Recent reviews by Soundchaos

If you have ever been the victim of abuse and struggle with PTSD from it, do not play this game. You will frequently find yourself in situations that cause you to feel like you are being abused and you won't recognize why you feel that way playing a stupid game until you're already addicted. In all the decades I've been gaming, this game is the only one that's ever made me feel this way.

If you're mentally healthy and don't mind a huge grind and a somewhat flawed game, have at it. This game is really fun most of the time.

This is a game where I wish I could write both a positive and negative recommendation based on the type of player reading. Since positives have been covered extensively, I'll stick to a "should you buy" negative review for people that are on the fence.

Shadows of Mordor's Nemesis system does one of two things: creates incredibly memorable and emotional interactions between a player and his or her enemies, or it does nothing. Unfortunatly, due to a lack of options to scale difficulty, there's very little that can be done if the Nemesis system does not work for you (enemies cap at 20 power and there is not a way to directly increase the difficulty of the enemies you face).

If you breeze through games with similar combat systems, specifically Batman (doubly so if you played hard mode and chose not to use upgrades to increase the challenge), or enjoyed games like the DSouls series, the Nemesis system will not work very well for you, even if you go out of your way to handicap yourself. Without the Nemesis system, this game is Batman: Mordor without any memorable villians (since the nemesis system is supposed to create your villians as you interact with the randomly generated uruks). It's still a mechanically good game, but you will most likely be somewhat disappointed.

That said, if you have played similar games and they weren't a walk in the park or this kind of game is completely new to you, the Nemesis system will create amazing villains and memorable unscripted moments.

I like the concept of being hunted, but the execution left me disappointed. I expected the rush of being the target of a manhunt, but got a scavenger hunt with a heavy emphasis on inventory management. The procedurally generated worlds look nice, but are often repetitive and mostly empty. Optimizing a limited, grid-based inventory can be time consuming enough to break immersion. Having limited inventory for a game like this is great, but having to reorganize a grid-based inventory to pick up an item when enough space is availabe is annoying (has anyone ever felt like they were being hunted when playing with Tangrams?). Buildings break immersion since they function as treasure chests instead of buildings. (I knew that going into the game and thought it wouldn't bother me, but I was incorrect).

Unfortunately, Sir, You Are Being Hunted fails to make me feel like I am being hunted and breaks immersion too often to maintain my interest.

I have criteria that must be met before I spend money on a free-to-play game:

1) The game must be fun.
2) It must be monetized in a way that does not make the experience less enjoyable.

Before Kabam aquired RotMG, it met those criteria and I devoted over 1000 hours and a considerable amount of money to the game. After Kabam's aquisition, I feel like I'm walking through the front door of a Wal-Mart every time I load the game.

Having something being sold no mater where my character was or what I was doing tainted the experience.

If you can overlook the eyesores that Kabaam created in order to sell you everything under the sun, RotMG is a great game.