➤ The intoxicating taste of revenge 🎮

How many stories of revenge have video games told us? Many, many, many of which have deserved to find an indelible place in our hearts. The thought goes to the devastating story in the balance between sense of duty and emotional dilemmas of Naked Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3, to the excruciating wounds at the base of Max Payne's explosive cocktail of violence, to the descent into hell of Jackie Estacado of The Darkness, in search of a second chance of Red Dead Redemption's John Marston, to the exceptional betrayal that generated Kratos' blind fury or to that, perhaps saddest and most touching of all, of Shenmue's Ryo Hazuki, which his revenge with every probability will never consume it.

Then there are different stories of revenge, which do not depend solely on what is decided upstream by a scriptwriter, but put the pen in the player's hand, allowing him to write them for himself thanks to the possibility of determining with his own initiative not only more or less junctions. important, through trivial multiple book-game choices, but the development of facts, relationships and concrete possibilities of action. It is the noblest fringe of the story applied to this form of entertainment, the one capable of elevating the main characteristic of this medium, interactivity, to a narrative tool., inserting it into an ecosystem of cause-effect relationships capable of generating situations that reflect the user's actions at various levels. This is what happened trying to help The Witcher 2's Geralt of Rivia and Dishonored's Corvo Attano to raise the shame of the accusations they have been unjustly victims of, to name two recent examples of excellence. And this is what happens in Middle-earth: The Shadow of Mordor which is not satisfied with joining the ranks of this virtuous category, but even relaunches itself as the progenitor of a new lineage.

Reviewed Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor rising star of action games and sandboxes

Two faces of the same drama

More than a story of revenge, in the case of The Shadow of Mordor it would be appropriate to speak of "stories". The plot links the events of the ranger Tallion and the elf Celebrimbor, both cruelly killed together with their families at the behest of Sauron. Once they have passed away, the two therefore get to know each other, discovering that they need each other to track down those who took away their life and loved ones.

A classic "together by force" situation, which lends itself well to giving a narrative backbone to the story, determining the rhythm of the main events, bestowing explanations and gradually bringing out the protagonists' personalities through the typical relationship in the making, in which they learn to get to know each other from different points of view (except the one with a humorous background, entrusted to curtains with other supporting actors), while their exploits are intertwined with places, characters and background of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. In fact, the two end up being a single entity capable of acting on as many different planes, the material one and the spectral one, both in the exploratory possibilities and in the fighting and in the more mediated approaches to solving problems. And this is precisely one of the peculiarities that helps Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor to begin to dig its way, to bring out its identity in the groove traced by the Assassin's Creed and Batman: Arkham series to which it owes, in unequivocal way, very much. From the setting of movement, fight and infiltration techniques to the types of tasks, from conquering towers to identify missions and activities to the possibility of using a vision similar to the Eagle's Eye or Detective Mode: these and other aspects are very similar the famous sources of inspiration, but Monolith Productions has managed to put its own, thanks to the ambivalence of the controlled character, which allows you to seamlessly switch from a soul specialized in physical attacks and the use of the sword to a other teacher of esoteric practices and the use of the bow. Not to mention other factors, even more characteristic, which we will discover below.

A game for everyone

Making video games now costs a lot, and we must therefore try to sell them to everyone, especially if they are triple A. But there is a way and a way. You know, no, the fact that in Batman: Arkham City the ability to remove the visual notification of an enemy attack has been "promoted" to a feature to make sense of the New Game Plus? Present, no, the unprecedented load of information and visual assistance for an FPS (even in the era of FPS for all) with which Far Cry 3 was launched and to which Ubisoft has remedied post-launch after crowds of, quite right, complaints? Or the discussions if the game came first or the on-screen indications in the case of Dishonored and the last Thief? Very good.

