Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a game for all. I have to admit, I came into this game thinking it would be an onslaught against the Tolkien fandom. So far, digital media has somewhat sullied the works of J.R.R. Tolkien with the Lord of the Rings movies and the new Hobbit Trilogy, both done by Peter Jackson. While I admit, they have brought Tolkien’s works to a wider audience, and have made themselves into media I like, they aren’t the truest to Tolkien form ever. However, this game touches on bits and pieces of less known Tolkien works like The Silmarillion and other assorted poems written by J.R.R. himself with a few references to the Jackson films (with an appearance from Gollum).
Not voiced by Andy Serkis
I have no number for my approval of the game outright, just my following review, where I will probably end up giving you a number, because people like that sort of thing. Be advised, there may be some spoilers of Tolkien works, but if you haven’t gotten to reading them in the last 70 years, you really should give them a go.
To give you a brief background of the game, in case you were like me and did not watch a single trailer, you play as a ranger of Gondor named Talion, stationed on the Black Gate, between Gondor and Mordor. Mordor is, for all intents and purposes, deactivated right now. Outcasts and hunters have settled in the lands, while Sauron garners strength to return to Middle-earth. Talion has been stationed at the Black Gate for some unknown reason. It seems standard in fantasy-fare now to throw people to guarding a gate when they have done something bad. I’m looking at you, George R.R. Martin. It also seems that a ranger at the Black Gate seems somewhat out of place in the timeline, as the events of the game are between the end of the Hobbit and the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring.
Anyways, your wife also comes along, and your son, because they are both pretty badass. In the beginning of the game, they offer roles as tutorials, with kissing your wife as a tutorial for stealth kills (oh, I will get to moral ambiguity later, I promise) and sparring with your son as setting up the ranger combat for the rest of the game. So, tragedy strikes and you are assaulted by Sauron’s lieutenants who kill you and your wife and son. Game over right? Nope. Fast forward, and some elven-wraith comes in and possesses your body, giving you awesome magical powers and an even more awesome moniker: The Gravewalker. Now Talion has become reborn as a vengeful killing machine with one thing on his mind: killing Uruks.
Even in the main menu, Talion is pretty pissed
Now that I’ve set up the story and motivation of the character, let’s go into gameplay. Like I said, Shadow of Mordor is a game for all. It is a very strong, solid game with endless hours of content that anybody can pick up fairly easily. I am not the most adept gamer ever, but I still found the flowing combat and game mechanics pretty natural. Imagine Assassin’s Creed movement mechanics (jumping, climbing, sprinting, and sneaking) and combine it with the combat system of the Batman: Arkham games. Something I feel games have lacked in recent years is the true feeling of skill required for playing. A lot of mainstream games have required a level of skill of hacking and slashing, and not true skill. Exploiting the environment around you, you can really attack problems in creative ways. Using animals, fires, and alcohol, you can lay waste to dozens of Uruk strongholds. As long as no one raises the alarm.
Well, this isn't the worst thing ever
You have pretty much three tiers of Uruks (or Orcs, it’s kind of interchangeable in the game, even though they make a point to point out the difference in them) that you fight in the entirety of the game. You start off with the regular, single named Uruks that are pretty much wraith fodder. You can tear through them pretty easily. They aren’t actually a part of the nemesis system until they kill you. That’s where things get interesting. When you die, you come back, as the wraith possessing you is that powerful. Uruks who kill you gain notoriety and gain rankings, with Captain being the next one. Captains have more powerful skills and abilities, which you can learn through gathering intel. Intel is gathered by either finding random scraps of important information the Uruks leave laying around or by sucking information out of their noggins with the help of the ancient wraith possessing you. Honestly, Talion is a really good ranger, but it’s kind of messed up to think he’s just a walking meat suit for this wraith to unleash his holy vengeance on Sauron. When Captains get promoted, they become Warchiefs. Warchiefs are even harder to kill, especially since they have bodyguards that protect them. Later on in the game, you can actually exploit that strength and turn it into a weakness. Once you defeat Captains and later, Warchiefs, you get one step closer to enacting revenge for your slain family. As you go along however, the wraith’s motives become less clear.
