The "What are you playing now?" Thread

[Jack Brickman]

Yeah I should have a copy of it waiting for me when I get home from work. For some reason, Amazon dropped the ball on release date delivery. Probably should have just got the PC version, but oh well.

 

[Chris]

Shadow of Mordor is really awesome

Im not an MMO fan at all but I love LOTR and the Assassins Creed-like combat

MMO...fan?

 

[Jack Brickman]

MMO...fan?

Maybe he means RPG? Because I know Shadows of Mordor isn't even remotely an MMO. It's a pretty textbook action RPG. Fun combat, leveling up abilities, etc.

 

[Ohio]

Ya MMO/RPG. Idk haha. Obviously you can tell I never play these type of games

 

[Jack Brickman]

First impressions of Shadow of Mordor:

• The game doesn't have much of a tutorial. You spend like a minute learning the buttons and then the game just dumps you into the open world without a lot of context. Granted, the controls themselves aren't tough to learn, but if I hadn't read some reviews I'd have no idea what the hell the various systems in the game were supposed to do.
• The text is absurdly tiny and hard to read. It reminds me of when my buddy in college played the first Dead Rising on the 360 on a standard def TV and couldn't read a damn thing. Maybe there's an option to fix this. I'll look tonight.
• The combat is solid. It's basically just the Batman Arkham games, only with orcs and hyper-violence. It's not quite as polished as those Arkham games, but it's fun and easy to pick up and play.
• The game forces you to learn through failure. I've died several times and learned something from each. The first time, I died because I got into it with a group of orcs before sneaking around to take out the archers, so while I was fighting they kept sniping me with arrows. The second time, I wasn't careful about how I engaged a captain and got overwhelmed by all the other orcs he called to fight with him. The third time, I just got unlucky when the captain I was sneaking up on (who had a crossbow) turned around and saw me right before I got close enough for the stealth kill. He called in the reinforcements and peppered me with arrows while I was dealing with his minions.
• Running away is a strategy you should use liberally. It's easy to get overwhelmed and surrounded in this game, which typically results in death, at least early in the game. Games have conditioned me at this point to always feel like the challenge scales up with me, so I have a tendency to just jump into fights without much thought for the consequences of my actions. That's gotten me killed a few times.
• I really like how each captain has strengths and weaknesses that force you to take them on differently, and how you kill a captain determines what rune he drops. This gives you incentive to deal with them in different ways so that you can upgrade all three of your weapons.
• The game looks really good. It's not quite as pretty as some other next-gen games, but the character models and environments look really good.

Overall, I've enjoyed what I played. I've only put about an hour or so into it, but am looking forward to experimenting further.

 

[Man Called X]

First impressions of Shadow of Mordor:

• The game doesn't have much of a tutorial. You spend like a minute learning the buttons and then the game just dumps you into the open world without a lot of context. Granted, the controls themselves aren't tough to learn, but if I hadn't read some reviews I'd have no idea what the hell the various systems in the game were supposed to do.
• The text is absurdly tiny and hard to read. It reminds me of when my buddy in college played the first Dead Rising on the 360 on a standard def TV and couldn't read a damn thing. Maybe there's an option to fix this. I'll look tonight.
• The combat is solid. It's basically just the Batman Arkham games, only with orcs and hyper-violence. It's not quite as polished as those Arkham games, but it's fun and easy to pick up and play.
• The game forces you to learn through failure. I've died several times and learned something from each. The first time, I died because I got into it with a group of orcs before sneaking around to take out the archers, so while I was fighting they kept sniping me with arrows. The second time, I wasn't careful about how I engaged a captain and got overwhelmed by all the other orcs he called to fight with him. The third time, I just got unlucky when the captain I was sneaking up on (who had a crossbow) turned around and saw me right before I got close enough for the stealth kill. He called in the reinforcements and peppered me with arrows while I was dealing with his minions.
• Running away is a strategy you should use liberally. It's easy to get overwhelmed and surrounded in this game, which typically results in death, at least early in the game. Games have conditioned me at this point to always feel like the challenge scales up with me, so I have a tendency to just jump into fights without much thought for the consequences of my actions. That's gotten me killed a few times.
• I really like how each captain has strengths and weaknesses that force you to take them on differently, and how you kill a captain determines what rune he drops. This gives you incentive to deal with them in different ways so that you can upgrade all three of your weapons.
• The game looks really good. It's not quite as pretty as some other next-gen games, but the character models and environments look really good.

