Semi-Spoiler Alert: (Anyone that feels they can privately instruct me (written text) how to make these special hidden spoiler things will be appreciated and graciously thanked.)
Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (The “Unofficial” [lost its license] Lord of the rings game)
The art and visuals in this game are awesome! This is an area that I appreciate greatly in games too. We spend so much time at our pcs exploring ether, these amazing creations of interactive art are very welcome and refreshing. To every artist (Designer, Developer, Programmer, etc.) that contributed efforts toward the release of this project, THANK YOU. If you don’t have a system that can fully render the game your missing out big time, go somewhere and play a bit at full render and you’ll understand.
Game play normal difficulty, moving though the game was very immersive. The bug bitch whispering in the back of your ear guiding you through the adventure (5.1 or better sound required) was interestingly helpful. I think anyone playing without headphones is going to be playing a totally different game, a surround sound system could help but just can’t replicate the sensation of a whisper coming into one ear from behind. The first one I remember actually startled me, I turned around at my desk to see who was behind me, lol I was alone in a locked building…
The Orcs, Uruks, Olog Hai all fun to battle and each with interesting skill sets (Up to the top levels). The trash talk from the enemies was … okay. I am not really sure where I stand with that, some of it was playful, expected and welcome for this type of game and the rest… meh.
Upon first completion I felt the relief of finishing a task, not quit the relief of completing an epic adventure, though completion. Then….
With more SADNESS, SORROW, and MORNING as one could possibly employed, the surviving creators ended the game. Why, why, why WHY! end such a grand creation with such a low tone? This has placed a permanent stain on any game that could every come from these developers (WB, Havok, Monolith, etc.) for me in the future, forever even if the choice was not theirs. In all my future replays through the game I will never play it again through to the end, ever, just to avoid this.
Micheal Forgey is an awesome being (spirit); every time the game opens “Warner Brothers” should be celebrating his life by thanking him, not waiting until an un-informed player finally (if ever) completes the game to teach them who that Orc was that rescued them that time*…
To keep the rest of the post short –ish; game->play was bad…
The “Nemesis” system is a forced system, observed by my experience, there WILL BE an orc even the best player cannot beat and it does not matter if the player is max level with maxed gear and the orc is lowest level, it will happen. You can run to avoid it, bring back help and defeat fate for a moment, but it will come…. You will be fighting your final battle for a realm, having killed 20+ captains and 100’s of orcs personally (not including what your orcs do) to get to the final chamber, you will fight that final boss for more than an hour straight (smoke break time deducted), killing 100s and 100s of respawning Uruks and Olog to both stay alive and rebuild might/wraith to reach either a point where; at full health from across the room behind solid shielding with no helper orcs the close range only “Dazed” boss will one hit kill you with a new skill it learned during the battle your currently fighting, or you will be on some open world task fighting one much higher leveled captain and be ambushed by three more high leveled captains; and when you finally get the forth one’s health down close enough for a final blow (up to 20 minutes of fighting) the action itself becomes so slow because the system is working so hard forcing the loss that it seemingly stops allowing ANY user input and forces the player to stand still in the middle of battle… FOR SECONDS! While enemy ocrs pummel you. Then after an eternity ( 3-25 seconds for real ) of waiting to be allowed to interact with the game again the captain steps up with its animation sequence for final blow*… These are just a few failures of the forced nemesis system I could go on…
*This is where I first meet Forthog, thank you for the save bro…, though it sucks we could not have met under better circumstances. Just sayin, forced to near death just so you can be saved, it really lessens the effect. You know, like pushing someone into oncoming traffic just so you can save their life with CPR kind of thing…
P.S. Mark the Bar is getting pretty high ;-)