Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

The DLC are pretty awesome.

Especially Celebrimbor's DLC.

I particularly like his little quips and references.

Like, when the ranger says of the dwarf "You know, I think he does not quite belong here" and Celebrimbor tells him "Not all those who wander are lost..."

He does those like. All the time.

Whenever I get a gaming desktop put together (pretty much whenever I can actually get a job {if they'd get back to me that'd be absolutely wonderful...}), this is going to be one of the things I immediately replay, because while I can play it on my laptop, even at the lowest setting's the FPS is kinda bad, and that's just the base game - if the DLC is a bit more stringent it'd be annoying to play.

Plus then I'll get to enjoy how pretty the orc blood and carnage looks at the best settings.

And the carnage is glorious in HD.

Sometimes I remember to not spend all day hunting orc captains to actually complete missions.

I so want someone to do Nemesis System ish stuff in other games xP

I mean, I do have had some awesome moments with the ocs so far :P Like three different orc captains get spawning on same encounters for some reason and all three of them came back after "killing" them(one got cool horrifying scar, one guy with poison stick became pale and lost ability speak and started giggling instead and third... Well the third guy didn't come back, but another orc took his place xD That new third guy has died like 5 times and comes back each time with less and less face and more and more cloth metal prosthesis on his face :P Pity the horrifying scar one got mauled to death final time it seems and poison guy hasn't come back either even though he was legendary too)

Had some other awesome moments too, though I guess eventually it will get repetitive xD So far its nice though and I do remember some specific orcs and what they were like even though I keep forgetting names

edited 28th Dec '15 11:51:51 AM by SpookyMask

Yeah, Nemesis system is amazing when it works

I myself had an amazing asshole Tumhorn the Hunter who would always show up, poison spear me in the back and just never die. The only thing that saved me from him is moving to the second region. And then suddenly his sack of a head popped up in the climax.

edited 28th Dec '15 11:58:57 AM by Adannor

Let's see, other guys I remember.. One elite captain who got to level 20 because I kept getting kicked my ass by him :P Then I got intel on him and turns out that he had insta death to sneak weakness... Other guy got from 5 to level 20 just by kicking my ass(he did die once, but he came back strong <_<) and it was really pain in the ass to kill him off since he didn't have any real weaknesses.

I'm starting to feel bit sad for killing off everyone memorable before I get ability to brainwash them xD I'm planning to kill off the rasputinian death one too even though it'd be cooler to recruit them :'D

Oh and the guy who just doesn't stay dead is also humiliator so if he wins he just walks away :P He is into classics I guess

Another of my favourites was one shield lance guy who got lucky and killed me. Afterwards I kept interrupting his parties and he just kept running away :P Took at least three missions before I managed to kill him before he run away xD

edited 28th Dec '15 12:12:33 PM by SpookyMask

Okay, I've been watching that video and its hilarious xD Are there any other good let's plays on this game? :D

Not that I have seen. TearOfGrace, that above linked guy, full Mordor series is the only one I would recommend. Seriously, the best

edited 28th Dec '15 1:19:16 PM by Adannor

When you get that Orc who can only be killed by Ranged attacks and is immune to finishers, immune to critical, etc....

Jesse Cox also played the game, but he runs the risk of getting frustrated and screaming at the game to the point where it gets really irritating.

Eh, that guy irritates me anyway so no loss there xD

I'm not sure exactly what, but something with his style rubs me the wrong way. I keep trying to figure out what it is, but haven't managed to place my finger on it

edited 29th Dec '15 5:17:52 AM by SpookyMask

I like him for the most part, but he can get fridtrated over really trivial things especially when it's his own fault to begin with.

That sounds familiar and that IS something that annoys me in Let's Players so thats probably it xD

Screeching LPers are the worst, in general.

(This game is kinda special in that a some measured degree of failing at it is required to get the fun part of the Nemesis system. TOG turned off GUI tips and limited his usage of uber-abilities in order to keep it challenging, for example.)

edited 29th Dec '15 8:35:30 AM by Adannor

Yeah, Jesse's normally good about it but eh, sometimes he's not xD

^^Ye, I noticed that from watching his videos :D It got bit annoying that he get complaining about him being unsure how counters work, but I got inspired to do same thing on my second playthrough since at the moment now that I have 100% first area, its bit hard to die :'D

I tried experiments for second playthrough - for instance, attempt to brand literally every single captain out there in order to see what the game gives me for the penultimate mission (it genned a new random guy iirc).

