You guys realize that the other LOTR games won't re-release due to licensing, right? This game is a completely different license (hence the name Middle Earth instead of Lord of the Rings).

Sadly, the other LOTR games have been in copyright hell for a while.
I should say licenses, since there are two sets involved: The one from Tolkien Enterprises which is based on the books, and another which is based on the Movie rights.
Thus you have two different RTS Tokien games come out in 2002 War of the Ring from Sierra and the Battle For Middle Earth from EA based on the movie liscence.
And the licence has changes hands quite a bit.Interplay had it and lost it Then Sierra and EA and I think it has changed hands again.
SO, yeah, unless things have changed don't look for the other TOlkien games to show up here. I would love fot that to happen but I ain't holding my breath.


As for this game, never cared much for it for a common reason: Not Tolkien enough. Just another hack and slasher that is set in Middle earth.

This sounds reasonable.

Sad news. Thank you for the info though, really.
Well, harder than I initially thought.

Games like those can legally be considered Abandonware?

Thanks for pointing it out too.
Unfortunately I have no ea account and can't support the thread there.

Don't know where you're from, but in the US, there is no such thing as legal abandonware. There is copyrighted, and public domain. Morally, I wouldn't bat an eye at people obtaining games that are not available for sale. I've done so myself. But legally, at least here, there is no distinction as such.

Now I've played this game for about 8 hours.

For those who are wondering what it's like: I'd say it's a mash-up of the older style AC games (prior to Origins) and also the Batman Arkham games, both of which it heavily borrows/steals elements from.

It's a fun game, but I wish there was more to do other than just massacring Uruks/Orcs 24/7, which is literally all the game is. Likewise, the game could use a much wider variety of environments, rather than just the one and only one that it actually has (i.e. a Hell-like barren wasteland).

Except for at the very start of the game, where there is a couple of 30 second long or so scenes with the protagonist's wife and son in the real-world.

That was really interesting and gave me the (wrong) impression that this game was going to have a strong story and strong characters (meaning, story-wise), which it actually doesn't.

But those brief scenes at the start show that the devs could have made a good story and rich characters if they had put in the time and effort to do that.

If someone took the combat system and Nemesis system (or an imitation of it if it's non-Warner publisher doing it, since Warner patented that system), and built a real story-rich RPG over it, that could make for a masterpiece-level game.

In regards to the technical issues I mentioned earlier:

1. Achievements are showing up for me now; not sure if this game previously suffered from the "invisible Achievement" bug and GOG fixed that today, or if it was just a glitch on my Galaxy page, but either way, they work perfectly now.

2. Forcing VSync from the Nvidia control panel for some reason does not fix the screen tearing that occurs specifically during cutscenes, such as when you first start a mission. I have no idea how it's possible for this game to ignore Nvidia control panel's VSync setting.

Or otherwise, maybe what I'm seeing in the cutscenes is not technically VSync-related screen tearing, even though it has the same appearance of such.

Anyway, I wish there was a solution to this, because it's very immersion-breaking every time it happens, which it almost always does for me when this game plays any cutscene.

3. I still have no idea why the voices are way too low in this game. Did the devs just make a really bad audio mix? Is there no real solution to this problem? I assume there is not, since I didn't see any posted anywhere on the internet.

It's great fun until the Uruk you've been stalking is actually in a group of 4 captains, two of which have randomly generated traits that make them invincible to you. That always sucked to me, that a captain can spawn with two or three traits that make it literally impossible to damage (immune to ranged, physical resist, immune to stealth, etc).

Just had an Olog Graug (a non-canonical Troll-like creature) randomly appear in the region I was resurrected in after an unsuccessful assassination attempt on an Uruk captain (not having identified his weaknesses and strengths beforehand) and, of course, always up for a challenge tried to chip away at its massive health bar all on my own just with the sword and the few elf-shots (spectral arrows shot from a spectral bow, basically) I currently had.

Not doing all that much damage to it while one of its big swiping attacks nearly one-shot me, I noticed that one of the numerous ruins with a contigent of Uruks having set up camp in it was fairly close by. And I wondered - does the sim-lite nature of SoM allow for something I was going to try to pull off?
To my surprise, it actually does.

So, in a last ditch-effort, I was going to bait and lead the Olog Graug to the ruins with the Uruks in it, hoping that they would engage one another, with the Uruks either killing or at least wounding it to the point where just a few more sword strokes would be enough for me to bring it down. And before another one of those swiping claw attacks would do me in.

Slight problem though. The ruins are on higher ground. That I'm able to scale with ease but what about the Olog Graug?
Well, as if it's the most natural thing in the world (of video games) it, of course, grabbed the ledge with its massive claws and pulled itself up, no problem at all.
And immediately after was already throwing rocks, ripped from the ground, first knocking the Uruk lookout from his post on top of the ruins and then at the rest of the Uruks congregated around a campfire, to much of their surprise as well as my amazement that the plan actually had come together.

As somewhat expected, the rest who could get close and land hits didn't manage to kill the Olog Graug and only were able to chip away about a fourth of its health bar before getting swiped ouf of their virtual existence.
So I thought to myself: Since this playing off Mordor's wildlife against the Uruk-hai is actually a thing and went reasonably well - how about I just lure it to the next encampment (which wasn't all that far away) and see if the Uruks there can manage to kill or mortally wound it for me to place the killing blow.

Off I went with it in tow.
And... came across a pack of three Caragors (SoM's non-canonical Warg-likes) which, fortunately for me, had it in for the Olog Graug and made short work of it while I was watching along like a wildlife photographer.

The end.

If you have a penchant for games with emergent gameplay and creative use of game mechanics like described above Shadow of Mordor is something you may want to give a try.

Actually kind of curious how far you can lure the creature to one of the camps?.

How smart is the AI in this game ?

Pretty straight forward. If you want a challenge, turn off button prompts. But play through first so you can recognize the attack animations or you'll have no chance. Enemies will gang up on you, but with handy button prompts combat is little more than a QTE. good game, fun, satisfying combat. Until it is exceptionally repetitive.

Thanks .

Admittedly, it's been quite a few years since I've read reviews to this.
But wasn't it basically announced at the time as a "brawler" set in Middle-Earth?
"Brawling" and "rising in the ranks of the Orcs" , or something like that...were the selling points, no?

The nemesis system is on point. Killing some Uruk without executing them can make them return as rivals (not dissimilar to when they kill you). The captains will advance through the ranks if they kill you, and get stronger. They will also take out other captains. It's quite enjoyable to manipulate their ranks. And as I said earlier, their strengths and weaknesses are somewhat random, so you can spawn super powerful Uruk captains that are a true challenge to take out.