Middle Earth - Shadow of Mordor (2017)

Quickly. Surgeon's knife. No time for the anesthetic.

I don't like this one. Whew!

You may now express yourself with bricks. If you are into that sort of thing.

Lesson learned: A majority opinion or a high favorable percentage on the internet is utter, pure, unadulterated, incomprehensible bullshit. And unreliable to boot.

Monolith, Monolith, what has happened to you. I suspect after the FEAR rights being treated like a ping-pong ball and having a brilliant first entry go to trash in such spectacular fashion, Monolith never really recovered and had to over-compensate with this, this, well, this mess.

Oh, Shadow of Mordor, how you annoy me, let me count (some of) the ways:

• The save system.
  To quote the eminent Donald Duck, "Hey, what's the big idea?" Here is a game in 2017 that is so outstandingly stupid it doesn't bother to inform you when and where progress is saved. On the other hand, maybe it does it so cleverly that my meagre brain failed to notice it after 16 hours of play time.
  
  Once you quit and restart the game, always assuming that at some point there must have been a checkpoint, you always start on one of the towers. Depending on where the tower is from the current main objective, enjoy a long refreshing healthy sprint across the map to get to the mission start point.
  
  There are mid-mission save points but only as long as you don't quit the game. Er, what?
  
  No wonder they didn't include a manual save option. In these conditions that option would have sent all the programmers to hospital with chronic headaches.
  
  
• I am Batman. No, you are not.
  Combat is Batman Arkham-ish but new and improved, or rather, old and quirky and rough edged. Works well in places. In other places, so-so so-so. If you are going to tread the Arkham path, could you do it without succumbing to button mashing? (Detailed rant about button mashing here, new window). The mash problem is not as severe as in say, Spider-Man or Devil May Cry, but it's there. And it's not nice.
  
  
• Enforced stealth.
  How long, how long, how long? How long will it need to be repeated? If you cannot implement stealth properly, just leave it out. Random stealth missions with unfamiliar mechanics are a pain. The odd thing is that if you fail and restart a stealth mission, the enemies previously executed disappear so the bonus objective becomes impossible due to decreased enemy population and you have to hunt for new enemies. Some missions are bound by invisible boundaries and mission aborts if you run too far. Uh? We are still doing this in 2017? Oh, okay.
  
  
• Repetitive missions.
  In so many missions the objective changes but, well, hang it all, nothing else does. Everybody and everything looks the same. There is no feeling that you are doing anything new. It's always a case of "haven't I done this five times already?"
  
  
• Viva quick-time events.
  I quit playing this game at the Hunting Partner (dominate the white dog thing) mission because of horrible QTE. Or perhaps I should say pseudo-QTE. Maybe it is my fault that my reflexes are not as good as 20 years ago but randomizing the button every time the QTE runs is silly. In a near-death situation it is understandable, the game is giving you a chance to keep going. But in routine gameplay? And with such a small time window? And changing the button every time the QTE runs. What the hell, Monolith?

Anyway, the QTE had already happened a few times and that was the proverbial camel-back-breaker.

According to the Steam Client my total play time with Shadow of Mordor is 16.1 hours when I quit on this game. I simply couldn't find the motivation to keep going.

Shadow of Mordor is not something unique in terms of bad design but oftentimes that can be overcome. Sometimes games have an atmosphere, an engaging story, characters you can't abandon halfway through, a sense of achievement no matter how vague.

Unfortunately, Shadow of Mordor creates a peculiar cumulative effect of not having any of those.

Combat, mission structure, characters, world building, story - it's a featureless flat terrain.

If all else fails, I am always ready for even a half-decent story. But, well, this is Lord of the Rings territory and you can introduce as many twists as you want, the big bad goes poof in the end.

Writing is tough. Writing a self-contained interesting story within an established larger story is tougher still. But that's the point, isn't it? We don't expect great literature from games, just something interesting enough to keep things going. Get a good gameplay loop going and even that becomes less important.

For me, the more the gameplay fails, the more the story has to succeed and, of course, the opposite too.

Shadow of Mordor does not do this.

Sigh.

I got Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War together on Steam and such is my experience that so far after so many months I cannot bring myself to install Shadow of War. It just sits there, gathering digital dust.

Guns, Gore, & Cannoli

This post is based on Xbox controller on Windows. Have not played with KB/mouse.

This is one of those games I liked before even knowing what it was. The art style leapt off the screen and took hold of that part of my brain that likes that sort of behavior from artwork.

That it was an indie title was another huge appeal.

Guns, Gore, & Cannoli 2015: An absolute blast. There, we are done. Side scrollers are hit and miss with me. GG&C, however, refreshes the gameplay mechanic in ways that I am unable to describe except "fun."

Zombie games bore me. Probably because there are so many of them and they do not manage to differentiate between themselves. Zombie, kill, rinse, repeat.

See, when you go for the realistic zombie approach then you cannot vary the gameplay. How much variation can there be between 23 types of zombies, all equally brain dead? And if you make them intelligent then they are not zombies any longer, are they? Most zombies seem to want to kill you, eat you, or something even bizarre. Where the brain dead get their motivation from, I don't know.

The cartoon approach is the only one that makes sense. And while GG&C does not tackle any great questions about the nature and philosophy of being a zombie in a non-zombie world, why should it? It's a video game.

The dialogue tends to be on the cheap-cheese side but stays consistently above the surface. Besides, given the game situation and time period, perhaps that is a good thing.

