User Score
8.0

Generally favorable reviews- based on 2699 Ratings

User score distribution:
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  1. Sep 30, 2014
    10
    This game is amazing, such a new and refreshing experience!. And also its 60 FPS 1080p! Excellent graphics, gameplay, voice acting, story, music etc. I can't find anything negative about this game so I'll give it a 10/10. Get this game NOW!
  2. Sep 30, 2014
    10
    Finally we have a LoTR game worthy of many hours of our time! Shadow of Mordor brings free roaming adventure and game changing new features together to make one amazing game. One of those games where you get lost in its mechanics and find yourself putting the story on the back burner. For me that's a good sign of a game with good longevity.

    Nemesis system is great, combat is satisfying
    Finally we have a LoTR game worthy of many hours of our time! Shadow of Mordor brings free roaming adventure and game changing new features together to make one amazing game. One of those games where you get lost in its mechanics and find yourself putting the story on the back burner. For me that's a good sign of a game with good longevity.

    Nemesis system is great, combat is satisfying and gory to boot. Story is there but I find myself making my own story to enhance the main one. RPG elements are there. I especially like how the weapons upgrade with ruins you collect off of war chiefs or other notable enemies. Graphics are great. There is not much tediousness that comes with the open world genre. You can fast travel pretty readily conveniently. But this is one of those worlds where I prefer to get lost in and take that short cut threw the woods.

    Even if you are not a fan of Lord of the Rings check this game out. It is an amazing game on its own.
    If you are a die hard Tolkeinite the lore should not be that blasphemous to you either.
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  3. Sep 30, 2014
    10
    With some issues aside, which I hope will be patched soon, the game stands to its hype. Extremely fun combat, with awesome visuals and not to mention the much loved world setting of Middle-earth, which I'm sure even non-Tolkien fans will rejoice. This is a RPG that I cannot wait to delve further into.
  4. Oct 1, 2014
    2
    The game feels like a poor Assassin's Creed rip off.

    The camera is so bad that it becomes a challenge in itself. If you fight near a wall it completely goes crazy and points to random directions. It reminds me of old N64 games. The stealth mechanics are bad. It's an open world most of the time, so the enemies just have super small sight. You can kill 3 enemies stealthly when they are
    The game feels like a poor Assassin's Creed rip off.

    The camera is so bad that it becomes a challenge in itself. If you fight near a wall it completely goes crazy and points to random directions. It reminds me of old N64 games.

    The stealth mechanics are bad. It's an open world most of the time, so the enemies just have super small sight. You can kill 3 enemies stealthly when they are all side by side and nobody notices. It's made to look like you are stealth, but in fact I think they found out that in LoTR orcs are deaf and have very poor vision. Also, there is no "go behind the wall mechanics", so when you go close to a wall, the camera focus on the wall and the controller gets clumsy (since you can't walk by the wall).

    Combat mechanics are a bit better, but still clumsy. Fighting has lots of button smashing and the player moves in random directions sometimes. To compensate for the easiness of button smashing, the game throws tons of monsters at you at the same time. This changes the mechanic into: button smashing, run far from everyone (which you do faster than them anyway), wait for them to come in line, button smashing and repeat. Also, the bow mechanic is worse than Tomb Raider. The only ok point of the combat system is that you don't have to actually switch weapons (press square you use the sword, press R2/L2 you use the bow).
    The open world part seems to be ok so far and the nemesis/famous orcs part works well. The respawn system is very aggressive (more than Destiny, for example). It means it is virtually impossible to get rid of all orcs in an area before killing the big guys. You kill a bunch of them, walk 15 steps, look back and there are more of them again. The only way to clear an area is killing the bug guys. It is designed like this because the fighting is very easy 1vs1.
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Metascore
84

Generally favorable reviews - based on 85 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 77 out of 85
  2. Negative: 0 out of 85
  1. Jun 12, 2015
    90
    For people who are alright with playing fifteen hours or so of Helm’s Deep-style carnage, Shadow of Mordor is a delight – and even for people who couldn’t care less about Lord of the Rings, the exciting combat and unique Nemesis System are more than enough to make the experience worthwhile.
  2. Dec 24, 2014
    90
    As a gamer you owe it to yourself to experience Shadow of Mordor if not for anything else other than the Nemesis system because playing a single-player game never made you feel less alone.
  3. CD-Action
    Dec 13, 2014
    75
    Batman’s Creed: Shadow of Mordor – Monolith’s inspirations are so obvious that you could call their game a rip-off. Its greatest sin though is the fact that it fails to vary gameplay the way Assassin’s Creed or Batman do and offers almost nothing apart from killing stuff and playing with the Nemesis system (which, I admit, has its moments). I got so tired with its repetitiveness that I wouldn’t have finished the game if I didn’t have to. [Dec 2014, p.48]