First Impressions – Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, The Evil Within and Lords of the Fallen on PlayStation 4

It’s been a long time since I got a new PlayStation 4 game. Well, the last one I got was Destiny so I guess it hasn’t been too long but still…I’ve gotten really burnt out on Destiny the last week or two and while the free PlayStation Plus games are fun, they don’t hold my attention for very long.

Well thanks to a “Buy 2, Get 1 Free” promotion at Target this week (that ends Saturday so get out there soon if you want to take advantage), I was able to pick up “Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor,” “The Evil Within” and “Lords of the Fallen.” Three fairly different games which are relatively new and each have their own strengths and weaknesses.  I’m going to try and do full reviews for each, eventually, but for now, I’ll give you my initial thoughts on the short time I’ve spent with each so far.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

The game I’ve spent the most time playing so far has easily been Shadow of Mordor. Out of all three games I picked up, this one had the most buzz surrounding it and got the most praise from people I’ve talked to.

In Shadow of Mordor, you play as Talion, a ranger from Gondor who is avenging the death of his family after Sauron’s army of orcs and uruks invade the land of Udun. His quest for revenge has him taking on an almost endless army of orcs and uruks, assassinating captains and war chiefs in hopes of one day reaching the Black Hand of Sauron. Though Talion is only a lone ranger, he has one ally – an elf wraith who can assist Talion in a number of ways. The wraith, much like Talion, had his life destroyed by the Black Hand and can utilize many supernatural abilities and is bound to Talion throughout the game.

Shadow of Mordor is a third person action/adventure game which has very strong similarities to other popular series such as “Batman: Arkham City” and “Assassin’s Creed.” It most strongly resembles “Arkham City” in that it takes place in a giant, open-world environment, taking on various activities, side quests and main quests. There’s a ton of different collectibles and aspects of Talion to level up which can be a little overwhelming at first but the actual gameplay – exploration and killing uruks – is simple enough and the rest comes over time.

One of the most interesting aspects of Shadow of Mordor is the nemesis system. In this game, one of your main activities will be hunting down the captains and war chiefs in the uruk army. Each of these uruks has a distinct appearance and set of traits which can be used against them in battle – things like beasts that they are afraid of, ways to kill them instantly or personality traits like using poison in battle or will never flee battle. There is also a distinct hierarchy to the uruk army and killing one captain often reshuffles the deck, adding new enemies in different positions of power.

These uruk captains will remember you from previous encounters and their reaction to you will actually be quite different depending on your past interactions with them. For instance, right now I have been at odds with a powerful captain named Kugaluga Blood Storm. We’ve clashed several times over the course of my game and usually when I encounter him he’ll acknowledge past fights and how he has a score to settle with me. It’s really an interesting system and one that serves to draw you deeper into the game world, knowing that your actions have a distinct effect on your enemies and that they will be remembered.

The Evil Within

It’s been a long time since I’ve played a good survival horror game and The Evil Within is definitely one of the more gruesome and challenging survival horror games to be released in recent years. The director of Evil Within is Shinji Mikami, who is the creator of the Resident Evil series, and if anyone can create a standout horror game, it’s Mikami.

You play as Detective Sebastien Castellanos. You start the game investigating a mass murder at a hospital but are quickly thrust into a strange world of macabre beings replete with bloody gore and horrifying imagery. Checkpoints and save points are seldom and you’ll often be close to death as health items and weaponry are also quite scarce. But that should be expected, being that this is a survival horror game.

Evil Within is a very odd game and it’s often hard to tell if you’re in the real world or some kind of strange, supernatural representation of it. Unlike Resident Evil, which told a fairly straight forward story about special forces dealing with a zombie outbreak, Evil Within is much more obscure. Granted I’m only on the third chapter, I still have no idea what is really going on.

I definitely want to delve deeper into Evil Within but I’ve been so wrapped up with Shadow of Mordor, it’s tough to switch between this game and the third game I picked up.

Lords of the Fallen

Have you ever wondered what Dark Souls would be like if it had a discernable story? If you have, Lords of the Fallen is basically your answer.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Souls series. It’s story is too ambiguous and the learning curve is way too steep for someone who hasn’t practically devoted their life to the series. But Lords of the Fallen takes all the difficult combat and XP risk/reward that Souls offers and puts it in a much more visually pleasing package as well as having a narrative which the game makes an effort to tell you about.

Lords of the Fallen is a third person action/adventure RPG where you play as Harkyn, criminal who is given a chance at redemption when an army of evil gods and demons attack the human realm. Combat is almost identical to the Souls series so if you’ve played them, you can jump right into Lords of the Fallen. Magic is handled a bit differently, though, as every class has access to the Gauntlet, which allows you to use various spells. XP and leveling up is also similar, in that you can only spend it at certain points in the game world and if you die, you must reacquire any XP you lost or lose it forever.

