else locally, plus another $10 off for pre-ordering made it an easy choice, what with the buzz about this game both in reviews and from real humans - this thread being no small part of it. PLayed it a little before going to sleep, and then accidentally spent pretty much all of my day off playing it yesterday. I've played about 4 story missions, but spent an awful lot of time running around collecting money to unlock slots, and a lot of time killing captains, finally unlocking the warchiefs before finishing up.

It's a nice looking game, but it's no huge step up from 360 games vidually. It's very much a cross-gen game. I also found the gameplay very repetitive, yet moreish. It'd also be nice to have the stealth-crouch on a toggle - and have it break when you go into combat. I spent about 8 hours yesterday holding the damn trigger down.

I like Tolkien, but the "lore" is a bit tedious after awhile. Memory spots from a fishwife's broken pot and such - but those are easily ignored, which is what I started to do after most of a day listening to them. Though some are interesting. Also killed some guy's nemesis a couple of times. I'm wondering if I should let the Uruks level up a little more before taking them down. I'm basically riding roughshot over them - except for one champion a crossbow with all kinds of immunities and his own private army - who is the only one I'm scared of. Fuck knows how I'm going to take him down. Play more and unlock the third tier of powers, I guess.

Just got the Brand ability.  I am now playing some kind of weird orc political simulator.  Definitely Game of the Year.

Are you issuing death threats?  Levels up the captains and gives them a goon squad.  If you are finding the game easy, do that.
The second map gets harder as well. 

Credit to the designers. Death Threat is an excellent addition. If I could pull right trigger to give the Middle Earth equivalent of a middle finger, even better. What I thought was odd was how you let the Captain go after issuing the death threat, he immediately disappears. I was confused for a few moments before I realized you need to leave the Captain alive to deliver the threat.

The voice acting and dialog are pretty good in the story missions.

Downloaded last night and have basically played 7 hour straight today.  Great game.  My left pinky kinda hurts from holding down the crouch button.

I seem to be unlucky in that I always end up fight two, sometimes three and sometimes four captains at a time.  WTF.  I think I need to do a better job singling them out somehow.  Also wish I knew how to behead some of these motherfuckers.

Yeah the little snippets of voice acting really elevate the game. "He's on the bridge!" lots of event and spacial awareness. 

Also as I was executing a captain last night he said "Your wife's screams were so lovely I'll remember them in death!" fucker.

Mo' map, mo' problems. New army and higher overall difficulty is greatly appreciated. I was surprised they added a forested, non-wasteland area to explore in Mordor -- I thought once I moved past the gate I'd be in a place that was even darker and more devastated than where I started.

I've started encountering the two-shot Captains and Poison. One Captain had an Iron shield that I couldn't break and use stun, arrows, or counter on -- I had to run and get my bearings before reengaging. If you go face-to-face with a Captain in the dark, you only need that one method to build combo -- in his case it was the leap stun to get me into flurry and double Executions. I expect things to switch up again when I get Brand and can start distracting the adds with my own.

I've only just gotten enough power to unlock that tier. I know you can also make time go faster from the towers. I'll likely start cranking the orcs up more once I get a few more upgrades.

I'm also not sure what the deal is with the story missions:

I think that is where I am right now as well, so I think so.

I really need to stop reading this thread.

Can't stop thinking about this game. 

Are the captains all totally random?  I mean, random name, random appearance, random stats?  It seems clear many of them must be, at least the random orcs who kill me and get promoted.

Captains are random, far as I can tell, though the amount of powers looks more constrained and standardized across Captains.

Kill All Warchiefs is the next phase of the story, yes.

I was on the last warchief on the list last night.  I clear out all of his known underlings and go after him.  When he spawns, he's got a bodyguard.  OK.  I can take care of that. 

Then, while fighting, I'm starting to get a bit overwhelmed.  Then, here's my Nemesis.  I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD.  Then another captain, then another, and another.  Then, another captain.  This guy has a feathered headdress and just makes noises and smiles at me.  It's kind of gay, but not as gay as Zuuz the Cannibal, who kept calling me man-thing and wishing we could be together under different circumstances. 

This ended up being like a 20 minute fight. Several times I had to run around for herbs or just create space so I could execute for health.  I blow up one captain, and finally do enough to drop the warchief.  The rest scatter. Including my nemesis, who I really wanted to execute for good. 

Good times.

I did not care for Gollum being in the game, but at least his song is amusing.

There might be a yellow slave uprising mission if you have done enough of the rescue missions?  Otherwise yeah kill warchief.  Ratbag will lead you to glory!

Morrigan has not aged well, and evidently the Warden had a daughter. ;)


In other words, Claudia Black is the voice of Marwen, the witch queen in chapter 2.  I suspected as much when I heard her but looked it up to verify.

Finally unlocked Graug riding. It has a strange feeling of being on a Rancor when he eats a Gamorrean orc.

And the guy who played Marvin in pulp fiction is Ratbag, i hope i get to shoot him right in the face.

This game is so nuts. I usually spend some amount of time on a rampage in open world settings in other games. But here I keep forgetting there ARE things llike missions and side missions and shit. It's just so damned satisfying on every level of game play I keep forgetting there's a carrot OR a stick!

I'm glad you explained the decap thing with the visual though. Was having a lot of deja vu.

You can also flurry kill them.  Head explode = gone.  Some guys don't go for the combo finisher, and you'll have to do a QTE.  Whether or not you get a decap off those seems somewhat random.

Thanks. You mentioned Flurry earlier I think, something like be in Stealth, hit E, and then combo them or some such while they're pulling a Lo Pan? Is that an unlocked ability? I haven't seen nor done a flurry,

An easy way to do a flurry is either hit them with the wraith stun or have the "stun on jump" ability and jump over them.  It's the series of fast blows.  I don't know if it's an unlock, but at the end of that a normal uruk/orc will have its head explode.   :grin:

You need the Wraith Finisher ability for the head explosion part on Flurry kills.

Need 6GB of vram for the HD texture pack that was just released. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll need to check that flurry thing as soon as I can kick my oldest off my computer ("but it's the best one for Minecraft!").

6gb?! Shit how many people have that? I guess I'm slumming it with 4? Game looks amazing and everything is maxxed. I might try it anyway (or will the game tell me to eff off?). One thing I like about the graphics is they could easily be over depressing, but it's not.

In fact after about 22 hours of doing nothing but open world killing stuff, the only thing I've found annoying is that when I do remember to do a mission, I realize just how early in the story I am. I'm still being told how to do things I've long since mastered.

Except flurry of course...

So I've got one Warchief left, and I've done Ratbag's Warchief as well - which opened up another mission - with a yellow fist icon. So I assume I'm not far from the second area now. I have a couple of questions:

1) Can you come back to this initial map?
2) I need to kill bats. I can't find the cave where there were a ton of them, though - and I've done laps of the whole map.
3) I've killed everything except for that last warchief. Most of my runes are around level 8-12. Should I be levelling the captains up higher and then hunting them down for higher level runes? What level is good/realistic/etc

Also, will the mission or killing the final warchief move me to the next map? I want to make sure I get to do everything if possible before moving to the next map.

Spoiler the answers if need be.

Yes. You can move between the maps freely after the gate is unlocked.

I shot my first set of bats from the outside. You just need to look up a lot. They do seem to be in the air closer to the edges of the map where there are caves, though.

If you want the epic runes you can wait till you get the death threat ability. That increases the chance those will drop. It also powers up the Captain.