Monolith, on the other hand, shows great respect for gamers by immediately putting them in a position to enjoy the game in the most comfortable way. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor provides a set of options through which to set the experience as you please. Whether you are a family man with little time now, interesting therefore to go straight from main mission to main mission, whether you are explorers willing to immerse yourself totally in Nurm, learning to know it inch by inch by orienting you on sight, that you are swordsmen a little at first weapons or purists who want to have a feeling as direct as possible with their ability to read action and their muscle memory, you should not find yourself dissatisfied. Not only that: if for whatever reason you and yours alone should feel the need not to overwrite a game, you are also given the possibility to choose between multiple save slots. The same is true in reference to the license on which this new intellectual property of Warner Bros. is based, which does not represent at all a barrier to entry or an excuse to fully enjoy it: whether you are a Tolkien fundamentalist rather than totally unfamiliar with his works or fans in need of a refresher, the game welcomes you with dozens of illustrations and screens with detailed descriptions on basically any aspect you will stumble upon, from the bestiary to the places, to the last of the mushrooms that you can collect or to that strange little dwarf with obvious problems. carry over of the hair, which mumbles about "tesssori" ...

Can you recognize innovation?

To understand the true nature and the real scope of the action game produced by Warner Bros. Interactive, however, we must consider that within the stories of revenge there are not only two, but many, many and always different. The two large regions of Mordor that can be freely explored (Udûn and, starting from a certain point, Nurn) are playgrounds populated by animals of various kinds, mostly harmless, aggressive creatures such as caragor, ghûl and graug and, finally, the true ruling race: the armies of Sauron. The Dark Lord's army is made up of a crowd of uruk, each of whom has a well-defined name, face and personality, also protagonists of a personal story waiting to be written on the white paper of that Nemesis System of which there has been a lot of talk in recent months.

If one of these happens to kill us is promoted, climbing the ranks ranging from Captain to Commander with different degrees of honor, obtaining better equipment, becoming stronger, earning the right to have subordinates, in turn individual entities to all. the effects. Enemies also have a memory, and since Talion is already dead, and then simply rises again on the next attempt, with no interruptions in the flow of events like when starting from a traditional "checkpoint", the next time they will prove to remember us. , making a few jokes, referring to the way in which we previously tried to defeat them and more. This creates a feeling of mutual rivalry, absolutely spontaneous, between the player and these subjects. For example, we happened to be defeated several times by particularly difficult Commanders, and we couldn't wait to make them pay, especially when we were mocked with a particularly insightful pun, different from the usual. Likewise, units we thought we killed may return, perhaps scarred or patched up at best, eager to consummate their revenge. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Each uruk, we said, is an entity in its own right that can move in the territory, because it is engaged in a mission, in a hunt, in a banquet, in the exploitation of human slaves or in the settling of accounts with a fellow human being, towards which tends to have feelings of rivalry for obtaining power. Activity that it performs in total autonomy, regardless of the player's action, and whose results are updated through the Nemesis System screen. We also happened to receive "notification" of the death of a Veteran Captain at the hands of a graug, which occurred who knows where and who knows in what precise circumstances. Or to unintentionally do a favor to one of our opponents, whom we wanted to ambush while executing his competitor, because in the heat of the fight we killed the victim by mistake, allowing our nemesis to achieve its purpose and make progress in the fight. chessboard of the military order of Sauron, also thanks to the fact that it then managed to give it a leg. Another symptomatic situation is a mission in which we had to face a certain Commander, who, while we were putting one failure after another, saw his power grow, on our skin, to become a Legendary Commander: result? At a certain point to carry out the task we had to go somewhere else, since with the increase in prestige he was placed at the head of a more important outpost. It must also be considered that the stick can be slipped between the coils of the legions in a more intimate and subtle way, influencing more directly the relations between uruk, through the Brand with which they can be converted to the cause of Talion and Celebrimbor, then giving them the order to join a superior as a bodyguard in order to hit him better. This implies that it also touches on worrying about our pupil's rise to power or even just his survival in that nest of ravenous snakes that are the exponents of his race, through dedicated secondary missions. And even here some examples thanks to which to grasp the substance and nuances of the Nemesis System in the 30 and more hours we spent on The Shadow of Mordor before writing this review would be wasted. We leave you the pleasure of discovering them for yourself as you build your own personal life experience. Here we limit ourselves to pointing out that the system works great and in practice it makes a lot of difference. It is truly a spontaneous generator of playable situations and small stories, a feature capable of pushing the concept of "sandbox" towards new playful and expressive possibilities, which we hope will be taken as an example by others, perhaps adapting the mold in new declinations..

Good first!

