Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor™ Game of the Year Edition

Rare that I finish a game, but I've nearly finished Shadow of Mordor. Would be 5 stars but for the controls Likes: Sandbox w/ good-sized maps. You choose the order of quests and where to go. Battles get ferocious, like you vs 30 uruks, and it's almost fair for them while a challenge for you. You can run from a mass fight, get a quick recovery/recharge, and jump back in. Bosses move around the map and can appear when you're nearly dead, in the middle of a quest, inside a stronghold. Then a 2nd boss appears with a 3rd boss as a wingman. You're wondering how to survive then you manage to stomp all 5(!) bosses. True story. Sow mass chaos in the uruk ranks! Sneak your way in and assassinate them. Set off big explosions, setting groups on fire. At higher levels you brand them and make them fight on your side. When you can do that in combat, halfway through a fight most of uruks are defending you! Getting an uruk elite captain fighting on your side is fun! Dislikes: The controls kill you. You try to leap up a wall but watch your character do a barrel roll on the ground. Then 8 uruks catch up to you, pin you to the wall, and beat you to death. When you're riding a caragor you can right click and get him to bite an uruk, but 9/10 you switch to shooting mode, which is also a right click. Very stable on Linux/Wine/Bottles, but I locked up the game fighting the boss Graug. Hit too many keys trying to get my character to take an action with the controls failing. Frustrating: Bosses can have multiple invulnerabilities. You MUST gather/use intel. One boss quest is to ruin their hunt. My target could kill a beast in 10 sec. No way to win that one. One boss ran when losing, but had "fast runner" perk. I was out of arrows; couldn't shoot him. He disappeared as I caught up to him. One boss could 2-shot-kill me, invulnerable to stealth and ranged, had a gang, and was always in a stronghold. It took many tries to draw him to a camp with explosive barrels so I could kill him.

A focus on quality, production value and strong game systems really paid off in this game that still holds up in 2025. The nemesis system is strong and rewarding.

Solid combat system, a pretty decent story, and the graphics hold up well

epic game i have played for a long time

Assassins creed meets LOTR -awesome story, batman/assassins creed style vombat that require a cool head and reward preparing for your target. 10/10