There's a yellow mission that will appear after you finish the war chief series. You can stay on the first map as long as you want without advancing the story by avoiding that mission.

I feel like the cave with the bats was in the top right corner, but I'm not positive.

Higher level runes aren't really that much better, the increments tend to be 1% / level, so a better reason to level up the captains is to make them more challenging.

There is a cave with bats just southwest of the forge tower in Udun Crossing.  You can shoot three easy while walking up to the cave entrance as they start flying away.

Thanks guys - and it seems I forgot one of the most important questions - does the game still generate captains after you kill all of the warchiefs?

Yep. The Captains get promoted to warchiefs in time.

You're a killing machine, but you can't kill all the orcs.

You get a message that a creature you need to kill is around if bats/any flying critter is near you.  With the slow time focus thing, you can just look up and plink one or two pretty easily.  No need to find a specific cave.

If you fast forward time (X on the keyboard from the map, I think) events will resolve to power up existing Captains and new ones will be promoted, and vacant Warchief spots will be filled.

Get the "death threat" ability.  You can then grapple any ork and interrogate, and then send him off to make a death threat against a Captain.  This will level that Captain up 4 ranks and give him a bodyguard, and increase the chance of dropping an epic rune. 

The game stops giving you the challenge hints after a while.

I thought this game would suck, its pure gold.  After logging 45 hours I finished it.  Two things really stood out, first I loved the vindicator missions especially when your fortunate enough to get a multikiller to spawn.  Second after you beat it, for some reason the enemies don't scale to your difficulty level.  Seems like kind of a flaw of the player monitoring system.  Great game though on the whole and the first in a long while that was worth every dime I paid for it.

It seems like, unless you die to a Captain / Warchief, their max power level is 20.

I only put about 20 hours into the story including dicking around with the Nemesis system. I thought it odd in the finale where it said "This is your Nemesis!" and I was like "Who?" Story in the second-half ties into some previous LOTR moments, which I thought was... good, though not excellent (Sauruman).

I've uninstalled the game, though I thought it worth the money. Eventually I was able to get a FOOS (First Order Optimal Strategy) that trivialized any Nemesis encounter. The only time I had an issue was someone who was immune to everything but Fire, but that still doesn't stop Combat Branding of regular Orcs to do the work for you.

I look forward to what this system evolves into with sequels and those who 'borrow' it for their own games.

I haven't died to an Orc yet, though I'm sure the stupid immune to everything but fire guy who also has the 'pops up to kill me whenever he feels like it' will get me eventually. Carragors on the other hand....

I've OCDed myself though a few hours so far without really doing missions.. some of those collect them all things have really slowed me down.

The voice acting in this is very good.

After feeling like I had been ganked too many times (3 and 4 captains at a time), I have decided to go on the initiative today.  3 hours of nothing but hunting down and murdering the shit out of captains.  They are now my bitches, at least for as long as I choose to stay on top of them.  Great fun.  I accomplished nothing else. 

I am going for the branding EVERYONE thing one the second map. 3/4 of the way there.

I've just changed Left Ctrl to Q, and made throwing daggers 1. I will probably rebind daggers to a mouse key once I actually use it. Space as run, etc is a no brainer to me, as I'm so used to jump. At the moment it's a punch (e), bash bash bash (mouse), execute (f), bash (click), dagger kill (shift click), repeat sequence.

I need a Carragor fighting simulator to train on though, those things kill me every time. I must be pressing space too late or something.

Shoot them in the head with arrows.  The time slow helps a lot.  Fuck those things.  They are the cougars of Middle Earth.

That's what i do, it ain't worth it to try to melee it.  Most of my leveled up captains come from dying to caragors.

Is there any way to absolutely execute a decap? Even knowing now I can't ever entirely exhaust the captains pool, I still want to force the engine to generate new ones.  :grin:

Interrogations and flurry kills if you have the head explody thing.

Oooh, good point. I only did that on a captain once when I already knew he was linked to a Warchief.

Also, if an orc is branded and you use the ability that kills all branded orcs it is a guaranteed decap as long as you are in the vicinity of said branded orc.  It's not ideal, but it is a guaranteed decap.

Just going to re-iterate the quality of the voice acting, and dialogue writing, in this. The nemesis is interesting (though nothing that special without Brand), but the quality of the 'world' and characters that the voice acting brings makes this game in my view.

I just wish the combat was a little more dynamic in the smaller battles, and less of a mess in some of the larger ones. Using skills in a controlled and deliberate way to target specific orcs in a battle is... well maybe I'm just not that practised at it yet, so it's just a bit of button mashing, follow the prompts, glory. It is very very hard to die to Orcs; almost impossible if you are willing to run away when in trouble.

I started playing Assassin's Creed III after this game. I was getting trounced by British Redcoats because I had grokked Mordor's combat scheme. Mordor +1.

Was there a significance to the "Your Nemesis" on the second-to-last mission? The game presented me with this Orc who seemed to know me, but all I could say in response was "But for Talion, it was Tuesday."

For me it presented me with the first orc to ever kill me, Gundza the Whisperer.  I had slain him once before, but he came back only to kill me again.  I hadn't bothered to decap him later out of revenge, and saw him leading the charge in that mission, calling me out.

Needless to say I made a bee line right for him even in the midst of that huge group of orcs.  It was one of the most epic gaming experiences I've had in years.

My nemesis, the only Orc to kill me, currently has a bag over his head holding it together. Not sure he will last to the later game.

I pushed through and completed the story because as fun as this game is it's sucked up hours of my life for the last 2 weeks that I just don't have.  (Serously, another series of midnight/ 1am bedtimes until I completed it yesterday)

My nemesis was a rebirth of an earlier nemesis.  I say rebirth because it was the same name and everything, but he was missing the big iron jaw and wasn't ranged immune.

Being that was the case, he went down PDQ to my elf shots, but I ran into melee to finish him off.  It was very satisfying, but less so than the tower fight.  I only wish the hand fight would have had more to it than it did.

Now that I branded all the orcs on the second map, I decided to go back to the first map and do the same. Two of the orcs I butchered are back... one who I have killed 4 times, once through burning his ass up. He has a sack tied around his head with string and is flesh is a decidedly darker color. He also had some choice words for me when we met up. After wading through and converting a ton of heathen orcs, I finally convinced him to play on my team. Sadly, right after I did that, I ported over to catch a few more and saw him off in the distance with 1/2 health. Graug ate his lunch and stomped him dead. He just can't win.

Now that I got a rune that heals each time I brand an orc, I am playing missionary and converting EVERYTHING, orcs, graugs, caragores,  you name it. All I need is a small bible in my other hand at this point.

So orcs chanting: "Dûsh! Dûsh! Dûsh! Dûsh! Dûsh!" is a thing that happened in my game.

Think that happens anytime you spawn a Warchief. The name chanting starts and runs through the cut scene. I am ok with it.  :drill:

Say Dûsh! out loud.

*wooosh*

Would this game be better if it was just: you are a lowly Orc fighting their way to rule the lot and take over the world? Yes, yes it would.

That is Rise of Mordor, the sequel. 

They need to shove this game into Elder Scrolls 6 so fast Jeremy Soule won't be able to sit down for a week.

TES 6:Shadow of Tamriel?

Or just an entire game based on the thieves guild or vampires guild or something. Typical elder scrolls is fucking stale at this point.

I still like it and the modders do good work.

Just got to the second area. How far into the game am I?


