Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (1999) - Review

 Kids today don't even know the pain of not having WASD controls (even though I have encountered some PC ports of modern games that try to emulate double joysticks, I assume, by forcing you to play with WASD and IJKL - yes I am looking at you Moonlighter and Katamari Damacy). Every time I try out a game from pre 2005-ish I worry about this. The main issue is the simple fact that it can differ so much from what you are used to. Until creators have agreed on the way to do it, they all throw things at the wall to see what sticks. A lot of the things that are thrown are simply not good. But most of it just takes some getting used to. The controls of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine manages to be both of these things.

Off to a great start

IJatIM, as I am going to shorten it, was released in 1999 to PC - and Nintendo consoles interestingly enough. So back then, you could choose to play this either on N64 or on the computer and I really wish I had an opportunity to try the console version to see if the PC version is just another bad port. 

Just like everyone else I am a big fan of Indiana Jones and unlike everyone else I actually really enjoyed the most recent movie, The Dial of Destiny, which also sort of happens to tie in nicely with this game. After I had seen the movie I sort of felt like I had to experience ALL of the Indiana Jones stuff I had missed out there, especially game wise, knowing there to be loads. I had already played The Fate of Atlantis a bunch of times, but there was so much more to explore. So I bought a whole bunch of them on GoG and pure randomness made me decide on trying this one first. Why not in chronological order? That is just not how my brain works.

If you've seen any N64 game, you know the graphics. They're blocky, but right up my nostalgia alley and definitely nothing that bothers me. In fact, I go back to these old games to experience these kind of graphics. They can be frustrating some times though, as it isn't always entirely clear which objects you can interact with and which not, or where you can move to. The camera angles can be a problem too, and I often felt stuck not knowing what to do next simply because my objective was out of my visible frame, the only way to see them was to free-look around. It's difficult to explain to some one who is only familiar with more modern games why this is even a problem, because we are so used to being able to take in most of what is around us at all times when playing a game. But back then games were designed around fixed visual frames and it annoys me when the creators put things outside of it, unless they're supposed to be hard-to-spot special secrets.

Indy gets around

The plot is familiar if you've seen any of the movies. Indy basically goes about his business when he gets thrust into trying to avert the bad guys getting their hands on some mysterious trinket and taking over the world. In this game that trinket is the Infernal Machine, a device so similar to the Antikythera Machine in the Dial of Destiny that for a while I thought they had genuinely rehashed the idea. In this game he gets joined by Sophia Hapgood, and I loved seeing her again after having visited Atlantis with her in The Fate of Atlantis. I always wondered how she and Marion would get along, though Sophia and Indy seem to be more digging partners than anything else.

In IJatIM you control Indy by using the arrow keys - something that used to make perfect sense until game makers realized that was a horrible place to have your hand if you also wanted to use the mouse. That is not a problem in this game though, the mouse isn't used. You press alt to jump, ctrl to interact/shoot, space to take out your weapon and shift to run (the only one that came intuitively to me).

So far it all seems pretty straight forward, it felt like something I could learn. Though the first fifteen minutes I thought it would be impossible for me to get used to it. The controls are tank in the most tank way possible, and it's not so much the individual buttons but the combination of actions that get frustrating. Indy just doesn't do what you want him to do unless you do it exactly right and it is so slow. Running toward an edge will have Indy drop over it (some times killing him) but just walking towards it he'll stop. You have to move right up to a ledge and press jump for Indy to grab onto it and some times you have to move about a bit to figure out where the sweet spot is. To move down a ladder you have to back up to it. It doesn't help that there is no quick and easy way to spatially orient yourself. There is a way to go into first person, a feature that is some times absolutely necessary to use, but just as everything else it is slow and clunky.

But there are redeeming decisions as well, Indy controls surprisingly well under water and he will auto aim when using guns (though this also works only half well). You can also change the difficulty setting to off set some of the damage the enemies do. But unfortunately it's not enough. In the end there just is a lot of having to redo sections because Indy fell down instead of jumped, or got needlessly hurt because he wouldn't move behind cover fast enough, or turn fast enough, or go up the ladder fast enough. It was a long time since I save scummed as hard as I did in this game. And honestly it just ends up being stressful and feeling unfair in a way that is not fun.