Overall, I've enjoyed what I played. I've only put about an hour or so into it, but am looking forward to experimenting further.

I think the first Captain I found has went from Power 3 to Power 14 from me dying so damn often. And then fighting each other.. It's rough.

 

[KCOTT]

been playing shadow of mordor nonstop

 

[Jack Brickman]

been playing shadow of mordor nonstop

Yeah, I finally put some more time into it last night. Really fun game.

I started doing some story missions yesterday and was surprised at how enjoyable they are. Helping Ratbag ascend to the rank of warchief was hilarious. Hopefully I get to see more of him in the game. Best character so far.

It's kind of ironic that a game set in Middle Earth is the best Assassin's Creed game ever made. This game is literally exactly what I've wanted from all the AssCreed games that they all failed to deliver. Fun, skill-based combat, solid stealth, and missions that actually assassination, something that has mostly been missing from the Creed games since the second game. The writing and acting are solid too, even if the story is a pretty standard revenge tale.

I was also wrong about the game not having a tutorial. I guess the story missions serve that function. I was just kind of wondering around doing side missions and ignoring the main quest, so I didn't see any of that stuff until yesterday.

So far, my favorite experience in the game was fighting a captain without any intel. I had no idea what his weaknesses were, but I was in a giant stronghold and he was one of four captains there (I had taken out the first three already), so I decided to go for it. That was a tough fight, and it's a little nerve-wracking going into a fight in this game without knowing if you'll even be able to kill the guy you're targeting. He immediately called for reinforcements, including those shield guys. He was a shield guy himself, so I couldn't hit him directly and his attacks weren't blockable. It made the fight interesting.

I survived two "last chance" QTEs in the fight before I finally took him down. The fight lasted around ten minutes and I probably mowed down about thirty orcs during the course of it. Fun stuff.

 

[jonmchugh]

been playing shadow of mordor nonstop

Will this be out for Xbox 360? Or is it just current gen and PC. It looks pretty sweet

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

 

[Jack Brickman]

Will this be out for Xbox 360? Or is it just current gen and PC. It looks pretty sweet

It comes out for last gen systems in mid-November.

 

[Chris]

Anyone pick up The Evil Within? I'm tempted to grab that and/or Shadow of Mordor ... but I'm saving my money for the barrage of games later this fall.

 

[AuxiliaryPie]

Started Borderlands 2 last night with a buddy, tons of fun, especially for $10

 

[Jack Brickman]

Anyone pick up The Evil Within? I'm tempted to grab that and/or Shadow of Mordor ... but I'm saving my money for the barrage of games later this fall.

I'd definitely recommend Shadow of Mordor if you like either the Arkham games or the AssCreed games. It's basically exactly what I've expected and not gotten out of the AssCreed series for the past half dozen entries. All stealth, combat, and assassinations with a story competent enough to keep you interested but also smart enough to stay mostly out of the way and let you focus on mowing down orcs. The game is also reasonably challenging, but mostly avoids feeling cheap. If you didn't take out the archers in the area before you went in to challenge a captain and have your health slowly whittled away by them, it's your own damn fault.

 

[MattyFos.]

I need someone to make me a video game. I want an open world like skyrim or GTA. Based in modern day. Post Apocalyptic with zombies. Not crazy zombies like left 4 dead or dumb weapons like dead island. Just a regular old RPG like boulders gate or champions of norath.

you find weapons, build strength and other attributes. Level up. Play with others like Destiny

 

[Witz]

Anyone pick up The Evil Within? I'm tempted to grab that and/or Shadow of Mordor ... but I'm saving my money for the barrage of games later this fall.

I picked up Evil Within reminds me of the old school horror games with the limited ammo. The story us kind of weird at first but you start piecing stuff together as you go on and random newspaper clippings in the save area help. My only gripe with the game is that there is no option to save at any point you want so if you make it to a certain part and you haven't triggered a checkpoint well you have to start the mission over from the beginning with that said i'm enjoying the game so far.