There are three different classes, though I didn’t take too long to inspect them. In RPGs I tend to always go with the brawler/fighter character and don’t mess with rogues or ranged characters. What was interesting about Lords is that along with picking a class, you can also pick your magic style. Each class has a different array of spells to utilize and you can mix and match according to your play style.

I’d imagine that deeper into the game you’ll battle monsters and otherworldly beings but I’m only an hour or two into it and so far I’ve only come up against enemies using a sword and shield like me.

Like Evil Within, I’d like to have put more time into Lords but Mordor has its hooks in me right now and that’s the game I’ve been focusing on. Though, I am very happy with each purchase and would say each are well worth the money. Shadow of Mordor is the most accessible game of the three, being that it closely resembles other popular titles. But Evil Within and Lords of the Fallen both offer their own unique benefits and challenges and would appeal to fans of survival horror and action RPGs, respectively. Look out for reviews of each (hopefully) coming up.

First Impressions: Hack into a new world in Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs, the highly anticipated next-gen title from Ubisoft, was released this week for Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U and PC and it’s a game that I’ve been looking forward to since I first heard about it.

Watch Dogs takes place in a fictionalized version of the city of Chicago where players control Aiden Pearce, a grey hat hacker who is using his techno-wizardry skills to discover why he and his family were attacked, which resulted in the death of his niece. Using his mastery of technology, Pearce can use the CtOS system – a city-spanning network that controls nearly every function of Chicago – to do anything from manipulating security cameras, syphoning money from people’s bank accounts or stopping violent street crimes before they happen.

Pearce’s connection to the world of Watch Dogs is his smart phone. By installing backdoor programs into district CtOS systems, he makes use of a “Profiler” app which shows him information about everyone and everything around him. He can steal money from phones (which can be put toward guns, clothes, cars and more), listen to phone calls or chat dialogues which may lead to preventing a crime and much more. And while a majority of what Pearce is able to do in Chicago is related to hacking, there are tons of missions, side missions, activities and collectibles to collect, complete and discover around the massive city. Along with a large city, Pearce has plenty of skills and abilities to unlock which will lead to him becoming a more powerful vigilante.

Being that Pearce is just one man, staying out of sight and using his technological prowess is usually the cleanest way to accomplish a mission. Much of what Pearce will be doing in Watch Dogs will entail stealing data from a target or infiltrating secure locations to either steal data or incapacitate a target and often it will be easier to accomplish these missions using stealth than going in guns blazing. Don’t worry, though, Pearce has access to a wide array of weaponry (pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, grenade launchers) as well as being able to craft items like grenades, lures and communication jammers to aid in disrupting and disabling targets.

There’s also a ton of online modes, most of which revolve around invading another player’s game and stealing information from them. This can happen to you at any time as well, which means you might have to drop everything and concentrate on finding this unknown assailant. This just happened to me yesterday. I was on my way to a clothing store when I was informed that my phone was being hacked and information stolen. A shaded area appeared on my map to display where the enemy hacker was hiding and using my profiler, I would need to track him down and kill him. As the time counts down a progress bar (showing the data theft) builds, the search area decreases. Finally, with less than 10% to go, I happened upon a parked car where my nemesis was hiding and carrying out the search from. It all happened in an instant – I walked briskly past the car, my profiler went off indicating my target, I pulled out a machine pistol and lit him up before he could turn the car on or get out to run. It’s an interesting idea, to combine single and multiplayer in this manner, though I think it won’t appeal to everyone. Also, you’re penalized for turning off the “always online” component of Watch Dogs – your Notoriety will be reset to 0 going offline (which is the XP you get for completing online missions that leads to unique abilities and unlocks).

I wasn’t blown away by the visual presentation at first, though. Compared to earlier preview videos used to hype Watch Dogs, I felt like the visuals on my PlayStation 4 version weren’t anything special – looking just slightly better than GTA V looks on my Xbox 360 – and certainly didn’t have the sheen of Infamous: Second Son. After I explored more of the city and watched the game in action, I realized I was a little hard on the game at first and even though it doesn’t look as good as the early hype videos (which were probably running on high end PCs), the lighting, textures and colors are all really top notch.

Watch Dogs is an incredibly fun game that has a ton of content and will definitely keep you glued to your PS4 for weeks. There are some unfortunate design choices but overall, you wouldn’t go wrong if you wanted to pick up Watch Dogs on a whim. Be sure to look out for my full review, coming soon.