Middle-Earth is B-O-R-I-N-G and Borderlands is too.
Middle-Earth is B-O-R-I-N-G and Borderlands is too.
I normally don’t enjoy bashing on games, especially when I know that there are real devoted fans of certain franchises and genres and you can’t come off as anything less than a clueless jerk when disliking anything popular, but I must. Usually when I don’t like a game I just don’t bother writing anything about it at all, and I don’t bother to finish it either. I’m not a games reviewer and I have plenty of options out there so I don’t feel an obligation to spend more time with a game more than I want to. How am I supposed to know when to give up on a game? Answer is: when I’ve just stopped playing for a long ass time and don’t feel like playing more of it.
Middle-Earth: Something, Something, Mordor
I’m really surprised at how many good reviews this game is getting because this game is truly awful. I should point out that according to the in-game stats I’ve only covered 20 percent of the game in about 10 hours so it’s too early to pass harsh judgment on the game, but I really don’t like what I’ve played so far. For starters the game is ugly. It takes place behind those giant gates leading to Mordor home of the Orcs where Sam and Frodo were trying to sneak through in the movies. A lot of what is behind the gates is not very eye pleasing. It’s mostly brown and devoid of any other color. While this might be an accurate representation of a desolate ruined world from the books and film, it just isn’t fun to look at or run around in for tons of hours. It isn’t exactly what one would imagine when you think of Middle-Earth and it’s gorgeous landscapes and regions like Rivendell, The Shire, or Minas Tirith, etc.
The world is mostly populated by ruins and groups of orcs and slaves running around everywhere with the occasional mutant wolf/sabre-tooth thingies, Wargs I think they’re called, showing up now and then. The combat is really dumb and simple. You are really underpowered at the beginning so the most you can do when being ambushed by Orcs (which happens a lot) is run. Otherwise you’ll be jumping and evading around everything merely getting a couple hits in here and there hoping for something to go down (hopefully not you), it’s very repetitive and boring.
It’s not all bad though. I was actually enjoying what little story and NPCs there are to interact with but those story missions suddenly disappeared off the map until I do more side quests, which I don’t like doing. That’s the other good thing. The game is open world and lets you take missions in any order you want, assuming you enjoy doing these missions. The “Nemesis” system is also very interesting. If you die fighting an Orc they get promoted to higher ranks and become more powerful, thus harder to fight the next time you encounter them and they will remember you even if you don’t remember them. Sometimes enemies retreat when they know they are about to be defeated which can be a bit frustrating at times.
So, this game started off with a bad impression for me. I really don’t like the world and I find the combat and action to be too repetitive, cheap and boring. Most of the side missions appear to be very similar in objectives, stealth, arrow attack, etc. I need to see and play more if it to really get a good impression of it, but I’m just having a hard time wanting to do so. Another game, Borderlands Pre-Sequel managed to grab me and pull me in with its opening missions, visuals and sound design enough that I wanted to play more of it, but towards the middle it’s also getting a bit repetitive and boring now.
Next time…
Borderlands is B-O-R-I-N-G too.
-asrealasitgets
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