I stopped playing Oblivion after completing the Assassin's and thief quest lines. Figured there wasn't anything worth doing after those.

My opinion on modding has not changed since f13 became a thing. If I have to mod your game to make it something I want to play, I'm just going to go play something else.

Depends on if the mods are about fixing mistakes, or adding new content.

This is, perhaps, worse than actual modding of player created bullshit.

F13.net: Entrenched opinions about irrelevant things.

Like, say, gaming. Yes. It is a gaming website.

I used to feel that way about mods, then I played Skyrim, Mount and Blade, Total War, and Minecraft with mods. Pretty much changed my outlook forever.

Skyrim really doesn't need mods unless you're really into bear fucking like rk.  I don't even remember if I had any installed.  Maybe a texture pack.. no idea.

Modders fixing bugs is fine until the moment they start injecting their own bias into the process.  The mega-fix packs for VtM: Bloodlines were rife with this. 

Nothing worse than a mod 'bug fix' which defines a bug as anything the creator just didn't like about the game, typically breaking the game in the process.

None of the games listed need mods. They increase replayability but aren't required, to quote schild,  "to make it something I want to play." 

I agree totally with that stance on modding and always have.  However adding mods to already good games gets me through the dry spells since I don't buy *everything* out there. 

Mount & Blade would be the example I'd point to where modding takes it from 'eh' to 'great'.

Having to mod a game to make it great makes it go from 'great!' to 'eh' for me. I cannot be bothered with that crap.

And I played hours and hours of M&B and it was great without mods.

It really depends upon the game and the mod.  If I get the game cheap (and almost always do now with Steam and patience), and the mod doesn't require me sacrificing a goat in the hopes of installing it right, I'm all good with combining the two.

Now in a perfect world?  Yeah, the game should be fan-fucking-tastic on its own.  And mods should just be ways to enjoy the game further or little preference tweaks.  And devs that can't do that should be shot.  But we only get that game once or twice a decade it seems...

Half-Life was a great game on its own merits, but if you were refusing to play Counter-Strike or TFC back in the day because they were mods, you were dumb.

Also, Vampire: Bloodlines, f13's first GOTY, is definitely much better with the mod that fixes the crashing bugs and whatnot.  An exceptional case, I know.

Eh, CS is a pretty special case.

Total conversions, while technically mods, aren't really the same thing in terms of gameplay experience.

I'm cool with mods extending the life of a game (e.g. Minecraft), but not so much to fix the game.  But more important for me is the processing for getting and installing the mods.  Skyrim has it right, totally painless.  Even something like DayZ has it right.  Minecraft has it partly right (but a whole lot of wrong as well).  If I have to jump through significant hoops and avoid a minefield of ad/mal/spyware plagued websites, then fuck that bullshit.

Back to the topic at hand.  I haven't played SoM for a few days, and it is driving me batty.  It has been a while since a game made me spend so much time thinking about it even when I wasn't playing it.

I'm with Schild and lamaros in regards to mods. The only game that I really felt needed them was Dark Souls for PC, but that goes under the category of actually making the game playable.

I keep trying Minecraft mods and I am probably not picking the right ones as there hasn't been anything that really enhanced it for the amount I play. I am fine with Skyrim the way it is and I could never get into any Civ mods.

I have not even gotten to the second area in Mordor yet - I keep getting sidetracked from the main quest and I was getting tired of failing the stupid stealth portion of the main storyline.

I hate escort missions and I hate forced stealth missions.

Mods are fine until the devs get lazy (BETHESDA!).  I don't have a lot of time for nonsense, though (Minecraft until Technic Launcher).

Bloodlines was an exceptional case, given we gave it GOTY before any of the mods that fixed bugs came out. We played through the pain that year. I've still never played it with bugfix mods. Though, I should, as its an excellent game.

CS took a couple months to catch on in Virginia and by then I was playing Unreal tournament and didn't care about CS really. I never played the original TF. That said, I probably would have played CS if UT had not come out.

I'm pretty sure I've modded less than 5 games in any capacity in my entire life. I definitely got maps for UT and Q3A, so if maps count that's two of them. I added a random thing to Skyrim when Steam Workshop came out to see what Workshop was about. This was long after I stopped playing Skyrim. I changed my texture map in Minecraft from a link on f13. Uhhhhhhh. Oh, and I installed Synergies mod for Torchlight 2, also from Steam Workshop, because TL was a half-baked soulless husk of a game (Synergies is a total overhaul of the game, and it was still crappy). Pretty sure that covers everything.

Oh, oh, and I downloaded a mod for Diablo 2 called Path of Exile which has this seriously wackadoodle currency system, a new combat system chock full of wet noodle slapping, and a skill tree replaced with a Skill Google Map.

The dagger missions are all stealth and I have yet to be successful on any of them on the second map. I am always spotted either right before the end or midway through - and always by some random mob patrolling through either from another level that climbed up out of the blue or some wandering archer up on a tower somewhere. I may never do these as they are just too frustrating to consider doing.

I find stealth missions require lots of patience, and constant use of wraith-sight viewing of mobs. Some are easier than others -- even so, yeah they can be frustrating.

This is mostly how I feel about mods too. There's plenty of games that I've played for far longer than I would have if I hadn't modded the crap out of them. I also just like the process of finding, installing and experimenting with mods. Skyrim & Fallout NV I modded to the point of bringing my PC to it's knees :)

KSP is another one that's very moddable. There's a lot of mods that tweak existing game mechanics that the small dev team simply don't seem to have time/inclination to fix, e.g. making the atmospheric model more realistic, but there's also a vast amount of parts and tech created by users that can change the game massively. I'm on over 400 hours played now and I'd guess most of that time I've been running at least 20 mods.

Once I started using my bow extensively in those stealth missions they became trivial. 

Now that I got the final focus slot, I might try that. Dunno if it will help since most of the time I am minding my own business and all the sudden it shows the failed mission screen and my camera pans over to some orc off in the distance behind me that is just showing his face or something. Someday I'll actually give it a go again.

This game is great.  There was a spear thrower, The Singer, that I couldn't kill at all.  Just immune to everything.  Finally got my wits about me and started an execution interruption mission which was him (L20) vs. another guy that was L5.  I plinked a few in there to try and interrupt and low and behold, the L5 dude beat my nemesis to death. 

It was awesome.  Jumped down there with a "scare everyone" stealth kill and picked up the item and ran off.

I've always had the audio cue trigger when I'm spotted while in stealh mode. Maybe play those missions with some headphones if you aren't already?

The only stealth mission that gave me much trouble was the one with the ghuls and the torchbearers.  That one sucked.  Mostly because I kept running out of arrows and had to run around finding more.  Plus, using arrows during that mission can lead to people seeing you if you're not fast enough about headshotting them.  Thus my need for lots and lots of arrows.   :grin:

Yeah... I tend to do that, but when the nice yellow arrow is just floating there and then an orc pops up from the ladder... /fin. Or the orc is up on some roof that just suddenly decided to patrol where I am. No biggy. I have plenty of other shit to do and I am hardly a completionist...

We must be playing a different game. I've never had an issue with mysteriously appearing orcs. They appear on radar, and they're long dead from Elf Shot before I move into a risky area.

Yeah stealth missions have been a doddle to date. Only mission I've failed a bit was the stupid cave sword kill the ghouls crap. Some serious spacebar abuse it finish that.

