I’ve been going through my Steam backlog and the most recent game I finished was “If Found.” I can’t remember what about it originally drew my attention, but it was disappointing in that it wasn’t what I expected in a game. The “gameplay” consists of just erasing the screen to uncover the next part of the story. That’s it. No puzzles, no choices (except maybe at certain points where you have to figure out where to move the screen to find the next part of the narrative), and you even have an option to simply “full erase” the screen so you’re not killing your wrists just dragging the mouse back and forth. The story was a bit confusing for me, as well.
There is a bit at the end where you make certain choices and that affects what you learn about what happens in the lives of the other characters (and there are achievements connected to unlocking all that stuff), but the “gameplay” involved in doing so was even more painful than the whole erasing thing.
I finished Shadow of Mordor (give or take some collectibles and challenges). I’m not necessarily sure if I’d recommend it. The gameplay is a mix of sneaking around and playing it as a brawler, where how you do depends on a combination of blocking or evading attacks and not missing, after which you can perform special feats. It certainly has its moments.
One of the better ones happened close to the beginning of the game. I was just riding a graug for the first time and I accidentally ran into my first ever general. This general just so happened to be afraid of graugs, and thus I was able to finish him off.
That quickly becomes your main objective in the game: figure out what a general’s weaknesses are, and exploit them to finish them off.
There’s also some kind of “nemesis” system, where if some orc kills you they level up and become your nemesis. This can become quite an obstacle, because they gain powerful bodyguards, they become immune to ranged attacks, etc. And I think they might even hunt you. All of these things are quite challenging at first, which is probably when the game is at its best.
So in short it’s well made and it was fun, but I had a significantly better time with other games that came out around the same time like Tomb Raider (2013), Dishonored, DmC: Devil May Cry, and Remember Me. I’d say it’s good but skippable. (But I will check out the sequel sometime. I picked it up as part of the same Humble Bundle…)
Have you tried a title from the Jedi series - Fallen Order or Survivor? I played both of them. Maybe not the best games ever, but enjoyable, in my opinion - at least if you like Star Wars.