Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

1. th3f4113n

   Nov 18, 2014

   10

   Listen, it's not perfect. But there are things called patches. One was released today and fixed a MAJOR amount of bugs in the game. ScreenListen, it's not perfect. But there are things called patches. One was released today and fixed a MAJOR amount of bugs in the game. Screen tearing is down like 90 percent, texture load properly, and although mouth animations are a little stilted along with others, this can AND WILL be fixed. That is the joy of these games; you get to see a **** port evolve to a good port. The game is very playable contrary to popular belief, and yes i recommend, but wait a little bit if you dont want any bugs. Overall i give a 7/10 but im trying to bring the scores up.… Expand

   • 8 of 29 users found this helpful
2. amateurcritic2

   May 30, 2016

   9

   Its far from perfect I would agree BUT the game is just so much fun read all the other reviews they will tell you about the textures and longIts far from perfect I would agree BUT the game is just so much fun read all the other reviews they will tell you about the textures and long loading times blahblahblah that to me is the reason it lost a point but only one because thegameplay is so much fun and you may think it gets repetitive but the skill trees add lots of new ways to play thhroughout the game and yes oncfe they are exhauste it does get repetitice but the gameplay is so good that i dont mind doing the same thing over and over to see the awesome executions. It also has a pretty basic story but it has a very smart managing system for the orcs army. Overall i fyoud dont mind a bit of basic things lacking for the complex fun gameplay you should have no problem with playing this on ps3… Expand

   • 0 of 2 users found this helpful
4. aaaaaaapt

   Jan 11, 2016

   6

   I tried really hard to finish this game, because it does have good qualities, but its many flaws were overwhelming (I completed about 60%).I tried really hard to finish this game, because it does have good qualities, but its many flaws were overwhelming (I completed about 60%). Lets start with specific PS3 port problems. I didn't play the first version released, but in this patched version graphics are good, not better nor worse than most PS3 games released recently. The main problem here is the long loads every time you try to access the menu options and map. It takes a long time to access it and to leave it, making the game an exercise of patience. Advancing in the game makes this problem worsen, to the point it becomes almost unplayable. Framerate frequently drops, but unfortunately this happens a lot on PS3, I couldn't say it is worse than most games. I didn't experience sound glitches or freezing. General problems to me: First of all, lack of variety. The whole time you keep doing the same things over and over. After a dozen hours the game becomes very repetitive and boring. The main protagonist is not interesting at all, the kind of guy you could say is a pain, so as the NPC's. The game seems to be made only for The Lord of the Rings fans, and I'm not, neither the books nor the movies, so I didn't feel connected to the plot and I really didn't care much for what happened in the game. There is no much care with details too. For example, there are missions where I'm supposed to save human slaves from the beastie Uruks, and to complete the task I just need to release them, it doesn't matter if I do it with dozens Uruks around that certainly would kill them, the game considers the task done. Other annoying thing it is when there is special missions (I am avoiding spoilers) where you must kill an Uruk captain. Eventually he may try to flee, and if you don't catch him soon he just disappears (even if you are close him) and reappears in another place, far from where you are. Your character here moves mostly like in any Assassin's Creed game, for the good and the bad. Combat is good and can be very funny, advancing in the game makes you acquire new powers, moves and abilities, but keeping fighting the same orcs, uruks, caragors the whole game eventually kills the fun, and that's what you're gonna do all the time. The Nemesis system works fine and it is probably the best thing brought by ME-SOM, since it does a great job creating Uruk captains and missions, where you must intervene, or not, you may choose just to watch. There isn't a great variety of locations. As far as I played, there are two moderately big open world regions, but they change very little coast to coast, and even among them the only difference is that one is barren and the other is greener, but the plains, the mounts, the buildings and other things look exactly the same. I don't recommend for PS3 owners, and probably I won't try to play it again even in new gen consoles.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
5. BebopMan

   May 24, 2016

   2

   Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a game that was published on the PS4, ported to the PS3, looks like it’s on the PS2 and plays like it’s onMiddle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a game that was published on the PS4, ported to the PS3, looks like it’s on the PS2 and plays like it’s on the PS1. If nothing else, it teaches you a valuable leasson in never buying a last-gen port of a current-gen game. Especially if Behaviour Interactive worked on it.
   
   The game is an encyclopedia of malfunctions. The game crashes, the character freezes; he clips through the ground and into nothingness, he clips into mountains and remains landlocked within. Orcs spawn out of thin air, their dialogue loops up to three times, and they gently float down to the ground, sans animation, when jumping from above. Caragors clip through the ground when climbing ledges, and Graugs have been removed all but from the story missions that feature them.
   
   When characters are showcased in in-game cutscenes and such, they appear to be wearing the scrambling suits from A Scanner Darkly as layers of textures pop in and out, rendering them truly formless. The landscape itself is riddled with texture pop-ins – you can stand by a boulder in the middle of nowhere and simply gaze at it for minutes at a time as it loads texture upon texture and doesn’t decide on any.
   