The villains are the Soviet this time around.

There was a particularly horrible section of rafting down a river, trying to avoid rocks that would sink your raft. Wrestling that little boat in the currents felt like wrestling a baboon over a banana. When I had finally gotten through the section I also realized there was in fact a slightly easier way to do that I had overlooked, so that's on me. But the frustration left a sour taste in my mouth and this was just one of many frustrating moments.

It's unfortunate, because with slightly more comfortable and responsive controls I think I would've had some good fun with the game. Indy visits some interesting set pieces and the atmosphere is definitely Indy enough to make you get into the adventure feeling. Indy will spout some one-liners and the occasional cut scene will move things forward at a good pace.

This is the right way to do a game with the Indy franchise, it's just hampered by frustrating controls that end up making you regret exploration and regret trying to look for secrets. There are secret areas on every level where Indy can plunder collect treasure which he can use to buy useful items between stages. Things like antidotes, first aid kits and bullets that are absolutely necessary to get through a stage. 

The game ran fine and I didn't have any weird bugs or glitches playing it, until I did. Trying to boot it up one time it suddenly decided to crash my screen, leaving it black and unresponsive. I had to connect a second monitor to get myself out of that pickle and at that point I decided the game actually wasn't worth the stress. The stress of trying to get Indy to move where I want him to, the stress of doing the exact same thing but getting completely different result, the stress of very slowly inching your way through hazard only to realize it was the wrong way and all wasted time. 

I only got about a third through the game before I gave up - a good game completely reduced by the very clunky controls.

Mad Max (2015) - Review

Having a good time in the Mad Max world means you are going to sound like a right lunatic. So when I say things like "throwing a thunderpoon at a war boy to make them explode is so satisfying" and "aw nice, I found some maggots to eat", please don't think that it in any way represent my actual values outside the gaming world.

The world of Mad Max is not a nice place. I actually tried to compare it to some similar post-apocalyptic universes - you've got things like Fallout, The Witcher (not post-apocalyptic per se, but considering you can't set foot outside your bed without being beset by monsters, I still consider it a hell-hole) and Judge Dredd to mention a few off the top of my head. And compared to a lot of them, Mad Max is a pretty bad place. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is a piece of shit. No one tries to do nice things. There is barely any semblance of civilization going on and it's a dog eat dog world at every corner. Add to that, there is nothing but desert as far as the eye can see, so you can't even shack up in some nice meadow somewhere and try to live your life on your own. The Mad Max world just doesn't have nice things. 

The main character, Mad Max himself, is in fact also not a nice guy. The few times he ends up doing nice things, it is almost like he has to pull his own teeth how much he seems to dislike it. The game makes a good job at conveying that Max only ever does something for someone else if he also benefits from it. Altruism is something that is truly dead in this sandscape.

To replicate that in a game then, without making the player just behave like an absolute monster, is no small feat. To be fair, Max doesn't go out of his way to ruin the life of the people he meets, unlike a lot of the people he meets. So there is a starting point for an anti-hero, and we all love our anti-heroes.

To make things harder for themselves, the game developers also make you kill off the final bad guy in a cut scene right at the start of the game. Yeah, no need to warn for spoilers here I think, you are literally offing what should be the final boss in the first few minutes of the game. You as a player are just watching these things unfold, but they also set the stage really nicely for what is to come. They immediately explain what a bad guy Mad Max is and you will realize quickly that there is still much work left to do.

Making a game from an established universe definitely seems to be a double edged sword. On the one hand you have characters, lore and story lines all for free. On the other hand you have an army of loyal fans that are going to nitpick every choice you make. The universe has to feel right, and whatever feels right differs from person to person. But when you get it right it can work so much in your favor. Play your cards right, and part of the reason people will want to spend time in your game is because they can pretend to be part of that universe. 

I noticed the difference when I compared a game like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Mad Max. I like the Lord of the Rings movies (and books), but I am by no means a big fan and know little about the universe beyond the abovementioned movies and books. I enjoyed M-E:SoM because it was a well crafted game, not because I was thrilled to be running around in the same world as Frodo and Sauron (not that anyone would be thrilled to hang out with Sauron, but you get my meaning).

