Shadow of Mordor – New RPG in LOTR Universe

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor is a new RPG game from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It will be released on September 30th.

All action in the game takes place in Middle Earth between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings. You are Talion, guardian of the Black Gate of Mordor. Sauron kills Talion and his family but powerful spirit of Celebrimbor resurrects him, giving set of special powers. Now your goal is to revenge.

The story looks pretty standard in general: you are a hero with powerful abilities and you need to kill big boss. But the gameplay is not standard at all. When you watch gameplay videos you realize that Shadow of Mordor will be one of the best games in LOTR universe. Here is a gameplay walkthrough from developers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fB64APq_jk

The first thing you may notice is that Shadow of Mordor game looks similar to Assassin’s Creed.

Talion’s movements are very similar to movements of Ezio. I also noticed this fact and on my opinion it’s not bad. Both games belong to the same genre and some elements may look very similar. But SoM is not Assassin’s Creed! There are a lot of unique and interesting gameplay features there. 

What is so special?

Shadow of Mordor is a game with big open world. You are free to take and complete quests in the order you like. General goal is to assassinate all Uruk Warchiefs. It’s a difficult task and you will have to assassinate their captains first in order to make the core task easier. By assassinating or dominating captains you decrease the protection of Uruk Warchiefs.

Talion, the main hero, has two trees of abilities: Ranger and Wraith skills. Ranger abilities make Talion sneaky, while Wraith abilities allow him to dominate enemies capturing their minds.

For example you can dominate orc bowman and he will help you in battle. Or you can capture mind of a big troll and mount him to ride and kill enemies. You can even dominate Uruk Captain and send him to try to assassinate his master! This system allows to play the game as you like.

Each mission can be completed differently: you can use berserk style to kill all enemies or you can sneak and assassinate without attracting attention. Both variants are great and lead to similar result.

There are many interactive objects in the word and these objects can be used for dealing damage to enemies. For example you can fire explosives with your bow and the enemies will take sufficient damage. This will help to finish them much easier.

Weapons

Talion has 3 weapons: a sword, a dagger and a bow. Each weapon can be upgraded with special Runes. There are 5 rune slots for each weapon and you can combine runes as you wish.

Each rune makes the weapon much stronger or unlocks special ability. There are Epic runes that give really valuable effects. For example you may find Bow Master (Epic Rune) that increases bow damage by 50%. Isn’t it great?

The game looks very attractive in general. The world is big, the graphics is awesome and the gameplay is interesting. Many RPG fans and Lord of the Rings fans are looking forward to play Shadow of Mordor. The game can really become the best RPG in “Lord of the Rings” universe.