I’m almost to the point where I bailed on the game when I played at release. I’m just starting the mission to get to the 2nd map.
I’m hoping I don’t burn out on it again. I think I’m feeling better about the game than my first play through because I’m now using the bow more than I did then. I’m making use of my focus, taking orcs out from afar, shadow strikes, etc.
My main complaint about the game is how easy it is to have unending hordes enter the battle. It gets freakin’ annoying. Or when 2 more boss orcs join the battle. I don’t enjoy fights that last too long. Next would be the lack of variety.
The basic mechanics and fighting is pretty good though and I’m enjoying the cinematic bits sprinkled throughout.
I stuck with it long enough to complete the story so I’m pretty happy. I appreciate that I didn’t have to do a ton of side stuff if I didn’t want to. I didn’t complete any of the legendary weapon quest lines, although I did do 9 out of 10 for the sword and found out I needed to unlock a skill that I didn’t choose, so I abandoned that.
Using dominate to get some assistance with the 2nd half of the warlord quests made them go a little quicker which was good too. Out of the open world games with Batman-like combat, I think overall I liked Mad Max quite a bit better. There was more variety (even though it was fairly repetitive), the story and characters were more entertaining - Chumbucket!, and the world looked much better.
Shadows of Mordor did have some powers that were more interesting though. During my first play through I probably would have given SoM a 2 out of 5, but after playing it again I’d probably raise it to a 3.
This normally wouldn’t be my cup of meat, but I was looking for something shiny to play during breaks from GalCiv III Crusade, and couldn’t resist the sale price.
After taking half the day to download, I jumped in and died right after the tutorial ended. I really suck at this kind of game, but I can see enough interesting ideas here to get me to stick with it for a while.
One thing I don’t see is a way to adjust the difficulty :(.
Try to limit yourself to combat with small numbers of orcs until you get the swing of things. Or, practice the combat an then start over because when the orcs kill you they get stronger, which may keep making the game more difficult.
Usually ranged weapons are difficult for me with the controller, but it wasn’t bad here because of how time slows down. You can take out some orcs with the bow before going into melee.
Not completely. You can avoid some combat that way, or make it easier to get to your objective location, but you will need to fight - probably very large groups of orcs. Try to get the guys that set off alarms when at their fortresses.
Sometimes you can use stealth to get in and get out and minimize fighting.
Yeah, the way I like to play is taking down as many foes I can using stealth, and then fighting on when I’m discovered. Here’s an important tip for the early game though: don’t be afraid to run if things get too hectic or dangerous.
Don’t be afraid later to run later in the game when you’re fighting 2 bosses and suddenly a third boss (who killed you about 30 minutes ago and is now invulnerable to you because they have a trait you can’t get around yet) shows up.
I don’t know how people feel about that, but I actually loved it. Great “oh fuck me!” moments where you have to run, then maybe recover and stealth back in and try to pick off one of the bosses.
I remember in the expansion it got ludicrous, some of the bosses were basically invulnerable to almost everything. I recall one boss I was trying to kill could only be harmed by explosions… 💥
While it’s been a while, I think eventually there was always some way to take out a boss, but you might have to be creative or lure them. It would have been nice to make bosses slightly less invulnerable - hopefully the sequel will correct that.
New trailer. While I’m still getting the game (because the first one is one of my favorite purchases for the Xbox One) this trailer is about as bland as it gets, short of one of those teaser trailers that don’t show anything but the name.
I know I’m super late to the party but I finally started playing this and absolutely love it. It’s so much more fun than I thought it would be, the progression systems and nemesis systems are so freaking cool!
The only sucky part is a lot of input latency on Xbox one. Is the PS4 the same way? Makes aiming for headshots pretty tough.
I also played and beat this some months ago and was very pleasantly surprised. It’s always been referred to as a mix of the Arkham games and Assassin’s Creed - and I gotta say that I enjoyed SoM more then either of the two. SoM certainly beats AC’s clunky combat system (not unimportant for a combat-heavy game), but I also thought it felt more refined than Batman’s. I also prefered the variety of environments and the day/night cycle over Batman’s all-night affairs.
Going into it, I didn’t expect much of the Nemesis system. It’s one of these things that gets hyped up and then actually doesn’t make that much of a difference, you know. Well, I was wrong. I’d say they hit the sweet spot between having a procedural/dynamic element and yet having enough distinct orc personalities. Even after 20+ hours you still discover a type or two you haven’t encountered before.
I’m slightly worried by the sequel’s introduction of mass battles - if there’s one annoying thing about the combat system in SoM, it’s fighing along branded orcs. I get why it’s possible to target your own people (so you can feed of their energy or use them to build a combo streak), but rather often a planned and desperatedly needed finisher ended up hitting one of mine rather than an enemy.
Another oddity: the gameplay experience in the first story DLC is worse than the main game, and the second story DLC is even below that. The new powers should be fun, but Lord of the Hunt already partially locks down the Nemesis systen; the Bright Lord restricts it even further.