I don't understand this game. I've not yet done half the missions in the first area (free slaves, etc) or picked up the trinkets or images, yet I've still unlocked most of my skills, two of the super expensive finisher thingos, etc.

Are you expected to move on to the second area with most of this not done, because I think I've pretty much already powered up beyond any usefulness.

I think it just depends upon how fast you go through the main quest.  I went to the second map at around 20 hours in and was just barely breaking into the third tier of skills.  Most of my weapons had three runes, but they weren't very good runes.

I guess you're expected to go through the main quest quicker, but then there's not much in the game that tells you that. I'm about 15 hours in, with a few epic runes and a few level three skills, but there is a lot more to do in the first area still.

Game is awesome, but I do agree that is feels a bit tech demo-y.

It's a sandbox that doesn't cockblock you from the different tiers of skills (just some specific ones). You go to the second area when you want to push the story that way.

There are a couple of the final dagger missions that are shitting me. One where they want you to get 5 caragor kills while rescuing the guys to a time limit. Actually, there's a sword one that's similarly annoying, though I can't remember if I finished it or not since I had a couple of tries.

The caragor mission would be stupid easy if you did it with the auto-mount shot. I did it before I unlocked that, and here's how:

The mission that fucked me up the longest was the "brutalize this guy" in one of the strongholds in the first area.  I'd get up on a roof behind the speaking orc, totally undetected and then when I dropped-down to brutalize I'd either get seen or it would mistarget one of the orcs in the crowd, blowing the last 5 mins of run-up. It took me 5 runs to finally get it.

Loved this at first, but its very quickly hit the "second island" syndrome a lot of open world games have. I've reached the second area, and it just...more orcs. endless orcs. Also the difficulty has basically vanished since whenver I run into a tough captain I can just activate the sword special move and hit him with 15 combat finishers in a row to hack his head off.

You can decide not to use certain abilities.  I made it to the second map on game two.  On map one the final warchief I fought was immune to range, stealth, and combat finishers.  My combo was up in the 150's more than once fighting him and a swarm of orcs.  Finally got him down and his head came off.  I hope I never see that one again.  Dropped some relic that can cause head explosions when you kill with a wraith punch?  Epic   :awesome_for_real:

You can brutalize from stealth from up high.

There is nothing really challenging in this game, hopefully some further content addresses this.

Yeah, trying that was how it was always mistargeting. Drop down.... and hit orc in crowd.  Fuck.

There is a bit of that. I've now got all of the abilities, and I'll finish the story, but I don't know if I'll finish some of the timed challenges - since I find the time limits too frustrating since I want to have fun, not wrestle with the controls (something Assassins Creed has issues with as well). I'll play with it through this weekend and kill a bunch of captains, but after that it might be shelf time, since that's all there is to the game after a certain point, really. The caragors handle horribly, and I hate QTE-games, so I've got no urge to ride another rancor, shit - WoW did that style of mini-game better.

So great game for a playthrough - but no long-term legs. Still worth what I paid for it and I've had a lot of fun with it. I haven't put this kind of time into a game in what seems like years.... and certainly this year.

If its game of the year it is only because it is a shit year for games.

It is a fine game, but it really needs a stronger story and/or role playing element for me. Open world epicness or rails fun, at the moment it's just potential and doesn't really hit either of them.

It's a lot of fun, but it's shallow as fuck once you hit the point of "second island". I had a play around with the "Challenge Mode" and it was as horrible as I'd expected. Time limits in open-world games can go fuck themselves.

This is not GOTY material.

If there was an award to give away for best "new system" of the year, this would certainly win it.

Best procedurally generated NPCs of all time award, to be sure.

There is a lot of work in this system, but a lot of it is just content and assets, so it's not likely it be co-opted for indie games too easily.

A lot of the stuff people talk about doesn't work when you don't allow things to come back from death, which means it doesn't work in a lot of other game. But for me those things aren't the real achievements anyhow.

The suggestion of a procedural political system is novel and awesome, and the systems that create characters and missions are pretty nifty. I do wonder just how much voice recording they have, and how flexible the orc character creation system is.

What they've done here is congeal an NPC society that passively and ACTIVELY interacts with the player and responds to their actions. This thing is infinitely adaptable to nearly any game design. It just required someone make the first version. Now that they have, the seed hath been planted.

Now watch the games industry ignore it all and do more sequels.

Why do some of the captains come back from death but others don't? This confuses me.

(http://i.imgur.com/PDHtpTY.png)

If you decapitate them, they don't come back.  Otherwise, they'll return bearing the scars of your previous encounter.

That's cool except I'm fairly certain I ripped that one guy's throat out.

I just noticed last night that each one of my ORC captain boards has one slot with a dead orc laying there. The rest I have all branded. This slot with the dead orc is in the second row and no orc subordinate gets promoted to it, no matter how many times I hit the advance time button. This is on both maps now that I have branded everyone. been 3 days on one map and 1 day on the other with no promotions. Wonder if it has to do with having to have a nemesis available.

May come back. Some die regardless I think.

I branded my first orc captain last night.  I go do some stuff and he just randomly dies.  Does this happen often?  It didn't show anyone killing him, he just fell over.

Was he a smoker?

I didn't check his medical history before enrolling him.  He didn't put up much of a fight.  Might have been a drive by caragoring.  Maybe I left him branded near a plant he was allergic to. 

Ranged orc might have took him out.

And yes, this happens...too often for my goals. It only seems to happen if I am actively in the area though. They get along just fine until I show up then the other orcs turn on the betrayer. I have also mistakenly killed a few myself by pushing the directional pad in the wrong direction and exploded a few captains in range of it... made me sad.

Accidentally threw my first branded captain off a cliff.  Ever since then those captains have gotten pretty clumsy... Must be faulty boots.  

I've had decapitated guys come back.

They are not supposed to come back if they end up as a skull on a spike in the Army screen:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=24431.msg1322672#msg1322672

More mod madness: CIV4 FFH, WoW.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/7Lw5ANf.gif)

Selfie mode added. (http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/17/sharing-shadow-of-mordors-photo-mode-selfies)
(http://assets1.ignimgs.com/thumbs/userUploaded/2014/10/16/Selfie-03_mov_Still001-1413483756114_1280w.jpg)

Annnnd /uninstall.

:oh_i_see:

Drama llama requires drama.

Or as a wiser man once said:

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/who-gives-a-shit-harrison-ford.gif)

(http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-Nhcdvhn/0/1050x10000/i-Nhcdvhn-1050x10000.jpg)

I've gotten over this pretty quickly, but I will have to take some selfies just to piss off Maven now.

I can't handle L3 being a button other than run (and even then it's a pain) so I turned it off almost immediately after turning it on after the update.

Selfie away! You only accelerate your own demise! Or some other failed logic.  :grin:

There's better things to be annoyed about in gaming than a photo mode. Seriously.

Smash your smartphone as well, while you're at it. Because they can also be used to take selfies.  :oh_i_see:

If someone can figure out how to get him to take pics of his own junk, then we'd be on to something.

Then he could safely upload them to The Clouds. Because Magic would keep his dick picks safe.

Just finished this. Last mission seemed a bit tedious really. Too much exposition and cinematics force-fed into the half-hour (or more?) it took to run through it. Also not especially fun, and QTE suck. Still, I'm interested in seeing what they have in store for their Next Exciting Adventure!  ...in the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.

We're probably five years out from another IP using this system properly, so yeah.