The gameplay also tends to get repetitive and this is where you can feel the freshness of the indie developer. Despite being repetitive it does not become boring or turn into a chore.

The only one minor itty-bitty point of contention is that the difficulty tends to fluctuate, especially the boss fights that seem to jump from easy to hardcore without any build up.

Highly recommended.

Guns, Gore, & Cannoli 2018: Sigh! Alas!

How many exclamation points must a man run down? Uh, three. Okay. Damn!

The curse of the sequel.

The first game was fun. They almost completely changed the control scheme and you cannot remap the controls from inside the game. This game plays more like a very, very old game called Abuse where the mouse controls where you aim and the KB controls movement. With an Xbox controller it requires a lot of adapting. I played slightly more than 30 minutes and kept trying to use the old controls. Goodness' sake, why would you change the jump button which is almost universal in all games?

Don't know. Maybe it is more enjoyable with a KB/M combo. So far it is more annoying than fun. And since the controls are not going to change for the rest of the game... Oh, well.

The Last Campfire (2020)

This will be short.

You know how some games leave cliffhanger endings? Other games will leave weird endings like a Nolan movie. Once you are done with everything it is as if the professor is leaving the classroom with the last one-word instruction: "Discuss."

Then videos start popping up explaining the story and ending.

Done right, that sort of thing can be quite pleasant. Sadly, doing it right is full of unexpected unknown perils.

The Last Campfire's story is not entirely clear but it does not matter. The gameplay is not always straightforward and for such a small game it is possible to get lost, but, again, it does not matter.

Given the overly complicated mechanics of AAA games, it is always a pleasure to come across a game like this.

A simple puzzle-adventure combination, it makes for a quick few hours of intellectual stimulation with adequate gratification to keep the gamer going.

Another indie gem.

Highly recommended.

Getting Treed

Let us, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, talk about trees.

Not the sort that pop out of the earth and grow leaves and things, neat though the idea is, not those. You know how it is about trees. Excellent chaps but they never go anywhere.

Let us talk about skill trees in games.

I could, if 'twere in my nature, look up the history and all the rest of it but why bother. This is not a history project.

My pique, if it is pique, arises from how every other game developer now feels compelled to include some variation of a skill tree even in genres that do not warrant it.

Now a certain type of game that involves the "build" (never got a grip on that one) and fundamentally changes the gameplay, or at least the approach to it, is one thing. But more and more it seems that skill trees are a sort of cosmetic bungling to induce a sense of progression or empowerment to the gamer.

Uh, not buying it.

Like the open world concept, the skill tree is not much talked about.

To illustrate, here are a few games that can be completed without even looking at the darned thing. Sure, the gameplay becomes a lot easier if you upgrade your weapon stats and your health but the rest of it seems to be so much developer time/effort/money wasted. (Some are just upgrade systems but the concept is the same).

• Tomb Raider (2013-2018)
• Gears 5 (2019) (Yes, I am counting this one. Be quiet).
• Star Wards Jedi: Fallen Order (2019)
• Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021).
• Assassin's Creed Unity (2014).
• And, of course, the entire Arkham Series.

Well, that list could go on forever.

As of today, I am playing Tomb Raider (2013) for the third time. It reinforces my suspicion that the whole XP and collectibles and side missions exist not because they add anything to the gameplay or the overall game experience. They are simply there to let the gamer know "you missed this one bit on the map." On my third play through, all my skill and salvage points went ignored till the mission where you get the rope climber. It is possible to reach the end of the main story campaign without availing any of those "points."

Not trying to single out the Tomb Raider games here. It just happens to be the most recent in memory. In fact, Tomb Raider sits at the top of my least disliked game-with-skill-tree list. At least the developer did not start you out as a weakling that needs periodic health upgrades to keep up with tougher and tougher enemies and thank goodness for no actual boss fights (separate rant on boss fights to follow).

Some people like skill trees and that's fine.

Perhaps it is just the whole stretched-out-time perspective that demands more room than the 21st century lifestyle permits. Some concepts I can only grapple with in perpetuity, never come to terms with.

When your mind keeps diving into the far end to surface fond fun memories it becomes a chore to like the current goings-on in gaming.

After Doom (1993) there came the age of Doom clones. Everyone and the chipmunk in their nearest tree wanted to make a Doom clone.

We don't use the term "clone" anymore. It seems the product of copying is okay but the act of copying is to be treated politely. We call them "like" now.

For the past few years we are stuck in the age of Rogue-like, Metroid-like, Souls-like. Individual games now turned into genres through the act of "liking."

Unlike the Age of Doom Clones, the Age of Nnn-Like shows no signs of abating any time soon.

The same applies to the spread of the skill tree. If the real-life pop-out-of-the-ground trees could match that tenacity for the good part of a century, we could stop worrying about them.

Seriously, if you have been gaming since the 1990s, just take a moment and think about the game after game after game that has passed your PC display without any of the modern trappings whose greatest achievement is having to pause the game and juggle upgrade menus and skill trees.

The really, really sad part for me personally though is the current iteration of the Doom games.

When even the elder statesmen are not exempt, things look rather bleak.

Then again, they looked equally bleak in the Age of Doom Clones and we got over that because the gaming community simply got fed up and walked away.

Praying for a swift and moderately painful death to the unwanted skill tree.

Maybe make it optional, as perhaps part of the Accessibility options. Spare the rest of us who have no use for it.

Hmm?