With Mad Max I suspect the opposite however. While I am not necessarily a huge Mad Max fan either, I am a huge fan of the Fury Road movie, which this game is clearly heavily inspired by. And while I find the game to have other qualities, which we will get in to hopefully, a huge draw for me is simply being able to run around and pretend to be a little part of the world in that movie.

Even if you don't like anything else about this game, you have got to hand it to them - they've really succeeded in building up the Mad Max atmosphere and just crazy stuff that goes on in those movies. People are suitably disgusting, both morally and literally, and the world is fifty shades of sand. But it works, it works so well that I absolutely love running around punching Scrotus' hordes in the face and setting things on fire in fifteen different ways.

Mechanically it works too. They've put focus on the two things that need to feel good - the melee and the driving. You'd think I'd steer clear of a game that takes place 90% inside a car, but ripping through sand dunes and throttling yourself off a cliff never gets dull. I am endlessly impressed that they've managed to build a world where a car can go completely mad and you never feel stuck or lost. There are of course loads of different vehicles to unlock, that all handle differently. Since I am no particular fan of driving I quickly opted to perfect the feel of one vehicle and stick with that. That worked well for me throughout the entire game, but there are many options if you prefer to tinker around. Now, I've never driven like a mad man through a desert with five other vehicles filled with maniacs on my rear hellbent on blowing me up, but I would dare to guess that Mad Max makes a pretty good simulation of how that would feel. 

Some more words about the punching then. Maybe it's telling that it took me about 15 hours of gameplay before I realized I could upgrade Max's melee abilities. Up to that point I still had had all the fun in the world. And yes, that probably also means that the game is a bit on the easy side - especially since it doesn't take long to figure out how to outsmart most creatures you come across, though that still feels suitable to the lore of the universe.

Max's punching has weight to it and you will swing yourself through hordes with some easy button presses. It takes some timing to get it right, but I rarely felt like I took a punch to the face unfairly. Upgrading Max means you can add some tricks to the mix which requires you to keep out for other cues. Yeah it's basically QTE, but it feels chunky and satisfying. It's straight forward, there is no sneaking about here. Max can attack from different vantage points, but there is definitely going to be battle. The shotgun and knives at his belt do a good job too, everything feels deliberate and useful. 

Some things took some getting used to for me, though I'll say they are actually good design decisions. To interact with most things you need to press and hold your interact-key (E on PC), which took me hours to get right. But it makes sense, this way Max won't accidentally interact with things because I accidentally press E. Also, I actually had to search the internet how to get through certain sections because it turns out Max has a jump button, it's just a weird one - Left Ctrl. Max will roll on Space, and it makes a lot more sense in the game because jumping is almost never used whereas rolling is used a lot.

If you don't want to follow the main story you get a whole world to explore or more importantly, purify from the hordes of Scrotus. The world is littered with enemy camps to destroy, races to win, mine fields to clear out and scrap to collect. The scrap allows you to improve your own vehicle but also the main hub friendly camps that you come across. Upgrade the friendly camps enough and they will also allow you to regain water, health, ammo and fuel. I use the word "friendly" in the loosest of ways here. The camps are lead by people who only decide not to shoot Max in the face immediately, because they recognize that he can be useful to them. People like Jeet, Pink Eye and Gutgash are definitely not nice people. They are just slightly less horrible than the terrible bottom-feeders that inhabit most of the wasteland.

You'll come across a lot of interesting characters, for sure. But none as interesting and easy to love as Chumbucket. Chumbucket sets you on your path from the start of the game and comes with you on every mission in the car. He won't fight, but he will fix the car and the car will need a lot of fixing. Chumbucket is a great character and the MVP of this game besides Max himself. Max tolerates him, but Chumbucket basically reveres Max as a prophet at the altar of the gasoline and even calls him "Saint". He will comment on things that happen around you and I never got tired of him hanging around. Chumbucket wants you to help complete his lives work of building the Angel - the best car the wasteland has ever seen. Honestly I had so much fun driving around doing all sorts of things besides the main story, I sort of didn't pay attention to what that was all about. The main story gives you a reason to explore more areas of the game, but playing around in the world felt like the main draw.