Now I from time to time get back to "revolution of the common uruk" - branding only the non-captain uruks, then let them kill captains to get promoted.

edited 29th Dec '15 1:19:58 PM by Adannor

Speaking of the final fight was anyone else really annoyed that you just got five captains instead of the army of orcs we were promised? If each Captain commanded a few orcs with them I wouldn't be annoyed but the fact that we make due with five warchiefs and then every big set piece at the end is just five warchiefs vs captains and a crapload of other enemies it's kind of a letdown.

Yeah, it kinda sounds like game is fun, but finale is anti climactic, heard dlc is better though xD

Anyway, my experiments on difficulty: Sending death threats to ALL captains and warchiefs does increase difficulty nicely, but mostly when there are multiple captains at same time attacking you. At around 10 captains can't be one shotted with ranged attacks anymore, but they are still pretty easy if they are alone with mooks, at 15 they start getting challenging but still manageable, at 20 they usually only have one weakness which might not be that good anyway so thats when they are actually a challenge.

The main problem it giving everyone death threats is that once you have managed to clear off the roster again(assuming you don't die, in which case, yay :D) is that new guys given death threats are just around 10 so they are likely to die off again fast so roster is empty. Would be nice if lower level captains banded together more often, they would be more of a challenge that way xD

Still, death threats is good way to make game harder without turning of GUI, still would be nice if developers just had included difficulty setting in the game xD

DLC is good. In Bright Lord you don't have slow-mo archery (instant charged shot doesn't compensate as much), missing a few skills and less HP. However, AOE brand is very strong. Oh yeah and the final battle is GLORIOUSLY AWESOME.

Lord of the Hunt on the other hand, gives several new toys.

edited 30th Dec '15 4:48:00 AM by Adannor

I've started a new game one year later and I'm reminded of just how brilliant this game is.

So uh, how does new orc power work anyway? Is it just that Udon has new orcs starting at 1 and Nurn has them starting at 5 or 15?...

...Like I cleared up whole area before completing final warchief mission(aka Ratbag's xD) so now that I returned to do outcast missions(they are only missions I didn't 100% on Udon because I didn't realize they were finite <_< Since they are almost all basically the same besides text difference) there are only weaklings on this area. That wouldn't have really mattered if I just had never returned, but now that I did I feel bad I didn't leave some of my better nemesises alive just so there would be something more interesting opponents to fight xD

Ah. I think I figured it out. New orc captain's starting power depends on power of warchiefs <_< So when I wiped them all out, new orcs started around 1-4 range, so new orc captains for most parts were as weak as well with highest exception being 9, at 10 new orcs are at 5 minimum, at 15 they are about 10 or 5 and at 20 they are about 15. Dunno if its average power of warchiefs or highest/lowest amount that matters, but now that I buffed warchiefs in old region, new warchiefs have started spawning around 10 instead of 1-5 weaklings earlier xD I did notice that even though warchiefs and higher ranking captains were around 1-4, lower level captains(besides that exception at 9 who was high level captain) tended to be higher level than warchiefs

edited 31st Dec '15 1:44:14 AM by SpookyMask

Okay, finally have 100% stuff, branded everyone on second map and gained level 20 warchiefs of all classes with equal number of captains among all classes :P Yeah I went bit obsessive there, but anyway, so I started the final mission

And my nemesis turned out to be the level 18 hunter guy(who was rather easy always xD Never my toughest nemesis, just the most amusing one) who died like 5 times earlier before he died permanently. He started out as regular, then after first death he got the metal eye piece, after that he got bad head along with metal piece xD So I love that his rallying speech ended with "Break his face!"

I do have to say that nemesis system could be definitely improven <_< I mean, orcs kinda lose their personality after becoming branded(since you don't ever hear their unique dialog again and since they lose their fears and stuff) and orc hierarchy becomes somewhat static after warchiefs are branded because warchiefs never do anything, orcs never go against warchiefs on their own and non branded orcs refuse to be body guards to branded warchiefs

Also, I have to correct myself again, I have no clue how starting orc power levels work, they seem to be random with first region having 1-10 range and second having 5-15 range, warchiefs don't have anything to do with it it seems <_< Its kinda pity though since it means finding worthy orcs in late game is hard xD

edited 1st Jan '16 8:47:58 AM by SpookyMask