If you're going to add a photo mode, this was a pretty decent one. I imagine I'll play with it a bit and then forget that it's there.

33% off on Bundle Stars.

https://www.bundlestars.com/

What the hell is bundlestars?

More importantly, the season pass is 33% off.

I'm idiotic and bought the wrong thing. $33 and a full Shadows Key is yours because Bundlestars doesn't do refunds.

Gone.

Thanks for to be answering this question.

Another random dodgy-sounding steamkey reseller like GreenManGaming. Supposedly good though.

:google:

Jeezus people, offuckingcourse I did that already. Looked like exactly what Fabricated subsequently said. Was asking if anyone had ever actually used it. Digital distribution works personally for me only because I have faith the source will still be around. Not CD-ROM permanently around, but hell, CD-ROMs don't have a hugely long life either.

Anyway, seemed fly by night. For a place that bitches about digital storefront from publisher's that have been around since we were tweens, I'm surprised something relatively not-common-knowledge like this would be trusted.

Eh? They give steam keys, why would you worry about them being around?

Steam key resellers are very often quite good value. As long as you can pay through paypal or something else trusted and don't give them your details I'm prepare to try out even the dodgier ones... especially as many of them don't do the Australia markup.

Yeah, that was what I wanted to know about, too...are they reselling steam keys and are they not going to fuck me over.  These sites that resell steam keys are the greatest thing since sliced bread for anyone living in a country that bends you over for game prices.  If you can trust them.


F13 is like a slower, more entertaining version of google.  Just needs more tits.

Yeah. It's a more than reasonable question. I'm comfortable with GMG and GamersGate, but I'm very dubious about registering on various new random Steam key resellers who pop up selling Russian and Indian, etc keys.

How the hell do you make money being a key reseller anyway ?

http://savygamer.co.uk/2014/03/29/on-serial-resellers-and-savygamers-role-in-their-use/

It's often dodgy, and a grey area legally depending on the source of the keys, some of which are simply nicked from retail game boxes.

I have two local sites that I have used, where one feels legit and the other feels potentially dodgy.  I figure the legality of their enterprise is primarily their problem, as long as they aren't screwing me over.  They both use legal and thoroughly vetted payment solutions as well.  The prices are so good that I may never buy straight from Steam, Origin (I have kids), or any brick and mortar outlet for PC games ever again.  At least 40% off on even newly released stuff.

Anyone else get the freebie code for "Shadow of Mordor - Power of Shadow" DLC? Looks like it's another play-the-bad-guy DLC, but I have only just started downloading.

Nope. :(

I got this installed. It's pretty good but kinda throws a lot at you. I dunno how half of the shit works exactly and combat seems kinda mashy. Shockingly well put together however for what first appeared to be a cash-in IP title.

It's the opposite of a cash-in. Shouldn't have even been a fucking Tolkien game.

As with the selfie mode, this is one of those things some people have to get over.

While I sorta get the general Tolkien dislike, I have to say that I think it fits this game quite well.  Primarily because it means that they don't have to waste time explaining anything.  If this was just a generic IP, we'd just as likely be complaining about the thin plot and wondering at our motivation for needing to kill all these Orcs.  As it is, I can just accept the premise at face value and get down to murdering the shit out of everybody.

I have no idea who would have published a game with an entirely new mechanic without some sort of sale-generating IP attached to it.  Ultimately I'm glad it was made the way it was because otherwise it might have only ever been a shitty kickstart title if it was even made at all.

Or even worse, they could shove it into something like Assassins Creed, which should be fun but instead bores the shit out of me.

I realize that probably makes me an outlier.

I suppose my main point is that I'm glad it was made even if it turns out to be unpopular in execution.

I said first appeared. And yeah, this should've been some original IP. It's not like evil orcs need some crazy back story.

Playing nothing but FPS titles has rendered my hands retarded, I keep accidentally hitting the wrong buttons for QTEs and forgetting I have abilities. I haven't ran into any "Immune to literally everything" captains/warchiefs yet but outside of getting pinged by archers you can almost indefinitely fight hordes of orcs just by mashing buttons. Satisfying though.

So I am about 90% of the way through this game and I am quite enjoying it. Its not game of the year for me but paying full price was definitely worth it. I do really feel its more of a full fledged tech demonstration and I an curious how other developers will take these ideas and run with them.

This needs to be how Sleeping Dogs 2 works, if they ever make one. Did I say that already? I feel like I said that already.

SAY IT AGAIN

Well, actually normally it's slap an IP on a already proven mechanic that the developer didn't understand well enough to execute a game good enough. Like take any crappy movie tie-in video game ever. Lots of reasons for those rarely working well.

At the same time, there's also relatively few IP which can be done just whenever a publisher feels like it. The IP needs to be so established that people kinda immediately get it just because it exists. Batman is a good example. But people were as surprised how good Arkham Asylum was as they are with this title. I don't know if people were surprised about KOTOR's quality, but that's another example.

Yea yea, I'm sure someone hated all three. :awesome_for_real:

tl;dr: this title without LoTR would have done as not well at all as Arkham Asylum without Batman.

That comparison is wretched. Arkham was basically what batman always should have been. Orc political action sim has nothing to do with lotr.

Beat this.  End battle was kind of dumb, but whatever.  Finished at 87.6% completion, which is usually better than I bother with for most games nowadays.   I may go for 100%ing it, although what I have left are mostly slave and dagger missions, which were my least favorite.

My warchiefs, by luck, were stupidly OP.  Well, at least one was: he had some sort of exploding fire arrow. He was just taking down groups all by himself.

The fifth warchief I had to brand was invulnerable to everything.  He also had two bonuses, one that gave him increased damage so he hit much harder and one that gave him increased running speed.  So he'd always hightail it out of the area when low on health and I couldn't catch him.  After 2 or 3 chases across Mordor I caught him in a fort and managed a mad scramble across the rooftops and cut him off.  In my excitement I forgot to brand him and killed him so i was a bit annoyed but I hoped his replacement would be a bit less buffed.

No worries, though.  His replacement turned out to be a captain I had branded so it ended up counting as a Warchief brand  :heart:

Heh, calling this an Orc political action sim is like saying Arkham was about crime-fighting.

My point was that both are great games, are based on IP that have had movies that neither game is particularly tied to and therefore not restricted by, and this is such a rare event we can count on one hand how often this has happened.

details?

I don't think it's a code - it's just bundled into the update, isn't it?

It's mostly Schild and a couple of "I hate Tolkien" people here bitching about the IP though, isn't it? I've not encountered that kind of butthurt anywhere else about this title, so I'm not sure if you can call it unpopular in execution.

Yah, the fifth guy I had was one of those. On the way there, I randomly shadow strike executed a captain.  What I didn't notice is that it was his bodyguard I had branded.  :oh_i_see:  So, I did the fight anyways and got lucky that my exploding crossbow guy showed up and burned down the warchief along with me activating the sword special ability and branding everything in sight.   He did a good enough job that I grabbed him afterwards and promoted him to the job.  One graul hunt later (I just tamed it), he was the new warchief.  That guy was money. 

The more legit feeling one is called playgames.dk.  The slightly less legit feeling one is called oneplay.dk (I have used it and got my keys from it, so it does work).

No idea if foreign credit cards or IPs work, that could be a problem.  Overall, I feel like I get my games now for the same price as in the US market, and occasionally even cheaper.

Enjoyed the hell out of this until I didn't anymore.

Took a few days break, then popped it in and just rush finished it. 

