Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Game of the Year Edition

Genre: Open-World Action-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Middle-earth: Shadow Bundle, along with Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Definitive Edition.)

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (not to be confused with the 1987 Text Adventure game Shadows of Mordor) is an Open-World Action-RPG first released in 2014 on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, with a port to Nintendo Switch in 2026 in this Game of the Year Edition that includes all of the game’s post-release DLC content.

Based loosely on the film versions of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films, Shadow of Mordor takes place during the gap between those two trilogies, and puts players in the role of Talion, a ranger who is ritually sacrificed along with his family by servants of Sauron looking to summon the elf lord Celebrimbor. The ritual doesn’t go quite as they planned though – Celebrimbor becomes connected to Talion, resulting in both stuck half in life and half in death. Working with Celebrimbor and making use of his supernatural abilities, Talion sets off to carve his way through the orc forces of Mordor, aiming to find The Black Hand, the dark figure who killed his family… well, and sort of him too.

I do want to be clear that this is a port – nothing has been done to remake or remaster this game, or even improve its framerate beyond the 30FPS of other versions. The only update this release has gotten is optional gyroscopic motion control for aiming when using the bow – a nice addition, but that’s it. This is pretty disappointing, but at the very least this game and its visuals have mostly aged very well, with plenty of variety in the orcs you fight against, and overall a good amount of detail in the game’s characters and environments, with good animations for Talion in particular.

There is one exception to all of this, though – the game’s locales overall look very samey. Look, I get that Mordor is supposed to be a murky wasteland, but even so I feel like there has to be more variety here. Dank bogs? Treacherous craggy mountains? Volcanic fields? No, instead what we get is a lot of rocky grasslands, crumbling castle remnants, and ramshackle wooden structures. You do eventually gain access to the grassy, forested Nurn area, but I feel by that point it’s too little, too late. Overall, apart from a few areas, if you took a screenshot of the game, I wouldn’t be able to tell you where you are on the game’s map.

Yet despite this, Shadow of Mordor is still a blast to play, thanks to a combination of an excellent stealth and superb combat system (which is clearly directly inspired by the Batman: Arkham series), and of course the signature Nemesis system, which uses your encounters with major enemies to create a story on the fly – procedurally-generated urak-hai enemies will remember if you fled while fighting them, or if they only barely managed to get away, and if one of them takes you out in battle, they might get promoted up the ranks of the game’s fluctuating org chart of baddies, complete with new perks and bonuses you’ll have to deal with the next time you face them. Players were so delighted with this system that Warner Brothers patented it to ensure no one else could use it, and then proceeded to use it themselves for only one other game, Shadow of Mordor’s direct sequel.

That’s not the game’s fault, and I won’t mark it down for that, but I will mark it down for its 30FPS framerates, its samey environments, and its extremely grindy progression. To be sure, grinding in Shadow of Mordor is still enjoyable, but after playing the game for hours and having a good time, I realized looking back that I was largely doing the same thing over and over again.

Still, even with how repetitive Shadow of Mordor is, and how this release does nothing to update the game despite the original release coming out a whole 12 years ago… I still can’t complain too much when I had an absolute blast with this game, and could happily dive back into it and keep going for dozens more hours. If you enjoy Action-RPGs and especially if you’re a fan of the Middle-earth franchise, this game is an absolute must-have. But if you played this on another platform before now… well, don’t expect anything different this time around.

tl;dr – Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is an Open-World Action-RPG set between the Hobbit trilogy and Lord of the Rings trilogy, following the story of a ranger possessed by the spirit of an elven lord and seeking revenge on the one who killed his family. This release does nothing to update or modernize this 12 year-old game, which can get a bit samey and grindy… yet despite this, it’s still a blast to play, with enjoyable combat, great stealth, and of course the legendary Nemesis system. If you somehow missed this game on other platforms and enjoy Action-RPGs, and especially if you’re a fan of the Middle-earth franchise, consider this an absolute must-have.

Grade: B+

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