Ramble On
So, last year I went through a bit of a difficult time (didn’t we all) but what arose from it was one of the greatest outpourings of love an generosity I may ever get to experience. I have great friends and they keep reminding me how very lucky I am regardless of any superficial circumstances. One of the things given to me, alongside a day of love and support that I will always cherish, was a Playstation 4 and a joke from one that they wanted me to review all the games I got that day here. The least I could do is fulfill that wish, whether it be a jest or not so here is the first entry in that series:
Overall, the game was very well put together. It checks the boxes for all you would want in a gaming experience. The combat was frenzied, if a bit simple, and the ways you could tackle the various challenges in the game were varied enough that you might even find yourself taking on tasks multiple times just to try out new things. It is open world, and if you never wanted to get along with the game you would never really have to. The aspect that really wins me over when it comes to this particular game is, I suppose I will call it the battlefield politics aspect, maneuvering around the different uruk lieutenants in the power structure and having fun at the multitude of ways you can cut off the head of the war machine of Mordor. The game keeps internal statistics and does some fun things with them such as having one of the final fights be the warchief that has done you in the most throughout the game.
As for the negative, the reason the manipulation of the chieftains stands out as such a positive is that everything else feels kind of uninspired. The combat, while fun, was pretty much straight from the Arkham games. Combine that with the assassins creed Parkour and the Lord of the Rings wallpaper and sometimes you get the feeling that this game was assembled purely as a cash grab rather then an inspired piece of creation. That’s not to say anything was executed particularly poorly, but it left the product feeling bloated and the open world didn’t help it gain any direction.
It would be disingenuous to say that the game was bad though, playing through it was fun and it seldom felt like a chore. Because of the ease of the Arkham style combat system you were able to take on hordes without breaking much of a sweat, which I’m not sure such high flying heroics fit the overall gritty tone of the game itself. I reread this post and see my thoughts are becoming disjointed as I go, which in and of itself is appropriate. Nothing that is being added is wrong at all, but it doesn’t stop everything from being a pile of thoughts haphazardly stapled together. As I said, it isn’t bad in any stretch of the imagination and I would be lying if I gave it any less then seven beheaded uruk... out of ten.