The villains will have lovely names like Stank Gum, Gut Noose and Stump Grinder. Encountering them is overall quite forgettable affairs, a lot of them are even re-skins of each other. A bit of a lost opportunity there, but a minor gripe in a game otherwise filled with both character and characters.

There is plenty more to mention, like Griffa, a mysterious stranger who will blow dust in your face and allow you to improve certain skills while musing about your future and your past. Or that the map is great and I never got lost even though pretty much everything looks the same. Or that there are sandstorms that are terrifying and last literal minutes unless you take cover? Or that the soundtrack uses a mouth harp, one of the most underrated instruments ever?

All in all, there is a lot to see and do in Mad Max. I've spent over 44 hours on it, and I am not done yet. I was a bit surprised and sad to read that it wasn't all too well received though it seems to have since gained more recognition. Maybe your mileage will vary, I am sure an interest in the world of Mad Max will increase your enjoyment. There are repetitive parts, for sure. But mostly the game oozes respect for the source material and an eye for detail. In the end, there is a very competent and fun game underneath all that sand and oil.

Saint's Row IV: Re-Elected (2013/2022) - Review

 If you're not around to play a game series from the beginning for whatever reason, after a few years you'll be stuck with the first world problem of trying to figure out where to begin. The internet is shock-full of lists asking "which Castlevania is the best?" and "Which Super Mario game should I start with?". There are a lot of thing to factor in here - the series might have crossed over platforms you don't even have access to anymore. It might have evolved through different genres, meaning you have to figure out which ones suit your tastes. It might be unclear how much the games reference each other, meaning you have to start from the beginning to enjoy later parts more.

I've managed to end up having to make this choice recently with not just one but two games I am currently playing. Taking on the Assassin's Creed series I had over two handful of games to choose from (you can click the link to see how that went). Looking at the Saint's Row series I fortunately had less than half of that to choose from, but for some reason I went with the latest one (not counting the reboot).

What was my reasoning? Maybe it wasn't deeper than simply being the game that was on discount when I was looking to try it out. When investigating the older games (1 and 2) they also looked a little more serious and a lot more ugly than what I was after. So the choice for me was really between 3 and 4 in the end. 4 won out for unclear reasons and here I am, wondering whether I made the right choice. Can I ever really undo it by playing the third instalment afterwards?

Either way, the fourth game (this being the Re-Elected version, which includes all the DLC) has not been a bad experience. And maybe it could be interesting to read what the game is like for someone who has no previous knowledge of the series and judges it on its own merits alone. If you think so, read on.

Trying to explain the story of SRIV is not easy. Right off the bat it was pretty clear that things had been going on in the earlier games and this was a continuation on that, or at least so I think. There is going to be a lot of assumptions from my side moving forward here, assumptions and straight out guesses. But here we go; You play as a character who is the president of the world. But pretty quickly you learn that there isn't much world to preside over. Alien forces have destroyed it and caught you and your posse, the eponymous "Saints", in their mind game of a simulated world. It's unclear who they are, where they come from or what their motivations are, but these things honestly don't matter so much. In all the confusion one thing stands out clear as day - everything is just an excuse to allow you to try out crazy gameplay.

It's a very dark game, with the occasional neon.

And in this regard SRIV delivers. I am not generally a fan of games that make it their main goal to be weird, games like Goat Simulator for instance, which seem to be designed mainly for those special Youtubers who get their money from screaming a lot on screen.

But I do enjoy a game that takes an odd premise and still manages to build a somewhat interesting story around it, a game like Octodad: Dadliest Catch is a good example of this. While SRIV might lack a bit in the story department, in the sense that you get the feeling that everything is just a "free-for-all"-excuse for more mayhem, it does deliver on heart and character. SRIV has a lot of both.

The character controls well, and I would even dare say excellent when comparing it back-to-back to Assassin's Creed: Unity, which I as mentioned played simultaneously. You get super powers that allow you to jump very high, run very fast, throw huge objects in people's faces and run up the side of buildings. And that is just mentioning a tiny fraction of all the skills you can play around with after a handful of hours into the game. The skills you get can be unlocked with currency, you can unlock other attributes with other currency. Some are found on the stages, some are got by completing quests. There is a lot to keep track off, but it manages to stay fairly easy to understand and use.

