Holy cow is Shadow of Mordor an awesome game. I spent a couple hours with it last night and am blown away.

I still haven't tried that one. Figure I might as well wait for the sequel at this point.

There's an in-depth system for forming either rivalries or alliances with characters, and apparently those same rivalries/alliances will export to the new game. I got killed by a low-level archer last night, so he got a promotion in his clan, some new armor, and his strength powered up. Next time I see him I'll cut his head off.

Did Wal Mart cancel those "accidental" preorders on you guys?

Nope. Not yet at least.

Man, I'm having a hard time getting into it. I can tell it's because of the type of gamer I am (slow and deliberate) but it's just kinda too much for me. Too many missions, too much shit to do, and I kinda hate that there's no way to reset things or try again when you die. Watching the world advance and guys get more powerful when I fuck up just stresses me out. I'm gonna try to stay with it but I just don't have a lot of fun and quit after a while half the time I play. Any advice for enjoying it?

Not sure I can help too much. You see "too many missions, too much shit do to," meanwhile I'm salivating at the size of the world and how much time I'll be able to spend here. I do share your frustrations about watching the world advance and your enemies becoming more powerful -- like 4 of my 6 nemeses are low-level grunts who finished me off with a lucky shot and have since leveled up to Power 10 or something like that. My hunch is that if I stick more to the story missions rather than running around exploring things, I'll gain new abilities quicker (the abilities tree has a lot of things that are unlocked by completing story missions).

My biggest problem is all the LOTR lore that I just don't care about. But I am really enjoying collecting new runes for my weapons and leveling up myself -- I just got one that allows me to deal a flurry of attacks to stunned enemies.

It's not the sheer size I have a problem with so much as how cluttered and non-organized it seems. Like I didn't understand a few game mechanics early on because they were part of story missions that I didn't realize would be pseudo-tutorials. Another thing happened where I completed a mission by keeping a captain from running away using those tether arrows, it played the whole mission complete cutscene, and then afterwords said I had failed the mission because I left the area. Just seems really wonky and non-intuitive in some ways, but then I'll play it other times and have a blast. Since so many other people liked it, I'm guessing it's just not my type of game, but I'd really like to enjoy it more.

Ha, I haven't gotten that far yet; I haven't even completed the first mission because I'm so caught up in exploring the game and trying to kill my nemeses. But yeah, that sounds super frustrating. I *think* that once I unlock those towers in other realms, then I can spawn there rather than the same tower I've been spawning on for the past few days.

Yeah, you can spawn and fast travel in the towers you unlock. I think they nemesis system would also be more interesting to me if the enemies didn't seem so samey. I never really remember any of the guys in a unique fashion.

Contrasting this game with the Batman games (which share a lot of the same mechanics) also doesn't really help it out for me.

Oh really? I haven't played the Batman games yet but have been interested to check them out.

The first one is great, but I haven't played the others. I hear mixed things, but mostly positive.

I know the last one has a lot of Batmobile driving, which doesn't look too fun to me.

I really enjoyed the first two Batman: Arkham games, but I returned the last one - that Batmobile is the worst, and featured SO MUCH.

The only batmobile things I hated were the stealth parts, which I agree almost completely ruined the game, which sucks because the rest of it (and the first two games) is truly excellent.

Yes.

Yours got cancelled?

I loved shadow of Mordor at first but the shine faded pretty fast.

The sequel looks amazing.

Not yet but I feel like it's only a matter of time. I don't trust WalMart.

start watching at 5:36 and tell me thats not memorable