The wraith world is pretty...blue
For Shadow of Mordor, the challenge of reviewing does not fall in the gameplay. It definitely falls into the morality of the game and how the story goes. For the most part, I’ve just been introducing the game and the bare-bones of what you need to know and for the most part reviewing the game in a positive light. However, the biggest drawback that I found was the ambiguity of the character you play as. Talion is driven by one thing: revenge, and he does not care how many Uruks he has to slaughter in the most brutal way possible in order to make that dream a reality. The wraith that possesses Talion even stops and asks him when the violence will end. Never have I played a game where the game asks me “Why are you doing this?” And then I realized I was committing nothing short of Uruk genocide. Sure, they are the agents of the biggest baddie of them all, Sauron, and do not really have any redeeming qualities at all, but they are a race and Talion is being fairly prejudiced. Talion goes to great lengths to destroy the Uruk culture to avenge his family, and it’s scary how much this plays on criticisms of Tolkien’s somewhat blatant racism. It’s hard to say if you really are playing a protagonist at all, as you are a white man killing a bunch of non-white “savages” in really detestable ways. I do not know if the developers meant to bring up this moral quandary, and that is really the biggest drawback I see. It is never really made clear why you do what you do and to why to such an extent you commit Uruk holocaust. Sure, the revenge part makes sense, but the wraith possessing you is also an extremely morally ambiguous figure, as you will learn later on in the game.
Again, not the worst thing ever
Lastly, I have a few drawbacks that I would like to go over before I end my review. The story arcs of Gollum and the ham-fisted references to Peter Jackson’s films really interrupted my experiences. I mean, I feel as though the game’s tying in to other Tolkien media, which I understand they have to do to bring in wider audiences, was poorly done. There was no real thought put into the references. They were almost all laughably inserted. Gollum talks about “filthy Bagginses” which would be really cool to think about if Gollum was not exactly like he was in the movies. The reason why is because of the lack of contribution this game has to overall Tolkien canon. It does not contribute at all to canon, as you will see in the rest of the game. Shadow of Mordor as a piece of media relied too heavily on previous Tolkien media and it really suffered for that. Gollum’s references to the events of the Hobbit would be awesome if they had any real effect on the game. Besides a few references to text and digital media, Shadow of Mordor is just another fantasy action RPG. It is a fantastic Tolkien game, but it did not stand on its own as much as it could have. As a longstanding Tolkien fan, I have suffered through bad Lord of the Rings game after bad Lord of the Rings game, and it was refreshing to play a game with references to other Tolkien works, up until the point where Peter Jackson’s monopoly on Tolkien media bled into the game. It really grinds me up, but it will not take away from my enjoyment of the game.
Shadow of Mordor is an outstanding game. I think it renewed a lot of people’s interest in digital media adaptations of Tolkien’s works. With the third and final Hobbit movie coming out in a couple of months, it was nice to have another outlet in which the average consumer could enjoy some Tolkien media, regardless of the fact of the malicious fan service to Peter Jackson’s movie series. As a game, the gameplay and combat are nothing new, but build upon mechanics developed by other franchises and picks up the good from them and installs it in this game. It is a time-killer for sure. To write this review, it took me 24 hours over a week’s time to get to the endgame. The endgame of Shadow of Mordor is up for scrutiny, and there are a wide array of opinions one could have about it. I do not feel as though I am readily equipped to give you my opinion on it, and I only hope you play it yourself and find out.
Overall, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a really solid game and I hope you derive the same enjoyment out of it that I did. Just be wary of the game’s place in Tolkien media, and try not to think too much about the violence you are committing. The Uruks will take care of that.
As a fair-weather Tolkien fan at best, I was genuinely surprised at how much Shadow of Mordor had me hooked within just the opening hours of the game. While it’s fit in chronology is still somewhat baffling to me, there’s some interesting ideas for a plot here that makes for a solid setup for an open world adventure. Writing is solid through most of the campaign, with a few hit or miss scenes with movie cameos.
The greater triumph of the game however is a combination of fluid gameplay action interlaced with interesting macro-mechanics. Your ranger of Gondor turned Gravewalker manages to steal the show when it comes to multi-man combat by stealing gameplay mechanics from the Arkham series, but with a much more lethal tint. Combining this with a fun progression system makes for noticeable power gains as campaign progresses. The speed that you’re able to dispatch orc hordes by the endgame is utterly intoxicating.
This is all layered underneath the very well-integrated nemesis system, turning orcs into commanders with personalities, and giving you a plethora of options when it comes to achieving your goals. No two players will approach working their way up Sauron’s army the same way, and it makes for some great stories, from finally finishing off your nemesis, to mind-controlling a horde of followers into combat.
Shadow of Mordor represents the best video game based on the Lord of the Rings franchise since the LotR: The Third Age. It’s also the best Assassin’s Creed we’ll probably get this year. Easily the best Arkham game too. This one isn’t to be missed by action game aficionados.
8/10
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