Shadow Of Mordor Gamespot praise? Deserved?

I think it's a great action game and arguably one of the best LOTR games ever. It's certainly one of the best games of the year. It may not be my personal GOTY but it's definitely up there.

Those lists are the games that people liked this year not all time.

And yes it's one of the better games released this year.

Definitely an amazing game which brought some neat new ideas, not sure I agree it's better than everything else out there but I can see why many people would think so. I remember playing it an entire weekend pretty much non-stop, it's quite addicting at first and the nemesis system is great.

Then quite disappointing / boring with QTE end boss fights. Any game that does that deserves trashed.

Hey look I found every artifact... did 100 captain nemesis quests...rescued all the slaves. Picked every plant and did every beast challenge. Maxing out my character 100%.

Hold X to win... Rapidly tap A for victory.

It was a good game, and it's Nemesis system was excellent. However, I don't believe it was GotY worthy, it's story was short and lackluster and added nothing to the Middle Earth mythos , the final two boss fights where appalling, and the areas where tiny considering it was classed as "open world".

Nope. Good game, but not GOTY material. There were actually some awesome games this year believe it or not.

Yeah I'm not a big fan of "find every collectable" out there kind of system, seems to be very prevalent in Ubisoft games, and coincidentally this game is inspired by Assassin's Creed I hear. However, what made it different in this particular game for me was that the combat is great fun. I like how challenging it is, and the gameplay is well designed that it is just very compelling to survey an area and then execute your attack plan. It does get a bit repetitive after a while though.

On the whole open world Assassin's Creed killing missions, I'd say Unity outdid it in pure quality, mostly because those ones were still scripted on the storyline.

But Shadow of Mordor did those missions more often, allowing for free flow. I love killing bosses, and letting me do so with intel or on the fly was great.

Otherwise the game is weak. Story was flimsy, combat isn't nearly as fun as Batman's, and the overworld was pretty much Ocarina of Time's.

I bought it during black friday and still havent opened it.

Too many other games to catch up on from 360/PS3

i personally rank Dragon Age and Wolf Among Us above it, but i don't really mind that they gave it to that game

LOTR does AC. No thanks. Loving DAI at the moment. As for you, you want to know? Play it. I personally have no interest in it but if I had, I wouldn't be asking other people to tell me what I should think about it. I had a thread a while ago asking if it was similar to AC the answer was yes which made the game a no for me.

But this game works.

The game is awesome. Don't know what else to say, really...

Out of the 5 gamespot reviewers who stated their 5 favorite games this year, only one of them mentioned shadow of mordor

It's "Shadow Of Mordor" not "shadow of mordor".

Jesus fucking Christ. ****.

okay so shadow of mordor

I never found the main story missions to be the fun parts of this game.

It was good and a good purchase, but disappointing in many ways as well. Definitely not my personal GOTY that would go to Smash or MK8 or Bayo 2 or Dragon Age personally. It exceeded expectations, but it did get a little too repetitive after a while. I would like the studio to make another Middle-Earth game that branches out to other parts as Mordor is quite barren. Last good Lord of the Rings game I can really recall was the Battle for Middle-Earth series.

I'd put in this years's top 5, but not #1.

I was disappointed with the game. The main story line was very short and I quickly stopped caring for the Nemesis system once I realized it's much quicker to kill a captain/war-chief head on (use the environment, wild animals etc) than place a spy and make him rise through the ranks instead.

I still think the best LOTR game is Return of the King because of co-op.

Easily was my favorite game of the year.

Well i keep going back to playing it, more than any game this year. So yes, I feel the award is deserved even if it's not my personal goty.

You can send me your copy :P

Very good game and deserving of the praise. Personally I would have picked Dragon Age as my GOTY, but everybody's opinion is different.

Now those were some short games. Those hack 'n slash games that EA made.

But they were really fun though. Unlike most movie tie-in games. Especially in co-op, yeah :D

All Wii U owners will vote "no" since they own no other system or games. OWNED.

