Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor is an open-world action game set in the gap between “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. It’s pretty violent, but a lot of kids are going to want to play it because it’s set in the wildly popular Lord of the Rings universe.
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Story & Themes
The game’s story follows a human ranger named Talion whose family is ritually sacrificed before his eyes by the Black Hand of Sauron, a captain of Sauron’s orc army. Talion is next, and with his sacrifice the wraith of an unknown Elf Lord is summoned and bound to Talion’s body. As a result, Talion becomes unable to die and gains a number of other supernatural abilities. Upon regaining consciousness, Talion decides to seek revenge for the deaths of his wife and child. His revenge involves brutally killing as many Orcs as possible.
Difficulty
The combat and stealth systems are more or less identical to those of the Batman: Arkham Asylum series. However, Batman doesn't kill his foes and Talion always does.
Talion has a ton of interesting abilities that give you the tools to handle pretty much any situation the game can throw at you. Even so, it manages to be fairly challenging at times. There are certain enemies with special abilities that make it so you can’t just go slashing your way through the oceans of orc bodies that the game constantly throws at you, and the higher up the chain of command they are, the more difficult any given orc is to deal with. In addition, if some orc Warlord or Captain gets the better of you, he gets stronger, punishing you for your failure.
This is a possible flaw if you aren’t all that good at action games like Batman or Assassin’s Creed: there are no difficulty settings, so it could be a bit frustrating to watch your enemies become even more difficult to defeat each time they kill you. However, combat isn’t all that complicated either, so as long as you have relatively quick reflexes and some practice with the game it won’t really be able to surprise you much.
Heads Up!
Violence Talion rides monstrous Carragors and Graugs and directs them to eat his foes, he slices off their heads with his sword, he puts arrows through their skulls, he stabs them repeatedly with his dagger, he sets them on fire, he poisons them, he uses his wraith powers to make their heads explode, and more. This onslaught of violence is pretty much reserved for orcs alone; there are attackable humans in the game but you are given no incentive to kill them and it’s impossible to perform any of the more graphic executions on them.
Scary Imagery The monsters and killing methods can be frightening.
Consumerism The Lord of the Rings franchise of course has many product offerings, but that isn't particularly a part of this game.
Conversation Starters
Is this game's violence less objectionable because it depicts the killing of monsters (Orcs)?
Killing in revenge for your family's murder seems like a good justification for Talion, but how is real life different?
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