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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor |OT| One Title to rule them all

MC Safety

Member
Meh, I never take neogaf opinions on game stories too seriously; I enjoy the story so far. My favorite are the artifacts that you find in the game, they all play memory voice overs that really add a lot of depth to the story. But a lot of people hate those types of story delivery systems in games, I never minded.

Thanks, man.

This made my day.
 
My friend sent this to me. Priceless.

RIP Douche

Nice video, I should send it to my friend who keeps asking me about the game.

Finished this last night. I liked it, but it does get repetitive. The nemesis system saves it, the personalities and variation in the Uruks makes things interesting. The story itself was kind of a letdown, but it was a solid game.
 
Just got my platinum!

What a great game, my surprise of the year so far.

And by the end of the game you´re badass as f.....

pQRQn6g.jpg
 
Played for about an hour and finished the first main quest (killed an orc...captain?), did a side misson and found some artifacts on the way. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Game looks amazing on my new GTX970.

Is there anything I should know an hour in that isn't obvious?
 

conman

Member
You can't possibly stand up to orc crowds at the start of the game. Run when too many show up. Focus on story missions until you get more powerful.
This is one of my favorite things about the game. There's absolutely no shame in running away! Maybe that's why I've never found the game terribly difficult. When things get tough, I just book it. :)

Is there anything I should know an hour in that isn't obvious?
You won't know what you're doing until you get to the second map area (about halfway through). Key mechanics aren't available until fairly late in your progression. Same things goes for the story. It isn't great at giving you details early on. Just stick with it. And as I said above, don't be afraid to run away if you get overwhelmed by too many or too tough of enemies. Also, despite all the possibilities for combat, don't be fooled: stealth is always the best policy.
 

Levyne

Banned
Played for about an hour and finished the first main quest (killed an orc...captain?), did a side misson and found some artifacts on the way. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Game looks amazing on my new GTX970.

Is there anything I should know an hour in that isn't obvious?

I would just say don't get distracted by side objectives too much early on. You unlock a lot of stuff in the main story (ie, branding) that will make things easier and (hopefully) more fun later.
 
Played for about an hour and finished the first main quest (killed an orc...captain?), did a side misson and found some artifacts on the way. I'm really enjoying it so far.

Game looks amazing on my new GTX970.

Is there anything I should know an hour in that isn't obvious?

Don't be afraid to run away and restrategize mid-battle. You'll need to run away if you want to survive for the first few hours.
 
Yesterday something awesome happened that was no already aware/spoiled.

A Captain with a search/ tracking/ability
in the middle of the night, raining and with other Captains in the zone
dunno if they were part of his search party, but it was awesome an tense

The Nemesis system has potential
 
Oh yeah, I got that WB Games e-mail, I hope that wasn't a spoiler. Even if it's probably obvious
given the lead character's name and I already made the connection
because of it.

My friend sent this to me. Priceless.

RIP Douche

I've run into a few Dushes, I think I had an ongoing fued with one for awhile where he survived a couple times along with one of those orcs with the fire helmet thinging Mosh the Hot-Head or something like that. I killed that fucker at least three times before he stayed dead.

I am about 12 hours in the game and I like it but I think it's way too hard for me to enjoy it a lot.

I can play hard games mind you but I do not like the fact that this game puts you amongst 20-30 enemies and gives you fuck all for crowd control outside of combo abilities, it takes way too many hits to kill someone even on the easiest difficulty. Atleast in Batman you had gadgets and bombs and stuff. You could be fighting two or more captains at once and have a warchief with them too. Plus there is always someone running to call the reinforcements.

All these coupled up with the fact that you have to do challenges such as killing 20 orcs in 2 minutes and do things that basically requires you to attract attention makes it hard. Also the low health and the scarcity of health herbs takes the challenge up a notch too. The strength and weakness is pretty redundant for example having weakness to ranged attacks just means the dude is not invulnerable to it and it takes a small chunk of his health. Having a weakness to stealth takedown just means you can knock some health off but doing the finisher but that's about it. In short the weakness isn't really a weakness but rather a lack of invulnerability.