Still, all in all about 16 hours of fun.  More than expected for me.  The whole orc nemesis thing was so great until it got boring.

They need a Carregor (sp?) nemesis system, I've been killed by more of those fuckers than Orcs.

I tend to die fairly frequently, because I often (sorta deliberately) bite off more than I can chew.  I rather enjoy getting killed by them and hearing them talk shit to me, and then come back and get revenge.  I have not tired of it yet, and I suppose I am 12 hours in.  Still in the first area.  The last few times I have played, I have advanced the story not at all, nor have I really felt compelled to.

Warchief with his poison crossbow and his bodyguard with a crossbow, fuck those guys.

You will be happy to know that I have avenged you twice now.

Who is ChiefTripodBear again?  Some Fat Guy keeps killing you, and needs avenging apparently.  I've tried twice now, and that fucker has kicked the ever loving shit out of me.  Stop pissing off fat people!

Man this game really does deliver.

I am genuinely happy to know that.

I was super excited. I saw the quest and was like "this fucker is going DOWN".

Ha yea I love when the revenge quests are people here. I'm not sure how they do that though. Is it just people on your friends list and people on theirs'? Is it random? Region based? Lots of times I don't recognize the names, but I think once I avenged Merusk? Or maybe not. M somebody but not Morfiend.

About to brand the fifth warchief. Almost maxxed out on everything, but decided to side track into the main quest. Dwarfdude is annoying. But, I have branded about 2/3 of world so half my objectives are achieved by my blue glowy-eyed allies. Heck, some caragor question was immediately resolved for me the moment it started.

It picks people out of your Steam groups even if you're not directly friends, I think.

I've avenged several of you, but most often Darniaq.

D, you seem to die a lot.

It's mostly Fridays and Saturday nights, around the third or fourth drink  :grin:

How long does the revenge timer last? Hours, days, weeks? There any rules?

First rule of avenging. Talk about avenging.

I run and hide on my tower too much  :why_so_serious:

If I don't avenge someone but advance the timer or die, the mission goes away and I may or may not get a new one. So whatever that timer is, seems like an hour or two.

Ah. And also, I always have two options for a Tower: fast travel or advance timer. Why would I ever do the latter? Never have, don't know what the point would be.

Sometimes you need to repop the captains/warchiefs. Dying is one way to do it. Advance time is another way. There's also a stupid hunting challenge where Advance time can be helpful.

So my fancy TV has finally arrived, so I can start playing this thing.

Do I need to get peoples' PSN names? Mine should be pretty obvious if people would like to add me to their own lists.

PC Master Race 4Life!!!

Ah. Haven't run into the need to repop anything, and haven't done much on hunting challenges. Playing this so slow I'll probably not be anywhere slow to 100%ing it.

It sounds like you use method #1 to repop quite frequently... :why_so_serious:

I know but I figured I need something on the ps4. New pc arriving soon.

Come on, I haven't died in hours. HOURS!

Cuz you haven't played in hours?

I want to advance time simply because I have this thing about murdering Captains, so they are always down at around level 5 (except Zog the Tiny, who keeps coming back to life).  Only problem is that for some reason the instant I hit the button, it crashed my rig.  Every time.  So weird.

I did the opposite -- I death threat'd all of them, branded them, and tried to get them to 20. And then I didn't explode them all near the end* so I didn't get their runes. Oops.

* The game resets all the captains/warchiefs when you complete the main story, which I didn't know at the time

Argh. I haven't really played since I finished it, but I didn't realise that they all get reset. I had also gotten most of them to 20, and branded almost all of the warchiefs in the second area (excepting some dead ones and random replacements.)

It's kind of funny with this game where you guys are talking about leveling up the orcs, when all my efforts have been to keep them totally neutered.  Then again, I don't even have brand or even understand wtf it does.

You'll get it later as you advance the story. It basically makes the branded orc fight for you.

But...I don't want to advance the story.

That's cool.

Advancing the story killed my interest in the game.

The story is really bad but it unlocks funner abilities. I'll probably do the thing where you brand all of the orcs, level them up to 20, then make them all be a warchief's bodyguard so you can explode all of them at once thing to get a mess of epic runes.

Make sure you at least open up the second area. You can still go back and forth, and you'll have twice the space to roam and more variety in your playground that way.

I actually just did unlock it yesterday I think (I stopped playing after some blonde chick told me her queen wanted to meet with me?).  Anyway, it was a throwaway comment meant to imply that I rather like the open world parts of this game.  The story is fine, but I only care about it in terms of how it gives me tasks I need to accomplish scattered among the other useless stuff I am spending time on.  16 hours of game time to unlock the second area, I guess.

For some reason, I felt like adding a second, isolated area was a net detriment to the enjoyment of the game and Nemesis. If I reasoned it out, it has to do with two worlds, two different battlefields that aren't connected to one another meaningfully.

More landscape is good! But the coastal environment didn't feel all that appropriate to the spirit of the game. Just an observation.

I read a write-up on it awhile back where the devs/writers talked about it being an earlier time in Mordor before the return of Sauron was fully complete, and that the second area around the Sea of Nurnen (which is an inland sea) is essentially "the breadbasket" of Mordor - ie an area with fertile land, not yet corrupted where all those Orcs' food is harvested from and not yet (re)corrupted. The first area is next to The Black Gate, which is quite a way away.


Also, I don't really understand what you mean by "the spirit of the game" or the different landscape being less appropriate - it showed both how Mordor as a land was, and where it was heading - nor do I see how it affects the Nemesis system at all. Not to mention the simple aesthetics of endlessly-brown games being fucking boring to look at.

I found it kind of nice to have an explanation as to how that massive army of orcs was able to feed itself beyond cannibalizing everything it came across.  The movies always made them feel kind of unsustainable even over a short period.

I can't describe it, so let's see if I can reason it out. Once the game shifted to the new map it felt like too much of a tonal shift. I enjoyed the new environments, but some part of me said "OK, time to wrap this game up."

It had more complicated, better fortresses. More complex than the previous region. There were clear positives to the area. Maybe after exploring the first area and having that shrinkage effect where you realize the world is smaller and your power level and experience give you a sense of impunity before the Orcs, you take that to a new area and those feelings are still intact. I felt like I "knew" the game at that point.

This is only my personal experience, and I'm an experienced player of these type of games. It could simply be an effect of the game being more known by the time you hit the second area.

Only thing that annoyed me was having to spend 10 minutes running around unlocking all of the forge towers, and the fact that I'd have to spend a bunch of time gathering intel on an entirely new unknown batch of like 2-3 dozen Uruks.

Yeah that was pretty bad. I was going through the paces doing something I felt I needed to do rather than something I was interested in doing.

I think most of us here are pretty experienced with this sort of game. It's not a forum full of 12-year-olds, after all. You are correct in that we all "knew" the game by that point and that it was very much exactly more of the same, with nothing new really added in (except riding Graugs). Some new enemy types or something would have been welcome, but I guess they had a large variety of orc appearances from the start, and it would have made no sense to be assassinating bands of, say, Black Numenorians in Nurnen.

I noticed that a lot of the little graphical effects on the uruks got much more varied in the second act. It wasnt a big slap in the face of "NEW STUFF" but there is a very subtle "more badassness" to the uruks.

Yeah, "glowy swords" of various types and such were a lot more common in the second act.