The map of the virtual city is littered with objects to interact with. I didn't understand the purpose to having fifteen shops where you could alter the look on your rides, buy a new t-shirt or load up on more ammo, especially not after a short while into the game where it becomes easy and quick to get around the city. Convenience, maybe? There also seem to be quests that are specifically designed for multi-player, somehow, I didn't get a chance to try these.

The game is overall never a challenge on normal mode, probably veered more towards having fun than giving you a real challenge. When I died it was mostly to fooling around and not caring, than genuinely trying to solve something. The only time the game made me scratch my head and reload over and over, was during a quest where I had to fight Giant Paul the Giant Soda Can. That guy blasted me with a laser that was essentially a none-dodgeable one-shot, even on normal difficulty.

You can tell that your character and their gang has a long backstory together, a lot of the quests allude to that. I often felt that it would've been fun to have played the quests and scenarios that this game references first, but the quests often hold up gameplay wise on their own, at least enough to be entertaining even if you don't get that extra oumph from fan service and nostalgia.

And there is a lot of whacky shit to do, that's for sure. I love that the game designers have not held back in the brainstorming sessions. Even character creation allows you to create something with pink chrome skin, if you like that sort of thing. In order to interrupt the virtual world that the alien Zin (as they are called) have created you need to break the code like some Neo on crack. You get to hurl your body, literally, against objects, save Santa from Evil Santa, use all kinds of weird weapons and have a gang of Gingerbread Cookies be your sidekicks. I can't emphasize enough that the pitch document for this game probably just had the words "MORE IS MORE" written in big, bold, red letters.

But generally it works, I am entertained. I like the characters, though I barely know them, and I have fun with the insane things that we get to do. Until at some point I can't help but feeling that even this golden treadmill, is still nothing but a treadmill. Am I asking for a sense of direction in all this mayhem? Maybe. There is just so much to do, so many characters to help and so many virtual pedestrians to run over that it actually manages to feel a bit... empty. When I am given these many toys to play with, I end up feeling like none of them are fun in the long run.

I don't want to tell SRIV to get a grip or to calm down. I think SRIV is doing exactly what it should and it is doing it well. But for us mere mortals it gets a bit overwhelming in the long run. SRIV is an all-you-can-eat buffet where after ten minutes of browsing you realize you're really just interested in the baguettes.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (PC, 2014)

There can be defining moments of your teenage years, and the movie The Mummy was definitely one of those for me. It hit me like a slap across the face and I woke up to the glorious mystery that was Ancient Egypt. I became a little bit obsessed, when other teenagers had posters of Legolas and Anakin on their walls (that's what people had in the early 2000's right?) I begged my mom to take me to Egypt to visit the pyramids. I decided to learn how to read hieroglyphs and... well long story short, a game themed around ancient Egypt sounded like it would be right up my alley, because even though the obsession has mostly died down by now, I still think ancient Egypt is rad has hell.

I have also always had the intention to play some sort of Lara Croft game, and by now there are many to choose from. Well, there you have it - two good reasons for me to check this game out.

I liked the isometric design of it, being a big fan of games like Fallout 1 & 2. Somewhere I also thought that the rest of Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (LCTO) would be in that vein, but I was very wrong. Turns out LCTO is a multiplayer action-puzzler and I was immediately struck by two problems: 1. A game designed around multiplayer but no one to play it with and 2. An isometric game but only WASD to control it with.

Let's just establish that WASD is not the best way to control any game that is viewed at an angle (hilariously the control scheme is compared to a SpongeBob Squarepants game on Wikipedia). I couldn't get my usual trusty setup of PS2 controllers to work with this game though, so keyboard is what I've got. Just think about it, to move the direction the game considers straight, I have to press two buttons. During the platforming elements and heated moments of battle it was easy to get confused and this definitely got me killed more often than I liked.  On the flipside, I think aiming is probably a whole lot easier done with the mouse than a controller, though weirdly Lara can't shoot urns that are right next to her. It does mean however that I can't make any comment as to the qualities of the game as a multiplayer experience, I am sadly without friends... who play video games.

It is weird to play this game on your own though. The other people on your team - Horus, Isis and some schmoe named Carter Bell - constantly talk to you, yet are nowhere to be seen within the dungeons. It just emphasized that I was playing it alone, and even the game was confused about it like it was saying "wait, you really don't have friends?".

