This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
I want to begin by giving any reader of use reviews good advice: If someone says they didn't finish the game, ignore their review. If they didn't finish the game, they didn't get into all the things you could do, didn't get the full story, and thus cannot put together any kind of intelligent review. That bit of wisdom aside, on to the review!
Unfortunately, I can understand some people being disenchanted with this title, so I'm going to have to defend the score I'm giving it a little bit. I will not compare it to newer-gen systems because I am reviewing the Xbox360 version of the game. The graphical criticisms are definitely true, this game has more pop up than a frat house at a naked lady party. Talion often looks like spiderman climbing smooth, textureless walls until all the boards and stones and things load, the cutscenes seem to clip short, and one time the cutscene just abruptly ended before the characters even finished their conversation with no input from me. The load times are also horrendous, every time you pause the game you can expect to dedicate at least 45 seconds of your life to getting back to the game and you must pause often to check the map and equip new runes and things. However, when one insists on playing a new game on old hardware, one must accept that technical hiccups come with the territory and some things have to be changed entirely (Looking at you, The Force Unleashed on PS2).
The game itself, like an ugly puppy, does manage to endear itself to the player, however. Talion moves and fights like the love child of Ezio Auditore and Batman. I'm almost 100% certain that he even uses Ezio's running animation from Assassin's Creed 2 and Brotherhood the exact animation. He hangs from ledges like Ezio, leaps onto Uruks like Ezio, and even hides in bushes like a true Assassin or voyeur. When the Uruks come a-knockin' and Talion gets to rockin', he does so with the grace of the Dark Knight holding a sword. The button inputs are the same: X is the kill button, Y counters, and you have this neat little stun thing you can do by pressing B. It adds its own flair by adding automatic combat finishers that change as you level up your abilities. Later on you can take control of Orcs and Uruks and make them into captains and even warchiefs by sending them to kill one another, which is the meat of the game.
Being a Tolkien fan, I found the story to be a fun bit of non-canon. Like the LOTR movies from more than a decade ago, the game revolves around a major character but doesn't necessarily stay completely faithful to the source material. In fact, for the game, they focus on one character (Celebrimbor, the Elf Lord who forged the Rings of Power and the One Ring) who was only really mentioned in passing in Tolkien's work and turn him into a full on anti-hero. It's actually very interesting to see how Celebrimbor and Talion evolve together and to learn of the Elf's true, less than heroic intentions.
So yes, the technical issues are there, but what do you expect from a last-gen console? The gameplay is solid, fun, and challenging, the sense of progression and player choice in the manner of that progression is there, and there's even a decent story in there if you're nerdy enough to look into it. Not to mention that when the game does look good, it looks GOOD. I will say the boss battles were a little disappointing as far as their difficulty, but I can let that slide. The game was never about them, anyway. It's about one man looking for revenge and the ghost who's going to give him the power to claim it whilst also gathering power for himself for his own ends. Just dig in and enjoy.… Expand
Middle-earth: Shadow of MordorYour Score0 out of 10User Score
