middle earth shadow of mordor has stopped working

Talion’s sword swings with brutal purpose on the bodies of orc and beast alike. This, Shadow of Mordor then, has finally managed to achieve that for me. It’s exhilarating, and watching it at the time was the kind of thing I really wanted to experience in a Lord of the Rings game. It’s like watching a ballet, except a lot more brutal, with rolling heads and black orc blood.

He draws his sword, grimaces, and then proceeds to maim, decapitate and basically kick orc-ass in the most badass way imaginable, all with the style and grace of an expert swordsman who makes the slaying of orcs look like art. The fight scenes feel dynamic and cathartic, and they manage to recapture the power and style of combat expressed in the films. There is a point near the end of the Fellowship of the Ring film, where Aragorn, after telling Frodo to flee, calmly faces an entire army of marauding Uruk Hai. None of it feels like a cheap rip-off though, the game feels so well to control that any plagiarism is forgiven. The action expertly straddles the line between being able to easily create grand moments of action, dispatching multiple minions of Sauron’s horde in a fast and slick method by using simple moves, while still adding just enough nuanced difficulty and variety in to the control to make you feel like a deft hand rather than a simple button masher. Talion’s swashbuckling antics while fighting the Uruks and Orcs of Mordor are also epic to say the least. There’s even a ‘leap of faith’ move when jumping from high places. Its open world system and map dotted with main and side quests makes it feel even more like Ubisoft’s famous assassin series. Navigating the landscape owes much to the parkour style of AC, the slick animation system sees Talion vaulting and climbing on almost every surface like a high-fantasy version of Altair or Ezio. Mechanically it owes a lot to Assassin’s Creed and Rocksteady’s Batman games, that much is blindingly obvious, but this isn’t a bad thing. Talion, having been brought in to the world of wraiths, and imbued with other-worldly powers, now must hunt those who murdered him and his family. Shadow of Mordor pits you, Talion, as a Ranger of Gondor, trapped between the lands of the living and dead after you and your family are brutally murdered at the hands of the dark lord Sauron’s orcs and a particularly ruthlessly creepy and nasty figure, known as The Hammer of Sauron. I’m pleased to say I wasn’t disappointed either. Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor then did not escape my own initial suspicions, but watching the in-game footage prior to playing did give me a lot of hope. And yet there are always exceptions Dune II, Goldeneye, and the recent Alien: Isolation to name but a few. And as a licence, there are always the usual suspicions of cash-in opportunities, conjuring the image of greedy-faced publishers, rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of well-meaning folk dumping £29.99 in to their bottomless purses to experience permanently hitting X on their controllers in the most mind numbing way, yet perfectly content as the whole affair is wrapped around their beloved world.

Many have come before of course, some successful, some not so much.

And so here we are, despite the criticism and legal battles, experiencing one of the inevitable conversions of Tolkien’s work to an interactive medium from the success of Jackson’s films. It looks like we won’t be seeing any more of the great professor’s world on the big screen for at least a while yet. Unfortunately Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R.’s son, has apparently stated his disapproval of Jackson’s conversion of his father’s books stating “They gutted the book, making an action film for 15 to 25-year-olds.” Tolkien’s estate also took issue with profits made from the films involving an $80 million legal battle. It breathed life in to an already well-loved set of books and fascinatingly detailed world through the entirely different medium of film. You would hope then, that Peter Jackson’s trilogy would have dissuaded him from this line of thinking. Tolkien never liked the idea of his books making the transition to the world of screen.

Middle earth shadow of mordor has stopped working