It's usually clear where you need to go and what you need to do, the game gives you plenty of hints. Enemies are thematically obvious being mostly mummies and scarabs of varying kinds but this is what I expect and want going into a game taking place in ruins from ancient Egypt. It is clear they've borrowed more than a few things from the aforementioned 1999 Mummy movie, I swear the music that plays occasionally is almost exactly the theme tune to the movie. The atmosphere is definitely ancient Egypt, albeit with cool and magical machinery around every corner.

The story is... well, barely worth mentioning. Osiris and Isis were tricked by their brother Set who kills Osiris (the game mentions that Osiris and Isis are married, but not that they're siblings) and now Set has machinations on the human world. To prevent this from happening you need to re-awaken Osiris by reassembling his body parts. Setting out from a hub world, you enter different crypts/dungeons and make your way through, solving puzzles and shooting up the place like any good grave robber would do.  Lara still does what she does best and I never got bored of hearing the noise of an urn breaking or bombing pillars. The reward at the end of each dungeon is a another part of Osiris. Just be careful how you decide to google that, "How to find body parts in the crypt" might put you on some register somewhere.

All over the dungeon you can pick up gems that allow you to open chests in the hub world. The chests contain gear of varying and random quality, the more gems you pay the better the gear piece. The balance between puzzling and shooting is overall good, but actually leans a lot heavier on the puzzling than I was expecting. There are collectables and upgrades to find on each stage and the puzzles are not difficult to figure out, even for me - a notoriously bad puzzler.

To execute them is a different matter though. If combat gets tricky with the WASD control system (though never hard), puzzling can get downright irritating. Especially when there are timed puzzles where you need to really get your button presses correctly and Lara. just. won't. do. what. I. tell. her. to. Of course she does exactly what I tell her to, there is nothing wrong with the controlling - just the counter intuitive nature of it. After a particularly frustrating puzzle segment about 3,5 hours into the game I decided it was time to quit. I really wonder how the games are designed to be solved in multi-player, if they're the same then they're just way easier to do with more people.

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is ok. If you love action-puzzlers or you're looking for a game to play with some friends then this has potential. Just make sure you play it with controllers.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (PC, 2014)

Some times you can almost see exactly how the pitch meeting went down in a game, book or movie. You can see the checked boxes, the business research that went down and the cogs and wheels behind different choices and functions. When some thing is by the numbers, it is rarely entertaining. By the 7th and 8th book of Harry Potter, I could almost see how J.K Rowling knew it was going to be turned into a movie, and it had almost turned into a bland movie script instead of the original, charming adventure it had started out as. Or just take a look at the last couple if Disney movies to see how to not make a movie based on what you think your audience wants to experience. There is no passion, just a desire to get things done as quickly, and profitable, as possible.

With some games however, this glaring obviousness in game design doesn't always turn out to be a bad thing. Even if the thought process behind the game design of games like Thief, Deus Ex, Dishonored and even Mario games is obvious at a first glance, there is a core idea and a want to pursue something fun that is missing from something that is purely created to fill some wallets. 

I am not naïve enough to think that that wasn't the main motivation for the beforementioned games as well, yet they manage to still create that ever elusive "flow", or the feeling that I as a player am in control and the game is my oyster to explore.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a game with its blueprint obvious to the player. Every new skill you acquire, every new enemy you meet, the step-by-step of progression is obvious and easy to detect. But it manages to find a pacing and rhythm in the combat button-mashing that just ends up being good old, simple fun.

I've had my sights on Shadows of Mordor for a while. Ever since it came out it was one of the few Lord of the Rings games to catch my interest. I have a pretty neutral relationship with the Lotr-franchise overall. I absolutely loved the first film and enjoyed the other two. I thought the books were pretty so-so, but love the Hobbit. The Hobbit movies on the other hand are a good example of the abovementioned board meeting gone wrong. So I'm not hype with every new Lotr thing that comes out and have had close to zero interest in the new TV-series or the MMORPG.

There was something about Shadow of Mordor that seemed to make it stand out though. Gone were elves, dwarves, rangers and dragons (not that I particularly mind those). It seemed a tighter, more controlled environment where the setting was just an excuse for what was reviewed as good gameplay. It lingered in my backlog for years, as games tend to do, until I decided it was time to bash some orc skulls.

