An unbiased review for people thinking of purchasing

[Mike]

I'm simply writing this because I was very apprehensive of this game when it was announced and downright vexed at the butchering of the lore, but as with all things, once I actually experience it then that's when I'd decide to pass judgment.

DISCLAIMER: This is a very long review.

SECOND Disclaimer: If you're thinking of getting this game for the express reason that you want to experience some of the LOTR universe or you want to learn about the lore; don't. Nothing that happens in the game should even be loosely taken as canon. It's simply a fun hack-and-slash with references/settings in Middle Earth, at best. (I'm only adding this because I know a lot of LOTR's following play the games for the story/lore.)

I'll start with the graphics: The graphics are quite pleasant. I've seen people bash the artstyle for various reasons, but frankly, it looks good. I'd say the most enjoyable ascept of it to me is how everything seems to look almost as if it's a painting. Distant objects (not the skybox only) have pretty high detail and there is really no noticeable pop-in of anything at all. The world is easy on the eyes. The one gripe I do have, however, is that awful, wet looking layer over the top of everything that makes every surface shine. I'm not sure if that's something to do with parallax layers or what, but I've seen it in a few recent games and it's just kind of annoying to notice. The animations in the game in general are great, on the other hand. Everything is very well synced together. There are some areas that I feel should be more dark or foreboding. It doesn't really feel like you're in Mordor. The Black Gate is the entrance to the very heart of Mordor, but there's grass growing and wildlife everywhere, even herbs and plants all over the place. There's never a time where you'll feel threatened or at all unsafe in any of the environments either, with profuse hiding places.

The map and getting around: Generally, things are easy to manage. You won't be running for hours and hours between missions just to progress the story. There is a very easy-to-use fast travel system and every mission, object, and "secret" in the game has a map marker, which is good, for this sort of game. I never really have had a moment where I've had to stop and question what exactly I was supposed to be doing.

Quests and missions: There aren't a whole lot of actual quests in this game. Most of your time will be spent either grinding levels/currency through various means (generally killing as many uruks/captains/warchiefs as possible), or doing the fluff content, like the weapon-specific missions spread throughout both areas. There are a lot of artifacts and "Ithildin" pieces to find, which basically only give you more currency and some insight into some of the history of Mordor. In short, there is little actual progression you have to do, but a lot of fluff and horizontal progression to progress the game more easily.

The gameplay: This is easily the most frustrating aspect of the game. For the most part, the context-sensitive controls tend to do their job, if just that. There is no precise way to do anything, with many different commands using the same button. For instance, if you kill a warchief in the middle of a crowd of uruks then want to pick up his rune and get out, you're more likely to be grappling every uruk around you because it uses the same button as the "grab" command. Most of all, the dodge/counter system is really bad in a lot of situations. There's a certain "uruk blob event horizon" that tends to happen where suddenly your controls will cease to do anything you want them to do when in a big enough crowd of enemies. This is especially frustrating when you're doing a mission that requires you to use a certain move on specifically marked enemies (such as one "drain supporters of a warchief" mission), where you'll inevitably find yourself wasting finishers on everything except the enemies you need to use them on. You will more than likely end up dying a lot to the broken dodge system as well, since the shield/spear-wielding uruks require you to have open space to dodge roll away from them, but when there are enemies around you'll grab them and flip over them instead, which will usually take too long to do before you're getting hit. Some missions require you to do things undetected as well, and it's easily possible for you to accidentally jump off a building into a group of uruks if you just happen to rotate your camera the wrong way at the wrong time and fail the mission.

The story: Contrary to most things you'd associate with Lord of the Rings, the story here is definitely not the strong point. It consists of missions mainly revolving around, "you killed my family, ANGRY" or "kill more things, and then kill more things again". There isn't a lot of coherence between a lot of the missions and some of the things you do simply don't seem to make any sense at all for their purpose. It suffers from the, "throw me a frikkin bone" syndrome in some places, with the plot device to move you on to the second area magically appearing out of thin air and asking you to go on a walk, for example. Then there are really, really badly shoehorned references to other things in Middle Earth, like a woman living in a part of the world that she canonically shouldn't be in being possessed by Saruman who somehow knew that Celebrimbor's wraith (something that canonically also doesn't exist) was bound to a ranger, despite even Sauron himself apparently being unaware of this, despite both Sauron and the Ringwraiths living/seeing in the Wraith world themselves. In essence, nothing makes sense and there's really no reason to think too hard about it.

Other thoughts: The sound and score is decent. The sound moreso than the music. I can't say the music is bad, but there is nothing about it in particular that really grabs you either. It's just "good". The sound effects on the other hand are quite well done. The voiceacting is good, but at the same time it doesn't really fit in a lot of places. A lot of the dialogue isn't even half in the spirit of the way the Lord of the Rings was written and ties in the with the fact that you should probably just ignore the story altogether because it's a trainwreck. There are also some pretty hilarious lines from the uruks on occasion that add a bit to the feel of things, on the other side of things.

The "Nemesis" and Sauron's Army system: I'm adding in this little bit here just to say that it's a great feature and adds some organization to your otherwise wanton slaughter. Sometimes you'll get really powerful enemies, but by about the halfway point in the game there's nothing you can't kill with minimal effort, which is a bit unfortunate, however. Once I got to a certain point I just started ignoring the Sauron's Army screen altogether and progressing the story because there was nothing to be gained from it, though. I'll tie this into my previous point of never really feeling threatened in the game, which I feel like should be a primary situation given that you're a lone Man in a land with millions of uruks and orcs populating it, and kind of detracts from the atmosphere. But, it is still an enjoyable fluff feature that has no real negative implications, only adding to the game as a whole.

