Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor: death with benefits

If you want a complete Middle Earth: Shawdow of Mordor review, look no further.

In this spinoff you will skyrocket to the heights of power through a new, invented character in the Lord of the Rings universe, Talion. The stage is set when Talion and his family are brutally murdered. You return as Talion spirit to wreak havoc on Sauron’s forces in the name of retribution. And vengeance is quite literally, a beautiful thing in this title. You’ll find this game on multiple platforms but the best quality will be on PC, so get a Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor STEAM key to become part of the action in the best possible way.

The combat you’ll do here is free flowing and makes you feel nearly omnipotent. But while the options to take down enemies make combat success quite doable, you can be brought back down to earth by your enemies. This is doubly true for the early portions of the game where the uruks can gang up on you and make you feel humble again.

As you level up the skill tree and gain access to longer combos and more damaging abilities, the difficulty curve will lessen. You can still get into trouble if you’re not careful. The story missions will likely take you a least 12 hours to trudge through but the side quests, dominating or killing the chieftains will take some real time and some real skill. Along the way you will die and the interesting wrinkle to this game is that there will be consequences to these deaths. No matter what kills you, they will level up or be promoted or change in some way. Creativity really stands out in Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. Review all the options in combat, whether it be combos or weapon variety and you’ll see what I mean.

This game take a few pages out Batman Arkham Asylum and ultimately fleshes them out even further. You do have the feeling of being all-powerful but not to an inflated extent. The game is challenging but rewards success with a slow decline in the difficult level as Talion becomes a vessel of vengeance. Overall, there is a strong case to be made that this is one of the top action RPGs of 2014. There are few complaints to level against a game that is so deep and expertly crafted. Not to mention beautiful.

The only drawback, if there is one, is a lack of variety throughout the single player campaign. There is a bit too much of go here, kill this, kill that. The environments in the first act don’t change much either. Thankfully, this is easily overlooked and doesn’t take away from the overall experience which revolve s around executing seamless combos with your bow and dagger, slowing down time and working your way to the top of the games hierarchical system.