I picked Shadow of Mordor on friday.
I have been playing it for most of the weekend.
-Graphics: 8/10. Great potential, needs great rig. My laptop with a 570M cant play it over medium with playable frame rates (25-30 range).
-Combat: 8/10. Similar to the batman games but I actually like it a bit more. The batman games were in many cases boring repetitive combat. Here you get that 2, but simply put, less often.
-Ambient: 7/10. So far, there is constant pressure on you to keep your guard up as there is almost no areas where you are safe. It does feel like mordor.
-Inventory/Items: 4/10. There is very little in terms of items. You dont change your gear, only upgrade it with runes, and those are relatively similar to one another. Your swing speed never changes, and while that worked in Dark Souls, Dark Souls had many weapons to choose from, here you dont.
-Controls: 4/10. Here is the thing, the controls are fine, for the most part, but there are 3-4 things that are a real pain in the ass:
A) The "drop down from ledge", "jump on enemy and drain him" key are on the same KEY! This means, if you are in sneak mode, and you target the enemy (sometimes you target it even if you dont have it on screen!), you will jump on him, if you go out of sneak mode, you drop down the ledge. This problem increases by the fact that you have to hold the sneak key in order to STAY in sneak mode (my finger was falling off after 5 hours of holding it). There are a few more examples, but that one is the worst one.
B) The combos are mostly useless in big crowds, and most of the game will have some: The coolest combos can only be made vs 1 enemy alone since if there are many of them, they will break you out of it. Particularly bad are finishers that give you a short time to do extra damage to a stunned enemy, but leaves you open to taking damage yourself for a LONG time (worst is taht the finishers are different length depending on the animation AND also sometimes will relocate your character so its random to know if you will get hit or not).
C) Parkour has some problems: The character wont always do what you expect them to, so after some time, you will start to play "slower" to avoid jumping the wrong way.
That breaks the flow of the game at times.
Overall, its a combat game that has some problems. It is however quite fun to play if you are ok to take a cheap death from time to time (if you are the type of player that frustrates quickly, this game might not be for you).
Even thou this is mostly a combat game, and the controls are sometimes bonkers, the game does feel responsive and exiting so overall I would recommend it for steam sales.
Overall 7.5/10, and not higher because I think it could have less problems rather easily.
P.S. The nemesis system is AWESOME, but its something that might actually not be for you, so I dont add it as a point for better or worse, but it is true what they say, it gets you invested in taking down particular orks, and feels great at many times (When you suddenly find a weak ork captain after you improved a lot and take him down in 3 seconds flat you feel like a bad ass, but same way that guy alone could take you out if you are reckless, so it does have a lot of fun involved to it).
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