Most of my favorite powers only come on in the second area and I thought the whole branding element added a new dimension of play. I suppose you could speed-run it by branding the minimum Uruk you need to five the five Warchief need. But I ended up branding what feels like most of the place and seeing how it affected each side mission differently.

Actually, that makes me wonder: I think someone confirmed it's impossible to kill all the Uruk because they'll just keep spawning. But is it possible to brand 100% of the Uruk? Or do escaped warg thin their ranks enough to cause new unbranded Uruk to spawn?

I'd love to figure it out myself but I just don't got that kind of time anymore :-)

I spent some minutes in one of the orc forts after the alarm had gone up.  I wanted to see if the spawning stopped or increased over time or more powerful orcs showed up or what.

The pattern just seemed to be a big wave of orcs comes at you at once, with steady stream of reinforcements over time.  After a few minutes if I killed most of them quick enough, the survivors would flee to somewhere in the fort.  And while the alarm would still be flashing, no orcs would be visible.  I guess like being in the eye of a hurricane.  After a bit, another wave of orcs (15-ish?) would arrive and I'd go again.

I got really bored after about 30 minutes so maybe more interesting stuff happens if you can grind it out longer.  I didn't notice any differences in the pattern I mentioned except maybe more orc archers would be in one wave and another wave would have a lot of spear/shield orcs.  The number of orcs coming didn't seem to increase and no captains showed up.

Ha, sounded like you stepped a loop in the Matrix :-)

FYI, this is on sale now with a bunch of DLC for $15.

http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-bundle/

Awesome, thanks for the heads-up! :)

Somehow $15 translates to €15.49 ($17.42)  :oh_i_see:

..... 42GB ?? :google: :argh: :argh:

It's funny...I can't think of a game where my desire to play it stopped so totally hard but where I have no ill will for it as a result. It felt like the perfect case of "that was fun, thanks, I will now forget this completely." Even the Assassin's Creed pirate game that clearly influenced it stuck with me more.

I was the same way, I loved this game but I don't miss it since finishing it. I chalked that up to a lack of challenge. You need to create your own challenge (quasi-hardcore mode, etc). That helped but still not enough.

So I just got this game for PS4, and I feel like I am missing something, especially with the praise I've read all around (not just on f13).

The controls seem extremely clumsy, I don't remember any assassins creed or batman game feeling this difficult to control.  The camera seems terrible so far and while I understand that we are in Mordor and everything should be doomish it seems extremely hard for me to pick out the Uruks from the scenery since everything is so freaking brown.

Trying to kill the first few captains I've attempted has been an episode in frustration as it's impossible to focus on one captain due to a swarm of bodyguards forcing me to counter them more than attack the captain himself.  Then when the captain is downed and I can use a finisher on him the combat always seems to push me out to a bodyguard that's 20 feet away instead of moving me towards the captain like I actually want.  Then when the captain is almost dead It's almost inevitable that I get aggroed by literally 2 more captain packs at the same time making the swarm of people I'm fighting up to 20 or so and I eventually die.  There are runes I had to leave all over the place because when I killed a captain I had to flee due to aggro packs.

Same thing inevitably happens on missions.  It tells me to assassinate this uruk with his 5 body guards, but the half the time I get aggro-ed by a captain pack who I didn't even notice that just happened to walk around the corner.

So I go around gaining intel on captains.   Captain X is apparently weak to range attacks, except I run out of elven shots before he dies so I either have to get in the middle of the swarm to fight him or he starts a retreat, which I have no desire to chase due to the likleyhood of me aggroing another captain pack.  Another captain is insta kill with stealth, yet he's surrounded by bodyguards so I'm not even sure how that's supposed to be possible.

I've never felt more like I"m missing something fundamental about a game before. 

Besides a possibly wonky targeting on the console, the only issue that sounds like it's on the fault of the game is the brown. That is true primarily in the beginning when most of the terrain is brown, but that part gets much better later on when you're in green grass as opposed to brown dirt. I actually really liked the controls on this for PC compared to AC (which I thought was horrible both for controls and as a game in general).

As for issues with killing captains and what not:
-IIRC, you can take out bodyguards first, or just assassinate the captain/chief/whatever.
-Change strategies. Maybe release some caragors, try headshotting some bodyguards then running away to come back later and headshot someone else, etc. There are usually alternate methods to take out most enemies (like poisoning food).
-Use stealth whenever possible, unless you're trying to kill orcs in a specific way. As long as they don't say immune to stealth kills from your intel then attacking from the roofs make easy work of a target
-Aggro from a different pack is just an awareness issue. It happens, but usually you can check your surroundings and look for them (abuse the hell out of wraith mode which allows you to see enemies through rocks and walls)
-Check your runes, sometimes changing those helps
-For some counters, sometimes it's best to just go level up and spec in to some ability, then come back later with a stronger counter or stronger attacks/counters.

That's pretty much it for this game. As for runes you had to leave behind, you can always go back to grab the rune and then run away as the orcs will stop following at some point. Unless the console de-spawns them semi-quickly.

Just beat this last night, and it's definitely one of those games with a very flat difficulty curve but a high skill curve (meaning you feel way more skilled at the end than the beginning, not that it will take you years to master or anything), meaning you'll get flattened at first but towards the end of the game pretty much nothing can touch you.  I was hunting ghuls last night and read they only come out at night, so to pass the time I set off the alarm in an orc stronghold and murdered everyone for like ten minutes straight, they never even came close to killing me.  Early game, I was getting completely destroyed by the same stuff you're complaining about (fighting one captain, another one comes along, etc).  Late game it throws my "nemesis" at me, it's this hilariously weak guy from the first hour or so of gameplay who killed me twice early on before I wrecked him a few times, because I never died to anyone later than about halfway through the game.

To add to what Segoris said, this is a pretty tricky game compared to something like Assassin's Creed, you don't just run in and wail away on people with the knowledge that you'll be able to counter any attack anyone throws at you (I could never reliably dodge those spacebar moves).  Getting the lay of the land with wraith vision (captains stand out in red, you can zoom in if you spot one to see if you know who it is) is surprisingly important.  I was constantly spamming that dodge / vault move to get a better position (it keeps your combo multiplier live, it just doesn't add to it).  Finishing moves are your damage dealers, regular moves are mostly just for building combo points to do fiinishers.  Once you start getting in to those specialized orcs (shield guys and so on) I generally found it easier to go in to arrow mode and snipe them, even from point blank, than kill them however the game thinks you're "supposed" to do it (one headshot instantly kills any non-captain orc, even the shield guys).

As Segoris says, stealth is important, but it's also really easy since orcs are goddamn stupid in this game.  You can literally sneak right up to one in plain sight in the open and stealth kill him before he's finished his "I've noticed you" animation.  What helped me early on was realizing how easy it is to evade them by climbing, they have huge trouble keeping anything above them in sight and cannot climb to follow you.  Also, a lot of environmental stuff is really helpful if you arrow it.  Those hanging bits of bait attract caragors, the wasps nests cause nearby orcs to get scared, one thing it took me forever to realize is that you can arrow the campfires and they explode, which takes out pretty much all the orcs standing around it.  All this stuff is easier to spot in wraith vision, so I was abusing that pretty heavily in the late game.

I did notice some wonky movement, Talion getting hung up on ankle high stones and things, and it's damn near impossible to hit anything specific in melee, but I still thought it was pretty great.