Its official, shadow of Mordor is GAME OF THE YEAR BY WORLDWIDE. Yes, it won even in system war. GAMESPORT GOTY > EVERYTHING (SINCE SOME WII U FANBOY MOD ALSO SAID THAT GAMESPOT GOTY > EVERYTHING ELESE(YES EVEN SYSTEM WARS GOT OWNED)

HAHAHAH NOW CRY!~!!!!! CRY CRY CRY!!!

You're such a terrible fakeboy

@FreedomFreeLife: shut up noob

The story and the lack of things to do were the only negatives in this game. I played it, loved it but I just have the feeling that I'll forget it because of a weak story. There's a lot of potential in this game. A lot of ideas can be invested in SoM 2. The nemesis system was the best mechanic I've ever seen in my whole life in a game. The combat was one of the finest. If only it wasn't for the lack of things to do in the world (a.k.a a world unworthy of any kind of exploration and a bit bland as well) then this game would easily had been a 10/10 for me.

Personally I think the praises are well-deserved. I somewhat neither agree nor disagree with the GOTY award because there were many other great games too that deserved that (ahem ahem Divinity). But in terms of innovation and pure reinvention, SoM did more than enough to justify the praises. Some might say that it was a copy and the use of word 'innovation' is misplaced but I'll disagree with them. This is the action game we deserved!

Totally !

Man ....grow up !

played about 30mins of it so far and i really like it. have a hard time giving it any attention however due to my addiction to cod aw.

Sure, its a great game to play. The only thing holding it back imo is the world. It's very bland and dull to travel through.

I thought it deserved it. Dragon Age would have been my vote but it was to buggy.

Who cares, Monolith deserves it's day in the sun considering WBIE had em up against the ropes and was probably going to can them before giving them a last shot with this game. I'm glad they're still around and if they need to GOTY spot to be there then so be it.

It was new ip with a really quality system and excellent gameplay. It has faults, non of which overly concern the player while the flow of the game is so good.

I'm happy for the games GOTY

They were short games but I felt they had a lot more story than SOM. And they were infinitely more fun than SOM.

A chocolate ganster?? wth is that suppose to be

From what I've seen and Played.

Sure, it's a great title. I'm not particularly mad Gamespot chose it.

I started playing it yesterday. It's excellent. It does "emergent" gameplay like no other... Really cool.

I just have a few issues with it. The music is repetitive in the open world, and the FOV is distressingly narrow.

The intro to SOM was pretty poor imo. Didn't do a particularity great job of setting up the world of characters. Essentially watching strangers get butchers than people who have any investment in as characters. Who cares?

Yeah and that is one of the weak point of the game. I wouldn't call orcs strangers, they did become kind of a known entity once I got my ass kicked by them. That is the beauty of nemesis system. Still I would agree though, those orcs should of been given a greater role.

From what little I played of the game (picked it up at a friends house for half an hour somewhere in the middle of the game) and seen of it, I'd say sure, but not to the level it's getting. It's an excellent combination of existing ideas (Assassin's Creed and Batman Arkham) with this allegedly "revolutionary" gameplay mechanic.

I'd have to play more to give real judgement on it, but I'm pretty much non-interested in playing more at this point.

I feel that the nemesis system is not a feature that will be copied.

But what we will begin to see is more game worlds that are very aware of the player. A GTA game where the citizen you kill...well his brother is coming after you now because of it. Stuff like that.

I was referring to the human characters. The opening of the game is very brutal: snuff like. It's suppose to be dramatic but I don't know any of the people getting slaughtered.

Lords of Shadow had a similar problem: it payed off at the end but the opening of the good does a piss poor job of setting up the characters.

And that was where I agreed. I was just clearing up that 'stranger' thingy.

If it's the first LoS you're talking about then you are correct. But later on in the game, all the characters are set up pretty well. To get a better grasp of them you'll have to read the lore book.