All of this would fall like a house of cards if there were no level gameplay to support it. Fortunately, much like the writers of Batman: Arkham Asylum, who came from Urban Chaos: Riot Squad, Monolith Productions managed to churn out a competent, fun and challenging action game on its first attempt at this area. Moreover: since Rocksteady refreshed the entire genre five years ago by pulling the Free Flow Combat out of the hat, Shadow of Mordor is the first title to match overall quality. Combat is based precisely on that setting, relying mainly on two keys (one to attack, one to counterattack) and the execution of combos based more on rhythm, through which to trigger special moves. Basically none of the bricks that have made the Dark Knight's gameplay a monument of Western action are missing, thanks to which he was able to find a dignity of his own without limiting himself mostly to badly emulating the Japanese tradition.

There is everything: various types of KOs, throwing weapons for crowd control, attributes that allow you to shorten the string of concatenations necessary to activate a special, logic underlying critical hits, input windows and, again, enemies that can be attacked only from behind, others that must first be stunned, still others that block attempts to bypass them and so on. But what is there, above all, is a reactivity of the commands, a precision of the collisions, an artificial intelligence and a soft lock that work at full speed, almost like the inspiring model, or the aspects that clearly differentiate the work of Monolith from similar attempts. of emulation seen in the past. Not happy, the parents of FEAR and No One Lives Forever have added theirs. There is a lot of talk about making video games more engaging, spectacular, "cinematic" experiences. In Shadow of Mordor the task succeeds, without ceasing to be a video game. First of all for reasons of scale: often and willingly the fists can become extremely populated, literally teeming with enemies (present the Brawl challenge at the Batman: Arkham City Luna Park, in the Extreme? Here, nice appetizer). To this is then added the Nemesis System: whether a mission that concerns him is in progress or that it is wanted by fate, making him pass by there by chance, the arrival on the field of a Captain or a Commander, with relative detachment of framing and dedicated choral music, it is always electrifying. Not to mention the consequences on the actual gameplay, with the subject who attacks or can be injured only in a certain way, which by nature, for example, gets angry if a bodyguard is injured, sees a caragor or suffers of burns. Or, on the contrary, he can be terrified of it, taking and slipping away, leaving us with the choice of whether to try to chase him or stay in the pit, focused on other objectives, while perhaps the slaves we freed ten minutes earlier are participating in the fight in our favor. or branded uruk. The result is intoxicating, bringing the combat of an action game into a new dimension, more "choral", epic, interactive and narrative: where usually a certain type of situation is decided upstream by a director and a mission designer, intervening with cutscenes and scripts, in Mordor sequences of the genre are spontaneous, dynamic, fully playable and "self-regulated". To this is added the instantaneous passage to Celebrimbor, which allows you to wield the bow to insert tasty variations in the flow of the action, without interrupting it, among which the sudden changes in front that can be implemented through the Shadow Shot stand out, through which teleport immediately on the objective, be it an enemy to be executed, a beast to ride, a rival on the run or simply an area where you can take a breather, far from the epicenter of the fight.

In secret, even from problems

As you can imagine, the Shadow Strike is a resource that comes in handy also in exploratory terms, but above all in stealth, thanks to which the stalking and the elimination of the guards can be made faster and more lively, with logic similar to Dishonored (which are related to those of Far Cry 3 when you unlock the ability to chain multiple silent executions). For the rest, even when it wants to act stealthily, the award-winning couple Talion / Celebrimbor does not miss practically anything of what is seen elsewhere, including climbing on any grip, the possibility of attracting the sentries, executions from hanging or falling and the possibility of saving themselves. in extremis it gives an alarm killing whoever is going to activate it.