Even with the fast execution ability, Talion takes way too long to execute which means it is easy for it to get interrupted. Same for interrogation, the wraith would take too long to start speaking his elven phrase to interrogate and even then there is no invulnerability frames to that, more often than not you would just want to weaken the captain quickly and interrogate him for intel so that the goons can leave you alone but if there are like 7-10 enemies on screen that you can be assured that it will never happen and you will need to adopt a strategy of run, hide and ambush. All my missions have been just this really and I've rarely ever finished an encounter by killing everyone like in Batman.

Also you can't just decide to kill everyone using stealth and ranged to clear out the stronghold and then approach your target as enemies seem to reappear. Overall I find that this would have been an amazing game if it didn't ask me to be repetitive because of the difficulty from the very start of the game.

It's meant to be harder at the start because after you get more abilities and some good runes you can wipe out waves of them in seconds and be nearly unkillable with certain runes giving you health back. For a good while I was using two of the X% (added up to either almost or just over 40%) of health gets restored on killing with Flurry, on top of a X% (88% for my current rune) chance to get 25 health on head explosions and another rune for getting health back and stealth kills which for some reason I'm still using. Now I'm just using the head explosion one with the epic sword rune that gives a 33% chance of heads exploding on dead from Wraith Flash or Wraith Burn which combined with other heads exploding still is more than enough to sustain me as long as I don't get too careless. Building up combos because a real non-issue too as you gain abilities, I did perhaps too much fighting in the first area so I had almost everything unlocked aside from things behind missions before I made it to the second area and I can build up high combos quickly without really trying now (which has lead to me getting lazy with countering though I swear there are instances where it's unresponsive) and the higher your combo number is the more damage you can do. I also ended up prioritizing Storm of Urafel and Shadow of Acharn which at least for a time helped immensely with clearing out orcs quickly and taking out captains/warchiefs... Haven't really used it much in the second area because I haven't really needed it... And actually forgetting to make use to it.

TLDR: Eventually the balance will shift dramatically.

Never had an issue with executions and they can't get interrupted once they start unless you mean the killing when they're on the ground stunned and not the actual ability. Those attacks are easy enough to usually counter anyway.
 

Chris_C

Member
Just finished the main story and yeap, they're awful haha.

Now I'm just going to clean up for the plat.



Don't be afraid to run away from combat.


Just to be clear, you can still run around the open world after the main game? I'd just like to know because I've only got to finish hunting and survival missions and turn 5 bodyguards against a warchief to get a plat. I'd like to know if I can finish the story and come back to finish those.
 

BouncyFrag

Member
Just to be clear, you can still run around the open world after the main game? I'd just like to know because I've only got to finish hunting and survival missions and turn 5 bodyguards against a warchief to get a plat. I'd like to know if I can finish the story and come back to finish those.
Yes you can.
 
Alright, I have no idea what the fuck to do.

I've reached a point in the game where I can't progress unless I kill four warchiefs, but they're all blacked out.

I think what I'm supposed to do is interrogate some captains, but how in the fuck am I supposed to do that when there are a million dudes surrounding them at all times? Not to mention that nearly every time I get into a fight with a captain, another captain appears halfway through, and it's pretty much impossible to take on two captains at the same time.

Any help?
 

SxP

Member
Alright, I have no idea what the fuck to do.

I've reached a point in the game where I can't progress unless I kill four warchiefs, but they're all blacked out.

I think what I'm supposed to do is interrogate some captains, but how in the fuck am I supposed to do that when there are a million dudes surrounding them at all times? Not to mention that nearly every time I get into a fight with a captain, another captain appears halfway through, and it's pretty much impossible to take on two captains at the same time.

Any help?

You don't have to interrogate a captain. Look for green diamonds on the map screen. It's either a regular uruk which you can grab and interrogate for intel, a prisoner which you can free and then talk to for intel, or just some intel lying on the ground for you to pick up.
 
A question, there's no way to get the
command ability early on in the game right? The special abilities are all tied to the story missions and we will have to wait till the final few missions to get the command ability right?
 
