New PC post has been delayed due to faulty parts, and I didn’t really want to type it up until things have been RMA’d and I can provide a full list and analysis.

In the meantime, I did manage to play and beat Shadow of Mordor. So far, it’s my front runner for game of the year. The moment to moment gameplay is just great. It’s an open world game where the missions are fun, the in between moments when you aren’t in mission are fun, and even the traversal is pretty fun. This is kind of a rarity in the open-world games market. You can wait for a Black Friday deal, but if you like Assassin’s Creed or the Batman Arkham series, I can’t imagine you’d be disappointed.

It takes the best parts of both, and mixes it with a few new systems while also cutting away the cruft. IE, you can Sprint with a button, you can Stealth with another button, and if you Sprint+Stealth you just run at near full sprint speed while stealthy. Someone sees you and their Alert bar fills all the way? You still have a couple extra seconds to take them out with a stealth kill. They won’t just immediately grab your sword and fling you away; the alarm bar isn’t a binary switch. Just, a lot of design decisions where “man, that’s annoying, let’s make it fun instead” were applied.