Preview - Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

I'm always sceptical when I come across a video game based on a movie license. Sure, there's a lot of good that can come from basing your game on a popular film franchise, but there's also a high chance of developers getting lazy as they know their game-movie tie-in will sell well no matter how much love they put into it. The Lord of the Rings is one of the most popular fictional creations of all time so its games could easily fall into that trap, but from early impressions it looks like Monolith Productions is giving it the respect it deserves.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is set between the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings saga, with players taking control of a ranger called Talion. Talion is responsible for guarding the Black Gate of Mordor against all those nasty orcs, but eventually Sauron’s army manages to kill him and his family. Fortunately, he's soon revived by a mysterious wraith called Celebrimbor and Talion himself picks up some special new abilities, which is useful as he's now on a quest for revenge.

That's the basic gist of it, with Talion and Celebrimbor now teaming up to form some kind of kickass, undead partnership. Shadow of Mordor is an open-world game so Talion can walk around wherever he chooses, and LOTR fans will be happy to know that Gollum is heavily featured in the game, which is where our presentation starts. We watch as Talion follows Gollum's trail through castle ruins before he eventually comes across a gruesome looking troll called Graug. Your buddy Celebrimbor says you're not strong enough to handle Graug yet, so you'll have to find another way around.

What follows is a bit of strategic play, with Talion walking around and causing small creatures called Caragors to flee from their nests in fright. Graug is distracted by the movement and leaves his post, which allows Talion to come back and progress through. We're not sure how much sneaking you'll have to do in Shadow of Mordor, but these sections make a nice change from all the swordplay you'll be doing during the rest of the game.

And there's going to be a lot of swordplay. Shadow of Mordor's unique selling point is something called a Nemesis System, which gives enemies their own personalities, strengths and weaknesses to ensure no two play throughs are the same. There's even a way you can avenge the death of your friends by taking on the orc that slayed them.

"The Nemesis System is such a big part of the game," lead designer Bob Roberts tells us. "There's this kind of asynchronous thing where the guys your friends are facing and die against, they can appear in your game. So you can avenge your friend's death by killing the orc that killed him, which will be very specific to his game because we procedurally, dynamically generate all the bosses in the game. So you'll never see that guy in your game, but if it killed him we can import it into your game and give you a go at him."

Back in the castle ruins, Celebrimbor can use wraith powers to see how Middle-earth looked when he himself was alive. This allows Talion to find hidden artifacts that reveal lost memories from history. Using these abilities you'll find out a lot about Sauron's past, before he became the evil ruler everyone fears in the LOTR trilogy. Finding these secrets also boosts Talion with new powers, and in the cave he picks up Shadow Strike, which lets him attack enemies with a quick, rushing movement.

Before long Talion finds himself confronted with a big group of orcs. You can either choose to wall-run and be sly about things, or go head-on and go crazy with your weapons. "We're trying to give people a fluid mixture of being able to bounce in and out of stealth, combat, range, and kind of manipulating the enemies a little bit more with strategic elements," added Roberts. Taking the fight to the orcs will show you the fighting system at full flow. Big, powerful moves are combined with speed of thought as you attack several enemies in combination, and the combat all seems to be very rewarding.

We're eager to see even more of the Nemesis System, and we can't wait to check out the dynamic and unique bosses the game throws up against us. Besides, just being back in the LOTR universe and experiencing more of Middle-earth is enough to have us giddy with excitement. Watch out for a review when the game launches next month.