My favorite memory related to this game is when I was playing it for the first time, my brother would occasionally stop by to watch when he had nothing better to do. There was this one time when I was playing one of the Laguna sections, a battle started and The Man With the Machine Gun played, after a few seconds my brother said "Wow, this battle theme is so much better than that lame-ass one that played all the time before." referring to Don't Be Afraid in the Squall part.

While I don't agree that Don't Be Afraid sucks, I absolutely cannot argue against Man With the Machine Gun being vastly superior, that's like a 6/10 track compared to a 9/10 track.

I appreciate the better controls and the fact that the kill 'em all missions now feel like they were designed by a sane human being, but eh, it's still largely the same game but more polished. My issues with Shadow the Hedgehog are mainly its bland level design where 90% of the time you'll be just holding forward and spamming the shoot button, and the utterly nonsensical story that gets even more confusing when you actually make use of the choice system instead of just following a linear route where you're always doing evil, dark or neutral missions all the way to the end, none of these things are really addressed in this version.

Credit where it's due, I do enjoy a few stages where this mission system is well used, like Lava Shelter, where doing the hero or dark mission will lead you to wildly different paths in the actual stage, with your actions even altering the layout by making the stage more or less flooded by lava. Why isn't the rest of the game like that instead of the same "kill 50 enemies" missions plastered all over the place?

Basically a polished mix of Batman Arkham and Assassin's Creed, taking the better elements of both of its inspirations and having the nemesis system as what sets it apart. Combat and parkour both feel satisfying to play with, though I'd say the Nemesis system doesn't feel as fleshed out as it could have been, it's cool that named enemies remember you and you can form a bit of a rivalry with them, but this doesn't amount to much aside from their one-liners when they meet you changing. Not to mention the outcome of these fights is always one of the following:

You kill them.
You get killed by them.
You run away.
They run away.

I imagine the sequel to this game probably does more with this system, which is why I'll be getting it later. Another thing I didn't like is how anti-climactic the last couple of missions were, even though there's this huge build-up leading to them and the final boss. But yeah, those missteps aside, I do consider Shadow of Mordor to be a good game, it has a decent story, which despite never having consumed anything LotR-related I was still able to understand and get invested in, great visuals and atmosphere, as well as an overall satisfying gameplay.

I've been streaming this game with a friend and we got bamboozled by the "disable adult content" option on the menu. After the first H-scene with Emi, we got caught off-guard by her naked sprite appearing, turns out this mode only censors the sex scenes with CGs. I was in a state of shock while my friend screamed out of her lungs at first and then proceeded to enter a laughing fit while I desperately searched for the game capture source on OBS so I could take that shit off the screen before Youtube fucks me over.

Thank you Four Leaf Studios.