Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

[SethMode]

divinity is the only game i enjoyed all year. wasteland 2 was a major let down imo. the new borderlands should be good. i would have said GTA5 except it wont come out on pc until next year lol

I don't think that Wasteland 2 lived up to Fallout 1 or 2, but I definitely wouldn't call it a let down. It certainly has all the bugs that one can expect from a game trying to be like late 90's early 2000 CRPGs.

Anyway, that being said, I agree with you. This year in general has kind of been letdown after letdown (at least to me). I do think that this game stands on its own though. It's been a while since I've played a non-RPG for more than 2 hours at a time, and this one has me doing the blinking "it's WHAT time!?" thing. Which is always a good sign.

[Maynard]

i never played FO1 or 2 so i was really excited to play what was supposed to be the real FO3. But i think my expectations were that of Divinity in its approach as far as the combat and over look of the game. i was really dissapointed to see how poor it looked and played by comparison.

Middle Earth is awesome. i love the game

[SethMode]

i never played FO1 or 2 so i was really excited to play what was supposed to be the real FO3. But i think my expectations were that of Divinity in its approach as far as the combat and over look of the game. i was really dissapointed to see how poor it looked and played by comparison.

Middle Earth is awesome. i love the game

Yeah, it's definitely not as good as Divinity, by a large margin. I'm not saying it was a great game...just that it's one of the only few I can say that I really loved this year. Divinity is hands down the best, IMO.

[Garrett67]

You guys should get this on PC. PC platform is so much , SOOOO much better than console.

You're missing out if you're playing this on a far inferior platform.

[Maynard]

finally decided to do another mission...the gollum one in the cave. i am just running around doing the side quests. i loved the one where you have to kill 50 orcs and try and get the 100 hit streak. fun fun

[j.hen]

About that head exploding video, if you actually took the time to hunt down and brand all of the Uruks like that guy did then you deserve to get to watch all 20 of their heads explode at once if you ask me.

[Swarley]

After a lot of failure on Thursday, I did quite a bit of wreckage to Sauron's Army last night. Took down two Warchiefs with relative ease and then about six or seven Captains including the level 20 one that's been a real pain in my ass. I did some scouting around the Warchief's camps and was able to plan some good attacks where I lured the them away from that gang of goons. It was super satisfying, especially after getting my butt whipped a few times Thursday night.

[SethMode]

This game is so wonderfully fun to play...it's a shame the story is so fucking dumb. My likely 1 and 2 for this year have the worst stories.

[j.hen]

This game is so wonderfully fun to play...it's a shame the story is so fucking dumb. My likely 1 and 2 for this year have the worst stories.

Is the story really that fucking dumb? I think it's pretty good as far as video game stories go. It would be foolish to go into this game expecting The Last of Us or some shit. But the story is well acted by the lead (obviously) and if you don't care about all of the LotR references then the story wasn't really meant for you anyway.

I for one am loving the tie-ins with the movies.

[SethMode]

Is the story really that fucking dumb? I think it's pretty good as far as video game stories go. It would be foolish to go into this game expecting The Last of Us or some shit. But the story is well acted by the lead (obviously) and if you don't care about all of the LotR references then the story wasn't really meant for you anyway.

I for one am loving the tie-ins with the movies.

As I've said, I definitely don't care about the calls to LoTR that much (although, I do know enough from reading that it shouldn't be possible to have an Elven Wraith). But yeah, the story is pretty fucking dumb. Guy's family is killed, here's how we shoehorn his story into an already bloated mythos.

Comparing it to other video games is really neither here nor there, and something I won't do, personally. It's just kind of disjointed and unimportant. I'm not playing it to see what happens to Talion, I'm playing it to level him up and murder more shit. I wouldn't even have cared if the game didn't seem to be so far up its own ass storywise at times.

Still, it really doesn't matter though, as I said. My favorite two games of the year (this and Divinity) have terrible stories. No biggie. Just an observation on my part.

[j.hen]

Again, not sure how you weren't expecting the main character's story in a LotR video game not to be shoe horned into the LotR mythos? I get that you don't care about LotR but I mean come on. For what it's worth the story does its job. And expands on itself within the extras you can collect and unlock throughout the game world.

Maybe I'm still too bitter about Destiny's story (or lack there of) so that once a game makes ANY more of an effort than Destiny has to engross me in the world it's just too easy for me to be down for that. At least this game made a solid attempt at presenting you with a coherent story.

/Troy Baker video game bias

[SethMode]

Again, not sure how you weren't expecting the main character's story in a LotR video game not to be shoe horned into the LotR mythos? I get that you don't care about LotR but I mean come on. For what it's worth the story does its job. And expands on itself within the extras you can collect and unlock throughout the game world.

Maybe I'm still too bitter about Destiny's story (or lack there of) so that once a game makes ANY more of an effort than Destiny has to engross me in the world it's just too easy for me to be down for that. At least this game made a solid attempt at presenting you with a coherent story.

/Troy Baker video game bias

I don't see how me saying that story is fucking dumb equals it not doing its job. If I'm talking about the story of the game, I'm not going to give points for giving a good effort. I don't know why I would.

For what it's worth, EVERY game story does its job. I just am bummed out at how much this game wants me to care about its story, but still doesn't follow through. There were times where I barely remembered your buddy Baker's name.

There are SO many games that make a focused, better emphasis on story, that it's not even worth bringing up. It's the second best game of the year, in my mind. In spite of what I think is a supremely lacking story. I'm sorry?

[j.hen]

Every game story doesn't do its job if you don't know what's going on in the game's world or care about the characters in it. There are PLENTY of games who fail at this, Destiny being a great example. So I don't see how you can say every game ever made's story does its job. I think I really am just too hung up on Destiny's shortcomings (story-wise) like I said though and that may have contributed to me being perfectly satisfied with Shadow of Mordor's story.

[SethMode]

Well, I beat it tonight and I thought that the ending was super underwhelming. Oh well.

[Maynard]

i dont mind the story. personally i like a simple story that i can easily recall as i play the game. im not playing games for the story. they are generally stupid and after 20-30 hours, who the hell remembers half the shit anyways.

i will say that the mission setup is lame. its kind of all over the place. and all the Red Marker missions are pretty weak too. the game is combat driven and it kind of annoys me that everytime i find a captain, he is not in the region he is supposed to be in, then while fighting him another one appears out of nowhere and interrupts the fighting.

its a fun game, but feeling very repetitive. the batman combat doesnt have enough to hold my interest long term. I was never a fan of the button mashing combat anyways. this is a bit better than batman imo.