A question, there's no way to get the
command ability early on in the game right? The special abilities are all tied to the story missions and we will have to wait till the final few missions to get the command ability right?

You get it more like half way through the main story.
 

Dingotech

Member
This is probably a dumb question but once you have dominated a captain how do you command them to attack other captains/warchiefs?

I don't see the option in the army menu?

EDIT - I think I get it now, you have to visit them in person.
 

FHIZ

Member
Finished the game, with 82% completion.

The
last two sections of the game were bad as hell
.

I just beat the game too, and yeah... it's like they gave up at the end.

This is probably a dumb question but once you have dominated a captain how do you command them to attack other captains/warchiefs?

I don't see the option in the army menu?

EDIT - I think I get it now, you have to visit them in person.

You also have to get the ability to command them, it'll be triangle or Y after you dominate them. It's the next story mission after you get the dominate ability I believe.
 
I just started playing this and I only have one question: Do you get enough upgrade points to completely fill out the attributes and abilities trees, or do I need to pick and choose what paths I go down?
 

epmode

Member
I just started playing this and I only have one question: Do you get enough upgrade points to completely fill out the attributes and abilities trees, or do I need to pick and choose what paths I go down?

You can get enough XP or points or whatever to get everything but you have to work at it a bit. Enemy spawns are unlimited, remember.
 

Bydobob

Member
I guess it was inevitable but I'm seeing a few cracks appear in this game. As PHOENIXZERO pointed out above I spent too long fighting in the first section, levelled up quickly, and now I'm kicking too much arse without really trying. Don't get me wrong, the combat system itself is fantastic, its just become too easy too soon.

I'm also not overly convinced how the story sections and missions are segued into the game. You'll be fighting off a mob of Uruk, but once you activate a mission everyone disappears. Day will turn to a rainy night and characters pop out of nowhere. It creates a sense of two worlds existing, the open game world, and the story world. I wish there were more natural encounters such as the first time you meet Ratbag. There he was in the open game world, asking to be released, then your decision to release him would seamlessly transition to the mission proper.

Ah well, game is still effortlessly fun. How can you not enjoy roaming the countryside on 30 foot Graugs and chomping Uruk. Escapism like this is why we play games.
 

30IR

Banned
It is overall a great game, however, the lack of SLI support is appalling. The new "Game Ready" drivers (344.48) has an Nvidia profile but scaling is utter garbage.

I get only around 50FPS @ 4K even though I'm using 4x GTX-Titan Blacks.

Surround doesn't work at all - instant crash when loading the game.

The combat is so awesome - really wish those morons at Ubi would implement a combat system like this in AC.
 
Yeah, fuck this game. I don't want to spend hours killing captains and warchiefs, I just want to advance the fucking plot. And it doesn't help that the combat and stealth are just bad imitations of Batman.

Oh well. Guess this game's going back tomorrow. Glad I bought it used so I can get the full price back.
 
Yeah, fuck this game. I don't want to spend hours killing captains and warchiefs, I just want to advance the fucking plot. And it doesn't help that the combat and stealth are just bad imitations of Batman.

Oh well. Guess this game's going back tomorrow. Glad I bought it used so I can get the full price back.

I enjoyed the stealth aspects in this game, just as much as I did with Arkham! And the combat is so satisfying I would go on a dozen hours branding captains and taking down warchiefs!
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
You don't have to interrogate a captain. Look for green diamonds on the map screen. It's either a regular uruk which you can grab and interrogate for intel, a prisoner which you can free and then talk to for intel, or just some intel lying on the ground for you to pick up.

Are the green Intel locations special? Seems like you can interrogate anyone. Is that just limited to early enemies like Intel on captains, and you need to get green Intel to use on war Chiefs?
 
Are the green Intel locations special? Seems like you can interrogate anyone. Is that just limited to early enemies like Intel on captains, and you need to get green Intel to use on war Chiefs?

Green intel markers will reveal the warchief or captains weaknesses as well as the location, whereas simply interrogating regular orcs just reveals their location.
 
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