Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

Fight through Mordor and uncover the truth of the spirit that compels you, discover the origins of the Rings of Power, build your legend and ultimately confront the evil of Sauron in this new chronicle of Middle-earth.

Previous Playtime

18 minutes

What Was I Thinking When I Bought This 

Well, it was on sale for silly cheap, like four dollars for the game plus all the DLC. Now, that alone is enough to get me to buy a game (hell, I'll buy just about anything for 80 percent off), but by that time in my life, I'd been through enough Steam sales to know that the same four dollars could have bought me any number of excellent games. So why Shadow of Mordor, specifically?

It really came down to a combination of things. I heard that it had a really neat system where it procedurally generates recurring enemies that you will grow to know by name. Also, I've long been both intrigued and intimidated by Tolkein's expanded universe, and while I have no idea if this game is based off stuff like The Silmarillion, the idea of a professionally crafted story set in Middle Earth was pretty appealing.

Expectations and Prior Experience

First things first - this is a stealth game, at least in part, and that worries me. I don't care for stealth in video games, and every time I've tried it, I've always been like, "ach, why can't I just kill these guys and sneak past their corpses?" On the bright side, I've been assured that the stealth in this game is fairly optional, and I'll usually be able to brawl with orcs as a fall-back position.

Basically, my line is Assassin's Creed 2. If this game has less stealth than that, I'll be fine. If it has more, I may have a problem.

I'm optimistic, though. When I first got the game, I fired it up to see if it would even run on my computer, and I have to say, nothing in the first 18 minutes made me think I was in any danger of having to creep around like a jackass rather than fight. That may change as enemies get tougher, but at least I know this an action/stealth game, and thus I can hold out hope that there will be a lot more action than stealth.