Recent reviews by D.O.P.R

I gave it an honest shot, and while I did not dislike the game, I never felt engrossed or particularly interested.
I discovered after only a few hours that what was keeping my interest wasn't the story, but my curiosity in discovering the ways this game differed mechanically from Fallout or Skyrim.

Personally, I love the futurist art-deco visual style of the game, but I kept finding myself seeing quests as chores rather than adventures. And while they weren't unpleasant chores, they weren't engaging either (especially with the lack of traditional fast travel, which made even simple fetch quests take longer than necessary).

As I said, I don't dislike the game and it has several improvements that I would love to see imported to Fallout, but I last played it more than a week ago and despite being less than half of the way through the main story (according to walkthroughs) I just don't have any interest in returning to it. I will still give it a very tepid recommendation for its positives, but this is definitely a game to get for cheap during a Steam sale.

This is what a remaster should be.
Aside from a few very minor "quality of life" improvements, nothing about the core gameplay has been altered.

This has all the nostalgia of the classic C&C and Red Alert, but optimized for modern systems and for modern aspect ratios.

The FMVs are still a bit low quality, but I don't blame the devs, since after Westwood was subsumed by the eldritch horror that is EA, the original recordings were lost, so they had to make due with upscaling the original footage.

For those unfamiliar, this remaster will give RTS lovers a solid taste of why C&C was the behemoth it was. And for those of us who grew up on this franchise, it will allow us to relive the experience all over again.

A beautifully realized game world, with simple, yet satisfying gameplay, characters with backstories that I actually cared about, and although it ends on a cliffhanger, the story didn't feel incomplete. It ends on a promise of more adventures, assuming the developers are given the resources to continue the tale.

As a huge fan of Tolkien and "The Lord of the RIngs", this game caught my eye the moment it was first introduced to me. Having just finished the main storyline (after a great deal of mucking about doing sidequests and random adventuring), I can say without hesitation that this has become one of my favorite games.

The gameplay is satisfying and runs nearly flawlessly. The only glitches I had in 30+ hours of gameplay was two occations where I managed to get myself stuck on some peice of architecture that I obviously was not ment to try and stand on. But this ended up being only a minor inconveniance as all I needed to do was fast travel to a nearby tower to get back on track.

Killing orcs is immensly satisfying, and I can't stress enough how much fun it is to sneak into a stronghold and drop down on some unaware Uruk from above for a savage Brutilize kill. The shouts of terror from the other Uruks as they flee in all directions really makes you feel like the stuff of nightmares.

>WARNING - MAJOR NERD SPEAK AHEAD<

As a LOTRs fan, I was immensly excited for this game, yet I tempered my enthusiasm and mantained a healthy amount of skeptisism since I've played franchise games before that have let me down, and I didn't want to be dissapointed yet again by a game set in one of my favorite universes. I can easily say that my fears of this being a poorly made attempt to get some more money out of the new generation of Tolkien fans were unfounded. "Shadow of Mordor" is a fantastic game that went so far beyond my expectations that, in the time it took me to turn my head to watch them go, they were already gone.

But, as a fan of the LOTRs franchise, I was most critical of the storyline and how it integrated into the lore of LOTRs. My nitpicks here take no points at all away from the game itself from a playability standpoint, but do lose some points when it comes to nerds like myself who can tell the difference between a Silvan Elf and those of the Laiquendi.

I won't point out all the variations the game makes from established Tolkien lore, and many of them I am able to (at least partially) overlook due to the fact that Tolkien never gave specifics regarding certain events. Indeed, with a universe as deep and wide as Middle-Earth, there's plenty of room for grand adventures and great heroes that themselves are only footnotes in the book Tetralogy. But other offenses are harder to overlook.

Certain revelations regarding the spirit who gives Talion the majority of his powers go from questionable, to pretty much lore-unfriendly. Even given how little Tolkien himself wrote about the specific characters and events themselves, they fly in the face of what we know about The Ring and it's creation and powers, as well as Sauron himself. There were also a smattering of items that were just downright untrue (like the assertion that the Black Gate was made by Sauron, which is untrue. It was built by the Numenoreans in exile after Sauron's initial defeat. It was originally built to keep evil from reentering Mordor, and what evil was still in it from getting out).
But they also do a great job incorporating plenty of other lore from the extended universe and Silmarillion, many of which players wouldn't notice unless they were hardcore fans.

For those familiar with the New Line movie trilogy of LOTRs, this world will look very familiar. While there are no ties between this game and the movies, it's impossible in this day to make any kind of LOTRs game without at least some bleedover from the iconic films. Everything from sword design and character design, to returning motifs and colour pallets. Gollum, who makes an apperance, was about the only character who seemed to be ripped straight from the films and plopped into the game. His design, movments and all were spot on to the film version, and if Andy Serkis wasn't the voice actor, they found someone who sounds just like him.

Overall, even despite the nitpicks I have with the lore-friendliness, this is one of the most polished and engaging games I have played in the last several years. Even for non-Tolkien fans, this is a super-fun, easily replayable diversion that is worth the money and the time.