My score:
Graphics, sound effects: 5/5, by current standards.
World design: 5/5, large enough to be interesting with just the right amount of fluff.
Playability, function: 3/5, generally works alright but falls flat very hard in places.
Story: 2/5, nothing remarkable on either end of the spectrum.

Overall verdict: 4/5.

The ultimate defining quality here is that it's FUN. That's all that matters for a video game anyways. You'll spend plenty of hours decapitating uruks and listening to their hilarious conversations, saying things like, "I caught a whiff of fresh air earlier, disgusting", which frankly makes them the stars of the game, regardless of how you basically commit systematic genocide of them. Not for the lore junky, but definitely for anyone wanting an amusing way to waste time that just happens to be set in the world of Middle Earth.

I'm sure I will get a lot of people disagreeing with various points, this is all a matter of opinion. For example, to some people, this might be the only lore they know and they'll see it as fitting, or some people might hate the graphics and art style, who knows. I'm just trying to be as unbiased as possible here and tell my experience as I played for people looking into the game.

[ZeroHistory]

Nice review, thanks for taking the time.

[riggz666]

the game is not in your library, which version did you review/pay?

[medavroog]

Escrito originalmente por riggz666:

the game is not in your library, which version did you review/pay?

Perhaps the Origin or Uplay version ... or perhaps, he or she has it on the consoles.

[~P~R~I~M~A~L~]

+1

[riggz666]

Escrito originalmente por medavroog:

Escrito originalmente por riggz666:

the game is not in your library, which version did you review/pay?

Perhaps the Origin or Uplay version ... or perhaps, he or she has it on the consoles.

games uses steamworks and can only activated via steam.

i asked because if he's playing on console the parts relating to gfx are misleading and shouldn't really be include because of the difference in quality between the three (PC, XB1, PC).
The controls seem to work much better on PS4 and qte's are more responsive.

I just think is relevant to state which platform he played it on.

[Gamer Mickey]

I've already poured scorn all over the story some time ago in another thread, but I realised the lore was pretty much ignored before I purchased it so I'm playing it as just a fun game with a middle-earth-esque theme.

[himmatsj]

I fully agree that folks shouldn't buy this for the story, expecting some good LOTR lore. I did buy the game for just that reason and kinda regret my purchase. Even the setting of the game resembles little of the Middle Earth we know from Tolkien and Jackson.

[Gamer Mickey]

Escrito originalmente por Spawk:

Escrito originalmente por himmatsj:

Even the setting of the game resembles little of the Middle Earth we know from Tolkien and Jackson.

How so? Because to me it looked exactly like Mordor from the movies, and the second area was as it was described by Tolkien.

What with the bases about a 2 min walk from each other? Yeah that was just like the movies.

[Gamer Mickey]

Escrito originalmente por Spawk:

Escrito originalmente por Acurisur:

What with the bases about a 2 min walk from each other? Yeah that was just like the movies.

You're right. It should have been realistic. The game should have made us travel for days through a barren wasteland before reaching an objective. That would've been fun.

Anyway, looks decently similar to me.

http://i.imgur.com/SfEmILr.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8PnM882.png

What, like in every other open-world game you mean? There's already a fast travel system in the game so your point is moot. And you started by saying "OH isn't it just like the movies/book, well the Urak camps aren't right next door to each other in either the books or the films.

There are no elf wraiths in the books or the films. There are no Catagors. There are no Graugs.

[Gamer Mickey]

Escrito originalmente por Spawk:

Escrito originalmente por Acurisur:

What, like in every other open-world game you mean? There's already a fast travel system in the game so your point is moot. And you started by saying "OH isn't it just like the movies/book, well the Urak camps aren't right next door to each other in either the books or the films.

Gee, could it be because the events in the game take place before the Peter Jackson movies?

Some of the flashbacks are from the Silmarillion. The rest is supposed to be set in-between the Hobbit (also a 3 part movie by Peter Jackson) and The Lord of The Rings (again made as a 3 part movie by Peter Jackson).

[WolfEisberg]

Escrito originalmente por Redneck:

I'm simply writing this because I was very apprehensive of this game when it was announced and downright vexed at the butchering of the lore, but as with all things, once I actually experience it then that's when I'd decide to pass judgment.

DISCLAIMER: This is a very long review.

You should post this in some console version forums, not the PC version since you don't own the PC version, you obviously reviewed the console version.

[medavroog]

Escrito originalmente por Spawk:

If there was a an Origin or Uplay version. The game uses Steamworks on PC.

I have both Origin and Uplay as well as Live: ... A few days ago when I was browsing the shop feature on Uplay, I noticed this game actually was offered on the Ubishop. I will check Origin and Live shall it be offered there or not. Because I already have the steam-version, I did not acquire the ubi-version ... thus, cannot confirm shall that version use steamworks or not.

[riggz666]

Escrito originalmente por medavroog:

Escrito originalmente por Spawk:

If there was a an Origin or Uplay version. The game uses Steamworks on PC.

I have both Origin and Uplay as well as Live: ... A few days ago when I was browsing the shop feature on Uplay, I noticed this game actually was offered on the Ubishop. I will check Origin and Live shall it be offered there or not. Because I already have the steam-version, I did not acquire the ubi-version ... thus, cannot confirm shall that version use steamworks or not.

all versions must be activated on steam.

[medavroog]

Escrito originalmente por riggz666:

all versions must be activated on steam.

OK, cool.

[Ser Cartoon of House Head]

Escrito originalmente por medavroog:

Escrito originalmente por riggz666:

the game is not in your library, which version did you review/pay?

Perhaps the Origin or Uplay version ... or perhaps, he or she has it on the consoles.

Game is on Steam, and why would someone come and reivew a console version in a PC forum?