All supported by a control system that responds properly, especially with regard to a critical element such as parkour, with the alter ego of the player who travels in speed and fluency sections affected by various obstacles and discontinuities, in particular when a "turbo" shot is triggered. To respond less well, in these situations, is the artificial intelligence of Sauron's soldiers. Sometimes it happens to be discovered and rightly to find oneself on the world, which hunts us with tenacity. At other times, however, it may happen that the alarmed patrols forget us too soon, perhaps turned a corner. There is nothing fundamentally broken in this apparatus of the game, but there are problems like these that undermine its consistency and solidity, making it not always enjoyable. Some other perplexities also come from some problems that pollute a little that sandbox nature that The Shadow of Mordor deservedly raises his pride.. If the impossibility of confronting a Commander on a graug encountered and captured along the way, which disappears in the moment in which the mission is "activated", may be a choice that is understandable in its own way for balancing reasons, less understandable is when a VIP on the run disappears into thin air, perhaps during an "open" situation and not too full of non-playing characters on the screen. In the course of our adventures it will have happened just six or seven times, but it is an inconvenience which indicates that not even the virtuous Monolith spares himself half-casts seen elsewhere and above all it is something that can really annoy, if the chase concerned a guy who it gave us a lot of trouble to be weakened or was the goal of a mission.

Tolkien's Master Race

For years Monolith Productions has given a lot to the PC (and the entire FPS genre). More or less until the beginning of the last generation of consoles, when with the late arrival of the first Condemned, the failure of the second and a FEAR 2 that in relation to the times technically did not push like the first and presented disarming simplifications in terms of controls and multiplayer infrastructure seemed to add to the list of developers who have turned their backs on this platform.

Fortunately, the team is back on track today, churning out a version of Mordor with all the trimmings. First of all the fundamentals: the possibility of pushing the resolution up to 200% of that of the display is implemented (in our case, therefore, to 3840x2160) giving the possibility to apply a native downsampling. In addition to full screen, there is also a window display, without borders and maximized, while there is an FPS limiter independent from V-Sync. The set of advanced graphics options is very complete, with even a detailed explanation for each parameter and an estimate of the impact on performance, as it was once used. To evaluate the latter, in practice, there is also an integrated benchmark. Speaking of performance, in over 30 hours we have found a stable and very clean code and quite adequate performance for what is put on the screen. As for a matter that has caused a lot of discussion on the Web in recent days: yes, to set the textures to Ultra, the sci-fi quantity of 6 GB of V-RAM is recommended. In our experience, however, the word "advice" is very appropriate: we played half of the adventure with these settings, on a graphics card with "only" 4 GB of V-RAM, spending the other half with high textures. , for which 3 GB is recommended. In the face of noticeable improvements only with a close investigation, in the first case we could count on a fluidity reduced by about 5 frames on an average that was still above 60 frames per second, with sparse but heavy swaps, even up to two long. seconds, which happened occasionally, often in the occurrence of new areas, a sign that the memory was probably "emptying the cache". If you really can't live with the idea of having to give up textures at Ultra, then know that it is a viable path even with a GPU equipped with 4 GB, albeit with some hitches. Last on the controls: Monolith has left nothing to chance on this front too, allowing you to set the controls for the mouse and keyboard meticulously. Again, we basically split in two, playing a large slice of adventure with the pad and another with traditional PC input devices, becoming fully familiar with both, until we have a confirmation: as in the case of Assassin's. Creed and Batman: Arkham, if you are familiar with M + T and have a gaming mouse (at least seven or eight keys), the latter is the control system of choice. Thanks to the ability to directly associate the camera with an input key that requires more buttons with a pad and to manage the camera more quickly and precisely, combat, escape situations and mounts gain a lot. Seeing is believing.

Big and succulent

After the credits, Shadow of Mordor does not unlock any New Game + or other new modes. This is not necessarily a problem, as Udûn and Urn are underpinned by a lot of things to do, which you can also dedicate yourself to later on. To put this into perspective, by the time we completed Talion and Celebrimbor's adventure our save file was 25 hours and 34 minutes and a completion rate of just 50%, when "in spans" we thought we had brushed a lot more stuff.

