I’ll be talking about my experiences with the ex-plumber in TSM 453.

On we go to victory over the Empire!

The problem is that they all have one decent idea, and then they try to ride the whole game on the strength of that single idea. It’s never enough to carry the rest.

It reminds me of John Cleese talking about the issues he faced writing comedy with some members of Monty Python: that some of them thought for a minute, came up with an okay joke, and then wrote it down. What they should have done, Cleese said (and I agree), is to say, “Okay, that’s a good idea, but let’s see if I can do even better.” So too DoubleFine.

Dancing Matt’s Blasts from the Past? Sure! Why not!

I enjoyed the board game cast though. Whenever the conversation careens off into different avenues is great.

Which is to say that the types of badness may be incommensurate. A good game hidden beneath flaws is bad because, despite the best intentions, some things did not land right. It stings because you can see what might have been. A bad game, say, Silicon Knight’s Too Human, which was bad from conception to execution, has no sting of missed expectations, but isn’t playable.

Shadow of War is playable, though, and if you liked the first one, you’ll probably find something to enjoy in it. Hardcore fans of Tolkien’s legendarium are going to be rolling their eyes at the violence done to it, and I suspect fans of stealth games or the Assassin’s Creed series will moan about sloppy controls (and that’s saying something), but the combat is quite fun, and the Nemesis system inventive, if a bit easy to game. All in all, I’d give what I’ve played so far (most of Act I) a solid “meh” in terms of enthusiasm, much as the same thing I felt about Mass Effect: Andromeda or Rise of the Tomb Raider: good combat, some fun parts, but lackluster everything else.

wat

“underneath its flaws, this is a game with decent stealth and action gameplay.”

This is something I have been thinking about lately: is it more objectively terrible to make a bad game through and through, or to make a good game ruined by bad element(s)? In the former case, the amount of bad is greater; but in the latter case the frustration with the matter is greater because the good that exists is enough to convince more people to play and experience the bad, thereby ensuring that although there is less bad on offer, more people are exposed to it.

The bigger issues are its abysmal treatment of the source material (sexxxed-up Shelob is but one of their more minor sins) and the fact that it is game-breakingly easy to overpower yourself just exploring the first map (this was an issue in the first game as well). Because you can level up by killing enemy captains, unlocking towers (because this franchise hadn’t quite yet stolen everything from the Assassin’s Creed games yet), completing the little bs side-missions and quests, and finding all the secrets, it’s easy to unlock/master most of the combat powers fairly early on.

I remember in Shadow of Mordor I had unlocked all of the non-story-gated abilities before I ever embarked much on the main quest, because the game is really dumb and frustrating in the early stages when you have no power. You can’t be stealthy, you can’t kill much of anyone or anything, and it’s easy to get dogpiled. So in the course of what I’d consider normal gameplay (opening up the map and completing side missions), it’s still possible to power-level yourself up. And when there are Epic captains on the field with shockingly low levels like 4-5, you can even get epic gear with very little effort.

You could, I suppose, choose to limit your advancement and stick to the main story quest as much as possible to avoid this, in the same way you can avoid the loot crate nonsense by just never choosing that option from the menu, but the design is still frustratingly bad, because underneath its flaws, this is a game with decent stealth and action gameplay.