   It’s also a game that requires lots of loading, and not just from booting up the game or loading up a new area. Unpausing the game alone can take as long as half a minute. Wanna check the map again real quick? That’s another half a minute. In any other game this wouldn’t be as aggravating, but it’s an RPG – you’re gonna spend a lot of time surfing menus, upgrading, customizing, etc. And every time you wanna do any of it it’s going to take forever. Pausing the game ended up being like laundry day for me – pile as much dirty underwear as you can, so you save yourself as many trips as possible.
   
   There’s also the issue of the in-game cutscenes that play whenever you start a side mission or extra challenge. These are, in theory, 5 second previews showing you the location, the enemies, the goal, etc. In practice, however, these go on for as a long as a full minute: cutscenes load and play one shot at a time. So you get a shot of a prisoner, and then a black screen as the game buffers, and another shot of another prisoner, and another black screen as the game buffers, etc. Pre-rendered cutscenes play just fine, though music tends to carry over from gameplay (usually war drums), which upsets the tone of cutscenes and also drowns out the dialogue.
   
   The list goes one. The low resolution. The hideous graphics. The screen tearing. The draw distance. The invisible walls. The inexistent animation. The lip-syncing, or lack thereof. Worst of all are the inconsistent frame rates. Of all the glitches and all the malfunctions, FPS is what makes the game borderline unplayable. Even as the ending credits roll by, the frame rate goes up and down. Never have I seen this level of incompetence in a game.
   
   This is all for shame. You can tell at its core that this is a fun game, but whatever fun I had while playing this broken mess was always in spite of the game rather than because of it. To be fair – fairer than the game was to me – the combat is serviceable (lifted off the Arkham games – also by Warner Brothers) and the Nemesis System, which keeps track of the hierarchy of Sauron’s Army, is engaging. I also liked the use of J. R. R. Tolkien’s body of work as part of the game’s lore (stretching all the way back to The Silmarillion), even if the story doesn’t do it much justice. But here I am reviewing Monolith's game, not Behaviour Interactive's, who can only be commended for all the things they didn't completely ruin.
   
   Without hyperbole, this is the glitchiest game I’ve ever played (and I’ve played Arkham Origins), and the fault lies primarily on the company that worked on porting it: Behaviour Interactive. I’ve written to them with an extensive, detailed list of all bugs, glitches, malfunctions and shortcomings I’ve encountered while playing their game. I was asking for a patch or at the very least some troubleshooting advice. Their response?
   
   “Thank you for the great feedback. Unfortunately, there's no team working on the game anymore at Behaviour. We are sorry to hear that you are experiencing difficulties with the game.”
   
   Thanks for nothing, Behaviour Interactive. And thanks for nothing, Anaïs Renevey, who is quite clearly credited as Head of Quality Assurance in the game’s credits though none of her online resumes mention it, instead crediting herself with the QA of one SpongeBob game.
   
   Never have I felt this ripped off after purchasing a videogame.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
6. Zachalou

   Nov 30, 2014

   1

   Well! Lets give Monolith a round of applause for making a very nice game with- in my opinion, great combat mechanics in an interesting world.Well! Lets give Monolith a round of applause for making a very nice game with- in my opinion, great combat mechanics in an interesting world.
   Then lets slap them in the **** face for making this a god awful steaming pile of excrement on PS3 that HARDLY even runs, and when it does- you wish it didn't.
   I just bought this game near 2 hours ago, and have encountered SO many glitches, frame rate dropping, audio phasing completely out, NOTHING renders correctly... this is truly awful.… Expand

   • 2 of 4 users found this helpful
7. TheYetiman

   Jan 7, 2015

   0

   Awesome game! Amazing graphics, HUGE draw distance, and an innovative nemesis system that adds for a lot of replay value. One of my favouriteAwesome game! Amazing graphics, HUGE draw distance, and an innovative nemesis system that adds for a lot of replay value. One of my favourite games ever........on the ps4. The ps3 version is a heap of unplayable garbage that not even ubisoft would let onto the market. If you've been excited about this game but only have a last gen console it is definitely worth buying a ps4 over. (I don't know about the xbox one version but nothing could be worse than the ps3 version)… Expand

   • 0 of 3 users found this helpful
8. zing21

   Nov 19, 2014

   0

   I am doing everything in my power to get this game returned, which is sad. I really like the game. The combat is generally fun and the NemesisI am doing everything in my power to get this game returned, which is sad. I really like the game. The combat is generally fun and the Nemesis system shows promise even limited on PS3. If it were just that it had bad graphics (even unreasonably bad graphics) this wouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, the bugs with this game make it unplayable. This is an embarrassment. It takes more than 5 seconds to load the pause menu or return from the pause menu to gameplay. That alone is unforgivable as I've never in my life experienced a significant load time for a pause menu. Even still, I manage to ignore it and all the ugliness and choppiness for about 4 hours. Then when the low frame rate gave me a disadvantage against a certain enemy type because I couldn't dodge well enough, and when the sound came to a very literal screeching death, I had to throw in the towel. These problems are not limitation of the system - I've seen better looking open world games on PS3 and sound problems like this are problems that shouldn't exist ever in a purchased game - but simply due to laziness on the developer's part. I very much want to play this game, but I have been so offended by the audacity to release and charge consumers full price for this p.o.s. that I likely won't buy a working version for a different system.… Expand

   • 5 of 8 users found this helpful

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