Certain runes and power abilities really made a difference in this game. Early on you had to really be stealthy and plan a lot, (so yes, Wraith-sight everything) but by the time I hit the 2nd map I was able to charge in and destroy whole orc patrols AND the adds the called in. The only real difficulty came in strongholds if I let someone get the alarm off or if one of those damn troll things jumped-in or you had more than a few Captains in a fight.

this is one of those games that looks worse and worse the further away from it I get, and I was pretty dissapointed at the time.

The combat system is easily the worse in any AAA game I've played in years. It's impossible to die if you just mash jump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AV9W2ZdmjU

It's a badly designed game, poorly implemented, that follows the exact same formula that we've been critiscing in Ubisoft open world games for years but somehow manages to make it worse by adding in extra brown and a truly awful combat system. The only redeeming feature was the interesting Nemesis system - which relies on you playing badly to actually do anything.

lol wow.  So essentially I just kept dying cause I was fighting trying to control and direct combat instead of letting the game fight itself....  That explains a lot.

It's a decent enough murder sim, I never said it was an engaging murder sim.

God, that's painful to watch.  "Here's me hitting F, I hit F again, watch me hit F, what a stupid game I can hit F in it and kill an orc."  Yeah, I get it, there are pre-canned animations on your finishers and you took all the skills that gave you more finishers.  I guess that's shocking that it helps in combat.  A decent player on a character with max tier abilities fighting common enemies is not going to run in to much difficulty.  Was he seriously expecting the game devs to put in an area where going in just flat out kills you, or what?  He's not really fucking up, he's blowing every skill he has and firing off executions and counters constantly and he's surprised when the game doesn't just straight up murder him for being there?

The spacebar thing isn't really a huge issue because it doesn't win you fights, it just stalls everything.  I guess enemies can kill each other with missed shots over time, but I'd be pretty surprised if they didn't repop faster than they died if you stuck to that.

I mean, I'm not saying the game is difficult, but holy shit.  The amount of whine in that video was off the charts.  His one complaint, as far as I can tell, is that enemies can't hit you when you're in the middle of a finisher or dodge roll, and from there he goes on this massive tirade about how there is no skill curve, unrelated to anything happening on the screen.  Like, look at the forums for this game some time, new players are getting wrecked by this shit.  Hell, look up thread here.  It's not something that people get the instant they pick up the game, you have to learn it and once you DO learn it then you can win.  That's a skill curve.  It's not something you need to meditate on top of a mountain for ten years to master, but it's not "durr, I push F to kill the orc" either.  Jesus.

The problem is that once you get how the combat system works, it becomes dumb, which to me was the core of his complaint.

I played more and now I don't die.  Why? because I just said fuck it and let combat play itself.  Just keep massing attack until I see a triangle, hit block then proceed to keep hitting attack again until I see another triangle icon.  I litterally have to do nothing but that and everything dies.  I don't have to press any movement keys at all, in fact doing so is bad.  I don't even need to do any stuns or flurries to survive. 

So why was I dying before?  Because I kept trying to actually direct combat.  I kept trying to execution downed enemies which is extremely difficult for some reason with the control scheme.  I was trying to attack specific enemies which was not working out and stalled out attacks enough for people to hit me.  It literally plays itself except for the two buttons, and trying to be more proactive in combat gets me killed more than just letting the game kill things for me. 

That's the problem, at least in the early stages.  I imagine directed combat becomes easier as you get more abilities.

And yes, I understand it's just using Batman's combat system.  The difference is that Batman had a really good story (at least Asylum and City) and they never bombarded you with swarms of enemies, and for whatever reason I feel like they gave you enemies that you culdn't just press square to win the whole time.  They also paced out enemies in between puzzles and platforming to make it not feel like you were doing nothing the whole game but pressing 2 keys. 

Those do come later, they just don't throw them in at first (I found the shield orcs to be a real pain).  Right now you're fighting the Shadow of Mordor equivalent of Goombas, but stuff does get a bit trickier at least.

I actually really liked the difficulty curve of this game. It definitely could have used a bit more punch at the end (the bosses especially, WTF was that lazy ass final mission) but it was nice to have a game that got easier as I got better, rather than artificially ramping up the bullshit so that your progression doesn't matter.  It gives players a lot of control over their own difficulty, I found.  You can level yourself up to be stupidly powerful and keep the orcs really weak, or you can keep away from the overpowered skills and cultivate some really strong captains if you want.  Seemed like a more organic system than just asking a player "do you want easy medium or hard" before they've even had a chance to play the game.

Shield orcs are ridiculously easy.  Just jump over them and keep hitting them, or just run up onto a ledge so they act like they lost you and constantly complain that I must have gotten away and headshot them before going back into the fray (it's a 10x10 foot ledge I just jumped on, there's no where for me to run, I know Orcs are supposed to be stupid but this game takes it to a ridiculous level).  I just did a captain with a giant shield that you can't jump over and that was ridiculously easy too, pretty algorithmic.  Just mash attack until you see an icon, press the jump button (cause it doesn't matter where you jump, just that you jump somewhere, even getting thrown back from the captain is OK since you don't take damage) then once you have your hit streak enough you just go towards the captain and hit the finisher.  Repeat 4 or 5 times and viola, captain with giant shield dead.  

If this game gets easier as time goes on does that mean it's just one hit kills?  Cause now that I understand things it's ridiculously easy....

You are in the first map.  It doesn't really try to challenge you as much as you learn how to play.  Next map will be alarms, mixed groups that counter your different defensive abilities, etc.  It also sounds like you haven't gotten a captain yet who has good immunities/abilities.... like range immune, immune to stuns, hard hitter, etc.

Then, when you stockpile a bunch of good runes, the game gets easy again.

They're easy if you get them alone (I generally just stun them) it's when you get like twenty orcs milling around and you need to stay focused on the shield guy that it gets annoying to me.  I had the same issue with the shield guys in Batman, but at least Batman has a disarm he can use on them.  Generally I just arrowed them to save myself the trouble.

Pretty much 95% of this game is easy once you get the hang of it, but that remaining 5% can really fuck you up since strong enemies can kill you with two or three hits.

There is no significant change between maps in terms of orc composition, patrols etc. Everything you describe is in the first map. all can be beaten by just letting the game play and hitting the appropriate execute key when it comes up.

And evil captains unfortunately don't ever turn up, because they aren't getting kills against you and so upgrading all the time. It's one of the problems with the system - unless you die in combat, the captains are never really a threat. It's a shame because it's a fantastic system and absolutely what the open world genre needs to liven things up, it just doesn't work in a game where the combat is so absurdly simple and easy its hard to die.

I stopped playing when I hit the second map. The game was great, but very shallow and repetitive. No hard feelings though, it was what I was told it would be.

I really enjoyed the game until I completed it. At (and since) that point I've had no desire at all to boot it up again to chase captains around or anything like that. I did run around with the Lagertha skin for a little while to see how it looked, but that was it. A worthwhile purchase for me.

The game's simplicity is really a feature, as where the game truely shines is as a mass combat simulator. No other game that I have played does it as well, what with throwing dozens of orcs at a time at me and I still have a good chance of defeating them all the first time trying. In other words, Dark Souls this is not, nor does it pretend to be.

I do think the gameplay, both combat wise and orc political sim-wise would have worked better with another IP, (say Conan, for instance) but LoTR is still pretty big, and WB has the full rights now I think.

Oh, and if you do play it make sure to grab the Celebrimbor DLC. Much better final battle than the main game's anticlimax....

The Lord of the Hunt dlc was surprisingly fun, for the stealth caragors alone.