head to head
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is execution, and it is a single point.

Execution · Practiced Mastery
A co-op shoot-em-up where coordinating ship stations and learning enemy patterns determines survival.

Optimization · Practiced Mastery
Open-world action game where procedurally generated orc captains remember your encounters.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime leans Execution (Practiced Mastery); Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor leans Optimization (Practiced Mastery).
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Rotating ship stations and aiming cannons requires fast, precise control
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Counter-timing combat and stealth execution
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
No adaptive opponent - enemies follow scripted wave patterns
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Nemesis orcs remember you but remain mappable scripts
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Enemy waves and power-up drops introduce meaningful randomness
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Procedural captains with hidden strengths and weaknesses
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Optimal station rotation and shield positioning are learnable strategies
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Intel gathering and exploiting known weaknesses solves fights
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.