You play as Talion, a human who dies during an orc/uruk attack in the opening sequence (I won't distinguish between orcs and uruks, though I know it will probably annoy some Lotr purists. When I type "orc" or "uruk" just assume I mean one or the other). The game is thus off to an interesting start. Fortunately it doesn't end there. Talion is possessed and saved by a mysterious elven ghosts (ok, so there are some elves in the game). Finding out who this is, is part of the main story line.

You're dropped into a world which could be optimistically described as tragic, more accurately described as 50 shades of brown. You won't see any trees, butterflies or cute lite rabbits running around this place. You're in fact in the vicinity of Mordor and surrounded by orcs and their human slaves everywhere. At first it's easy to become a bit overwhelmed and think that you won't stand a chance against the sheer number of enemies. 

Fortunately Talion is exceptionally skilled at sneaking around. Unlike your protagonist in Thief or Dishonored however, Talion is also a beast when it comes to direct combat, and you quickly learn to deal with hoards of 10-20 orcs and more. 

It would be easy to pick apart the game design choices here - there are convenient bushes to hide in every 20 meters, Talion can climb pretty much any surface better than a mountain goat, the orcs behave predictably, and also stash an unhealthy amount of explosives right next to their camps and so on and so forth. But that doesn't really matter. Tetris has, after all, an extremely predictable game design. The fun comes in trying to plan your advance and attack based on the knowledge that you have on hand. Will you sneak up to a tower and jump the Orc Leader from above? Will you let loose a caragor and try to attack in the confusion? Will you pick the orcs off one by one or try to go in swords swinging?

There are many choices and they grow as you process through the game. Where you start out pretty simple with a few ways of attacking and defending yourself, you quickly unlock an arsenal of options that allow you to handle fights in more ways. Of course the game then also presents you with new and more difficult dangers to take into account. Overall the level design and combat is very well throughout and designed, it keeps up the fun through all the 15 hours I have played the game so far.

That isn't to say it is perfect however. The game allows you to control and execute a vast array of skills in just a few button clicks, which means they are mainly context-bound. This means there will be situations where the game thinks you want to do something you don't. This is especially true for trying to interact with the environment, like climbing and jumping things. I've been stuck on small thresholds on the ground with 40 orcs around me, because the game is trying to climb something that clearly just needs running over. I have been stuck in "sneak along the wall"-mode when all I wanted was to pass the wall running. I have jumped off things the wrong side because the game can't decide which way I am looking.

But this has never been the cause of my death, just some sweaty and sweary moments. In all the abovementioned cases I can see the logic the game algorithm is trying to apply, it was just a few steps behind or ahead of my own thought process resulting in some hilarious moments where Talion is seemingly humping some wall trying to climb it while I am desperately trying to not get killed.

But overall the system has probably saved me a lot more than it has put me into trouble, and I think they've done a good job balancing your skill with the overwhelming odds that you're some times up against. It rarely feels too easy, it rarely feels unfair.

The voice acting is good. I thought I recognized Talions voice and yeah, duh, it's Troy Baker from Batman: Arkham Knight and The Last of Us fame. All the orcs sounds suitably angry/dumb like they're supposed to as well, and I actually enjoy the little cut-scene of smack talk that comes every time you encounter an uruk captain.

The story is set apart from the other things I have seen from Lotr so far, like the movies and the books. Spoiler alert, but as far as I've gotten there are no hobbits or white mages as far as the eye can see. And I like that. This is about other people having the same fight but elsewhere in this world. It actually makes the world more real, the fight more urgent. I can imagine that Frodo is working is way through some bog at the same time I am slitting throats in my corner of Middle-Earth. I could've also gotten this completely wrong and maybe Talion lives in some other time, but it doesn't matter. The story is just the frame work to get you into the action.

Playing Shadow of Mordor I can easily sink into the game world and pretend I am a badass ghost-riddled uruk-slayer, slowly chipping away at the dread that is Sauron. It's not profound, but by golly is it fun -  the same kind of fun watching a Godzilla or Jackie Chan movie gives. You know what you're going to get, but it is exactly what you want.