In short, in the cauldron of Monolith's Mordor there is a lot of material, with ups and downs, but generally successful. Beyond some rosewater activities such as the search for plants and the hunting of beasts that are not always ferocious, exciting classics such as the discovery of artifacts or the Ithildin (inscriptions in the ghostly world), we can say particularly guess the arcade-style challenges focused on the use of the bow and the sword, on stealth or on the liberation of slaves, but above all the Struggles for Power. The latter are secondary missions, within certain mandatory limits to unlock Skills, generated in accordance with the progress of the Nemesis System. Within them we find the uruk struggling with rather varied situations (ambushes, ghûl hunting, executions, duels, ordeals and more, up to the intriguing possibility of avenging a player they killed). Even if in the long run the formats tend to recur, and therefore there is a certain underlying repetitiveness, these are absolutely welcome morsels through which to bite into a game substance that lends itself in a particularly tasty way to replayability. Another reason to keep the game installed on the hard disc, in case you decide to make your own the dedicated DLCs or the Season Pass, are provided by the Trials of War, a series of challenges that test the ability to get by a bit at all. the levels, which are added to the initial menu proposal, but which we strongly recommend to approach only once you have unlocked most of the Skills and become familiar with the different aspects of the gameplay, given that you are judged with a score, which ends up in the ranking , and at first you can't necessarily be very competitive.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K@4.4 GHz
Scheda video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 OC
Memoria: 8 GB DDR3 1600MHz
Operating system: Windows 7 64 bit

Minimum requirements

Processore: Intel i5-750 2.67 Ghz/AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz
Scheda Video: GTX 460/Radeon HD 5850
Memory: 3 GB
Disk space: 25 GB
Operating system: Windows Vista / 7/8 64 bit

Recommended Requirements

Processore: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4 GHz/AMD FX-8350 4.0 GHz
Scheda Video: GTX 660/Radeon HD 7950
Memory: 8 GB
Disk space: 40 GB
Sistema operativo: Windows 7/8 64 bit

The beautiful people

Graphically, The Shadow of Mordor is beautiful but not beautiful. The impact and the technical figure of the Warner Bros. title clearly give the idea of a production born between two different generations of hardware (consoles). Architectures with a basically square impact and a lighting system that tastes a little old coexist with robust polygonal models and with valuable effects, such as that of rain, hail (complete with grains that bounce around in a physically-correct way ) and fog.

The result is that even if perhaps the details sent to video are actually many, unless certain climatic conditions or particularly evocative views, such as the Cab-Gwanath Cliff, the glances often end up being a bit empty. and generic. Where it is very successful, however, often ending to bewitch, is in the details. Despite the extension, the game is characterized by superb care and attention to detail. The models of monsters and characters stand out, with the uruk taking the lion's share: starting from what is the current Tolkenian aesthetic of reference (the films of Peter Jackson), Monolith has done a simply exceptional job in characterizing each Captain and Commander in a substantially unique way, maniacally outlining their face, skin, hairstyle, armor and others decorative elements, without neglecting any particular signs such as malformations, scars and tattoos. A similar argument can be made for a fundamental element for a similar title, that is the animations: not all of them perform in the same way (in the race the caragor seem "sacchettosi", certain slashes of Talion appear evanescent), but in general they can only be spend words of praise if we consider the encyclopedic quantity of movements implemented and an average quality capable of making the impetus of certain gestures, the heaviness of certain impacts, the contacts between the metal of the sword and the wood of the shields in a vivid and convincing way , the cuirasses, the flesh. Honorable mention for the many, many executions, which apply the lesson of 300 and Spartacus as a textbook in terms of plastic poses and expressions of enthusiasm and pain portrayed in the glory of slow motion. The audio is on the same line, with a soundtrack that basically represents what is expected from a production based on this license, without particular flashes, even if the arrangement for solo piano of the main theme ends up taking root in the long run, representing one of the reasons why you feel a little connected to this Mordor after all. Except for some impromptu falls into the "cartoonish", the dubbing in Spanish is really excellent, which among other things has the merit not just of trying to reproduce the vast sample of uruk voices, often filtered by helmets and so on.

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Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam Price 45,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

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It looks a bit like the tale of the ugly duckling: a game that seemed so derivative in the end turned out to be innovative. The Shadow of Mordor takes a lot from famous titles, absorbs it in an (almost) flawless way and unfolds it in a fitting way around the peculiarities of the fantasy universe par excellence. But this is only the beginning of a deeper and more important discourse, which is his and only his: to make the player an active part of a vital and dynamic ecosystem, capable of generating both gameplay and narrative cues in hitherto unexplored ways. Had he started from more original features and had filed away certain filth, we would have found ourselves in the presence of an epochal game. So there remains the perception of finding oneself with something not fully completed, which however has plenty of time to flourish, with possible follow-up. In the meantime, you have to "settle" for a well-kept, exciting action with some features that can teach the video game to express itself better.