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

lol branding captains is fun. Is there any way to make murders not just 'executions' all the time? Is it to do with power levels or is it random?

i've accidentally killed my captain by swinging wildly by accident more than once >.<"

It's just a matter of getting their lifebar to 0. Your attacks, your enemies attacks, and environmental effects can all reduce the health of a branded ally... so sometimes you have to be careful with them. Definitely avoid "activating" them in huge crowds (such as those in alarmed strongholds) because they'll almost certainly get overwhelmed without support, or simply lose their life in the chaotic fray that ensues. And never throw them over cliffs.. I've learned first-hand that it's bad for their health.
I'm so sorry my precious slaves... I only meant to command you, not kill you.
 
why does the game keep getting me a main objective to brand 5 warchiefs. I did it, nothing happened, so I killed them all for the power vacuum achievement. Now it is telling me to brand them all again
 
For one of the war chiefs, it's asking me to do 5 combat executions.

Which are those?

I'm doing the ones where you charge your counter and press triangle+circle, but they are counting.
 

Ferrio

Banned
Hey guys, how do you zipline down a rope in this game? I've seen it in commercials but can't figure it out.

For PS....X. You gotta be in the proper place though, and sometimes that place seems like a couple feet away from where you think it'd be. The prompt will show if you're in the right place.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLIQHs2RYE

has this been posted? Pretty much gona have to agree with everything he says =[

Except he proves himself wrong repeatedly in the video.

  • "You can just spam right click and left click" - Immediately shows that that isn't true against 3 regular grunts.
  • "Weakeness and Strengths and Intel are all irrelevant because you can just spam right click and left click on Captains and Warchiefs" - Not only is this not true, he shows it isn't true against both Defenders and Berserkers, who aren't even Captains or Warchiefs.
  • "I play games at an elite level" and "this game was incredibly easy" - Mentioned he died multiple times in the first zone.
  • "Terrain has no tactical bearing" - Immediately shows that isn't true and assassinates an orc from above.
  • "You can just sneak around everyone" - Immediately gets spotted.
  • "Runes are a waste of time" - Doesn't have any good runes and only one of the Epic ones.
  • "You need to grind for runes" - Not true, I have full Epics on Sword and Dagger before finishing the main story without grinding. I'm going to assume he hasn't unlocked and/or used Death Threats yet.
  • "You can easily just take out an entire camp" - Immediately gets spotted from stealth, countered by a Berserker, then says "You just jump over these guys" only to be immediately proven wrong since Berserkers actually need to be stunned unless you hit them when they are already stunned or staggered.

Now, some of the underlying criticism he is very poorly trying to make have some validity, but since his delivery of these points is so mired in elitist bullshit, exaggerations, and outright wrong information it is no surprise that almost no one gives a crap about what he has to say.
 

Corgi

Banned
It's just a matter of getting their lifebar to 0. Your attacks, your enemies attacks, and environmental effects can all reduce the health of a branded ally... so sometimes you have to be careful with them. Definitely avoid "activating" them in huge crowds (such as those in alarmed strongholds) because they'll almost certainly get overwhelmed without support, or simply lose their life in the chaotic fray that ensues. And never throw them over cliffs.. I've learned first-hand that it's bad for their health.
I'm so sorry my precious slaves... I only meant to command you, not kill you.

I mean the conflict scenario. Duels are fun but 90% I send my dude to fight someone the scenario is 'execution' where I pretty Much have to save my loser captain.

Wish you can't target your branded guys with combat kills. It's just hard to select on the fray.


Also missed opportunity. Wish when your commanded noname guy finishes a captain, he gets promoted.
 

negitoro7

Member
For PS....X. You gotta be in the proper place though, and sometimes that place seems like a couple feet away from where you think it'd be. The prompt will show if you're in the right place.

Ah see it now, not sure how I missed it.

I can't believe I didn't know I can do a triangle+circle execution when my combo meter turns red. Kept waiting for the actual prompt on screen to pull it off.
 

Deadman

Member
Got the game today, seems fun.


I'm lucky cargors cant rank up and become captains because I've died twice to them already.
 

VanWinkle

Member
Except he proves himself wrong repeatedly in the video.

  • "You can just spam right click and left click" - Immediately shows that that isn't true against 3 regular grunts.
  • "Weakeness and Strengths and Intel are all irrelevant because you can just spam right click and left click on Captains and Warchiefs" - Not only is this not true, he shows it isn't true against both Defenders and Berserkers, who aren't even Captains or Warchiefs.
  • "I play games at an elite level" and "this game was incredibly easy" - Mentioned he died multiple times in the first zone.
  • "Terrain has no tactical bearing" - Immediately shows that isn't true and assassinates an orc from above.
  • "You can just sneak around everyone" - Immediately gets spotted.
  • "Runes are a waste of time" - Doesn't have any good runes and only one of the Epic ones.
  • "You need to grind for runes" - Not true, I have full Epics on Sword and Dagger before finishing the main story without grinding. I'm going to assume he hasn't unlocked and/or used Death Threats yet.
  • "You can easily just take out an entire camp" - Immediately gets spotted from stealth, countered by a Berserker, then says "You just jump over these guys" only to be immediately proven wrong since Berserkers actually need to be stunned unless you hit them when they are already stunned or staggered.

lol perfect. So true.
 
lol branding captains is fun. Is there any way to make murders not just 'executions' all the time? Is it to do with power levels or is it random?

i've accidentally killed my captain by swinging wildly by accident more than once >.<"

Yeah. I don't know how you make it different, but I believe I had a murder mission turn into an ambush and not an execution.
 

DrBo42

Member
Except he proves himself wrong repeatedly in the video.

  • "You can just spam right click and left click" - Immediately shows that that isn't true against 3 regular grunts.
  • "Weakeness and Strengths and Intel are all irrelevant because you can just spam right click and left click on Captains and Warchiefs" - Not only is this not true, he shows it isn't true against both Defenders and Berserkers, who aren't even Captains or Warchiefs.
  • "I play games at an elite level" and "this game was incredibly easy" - Mentioned he died multiple times in the first zone.
  • "Terrain has no tactical bearing" - Immediately shows that isn't true and assassinates an orc from above.
  • "You can just sneak around everyone" - Immediately gets spotted.
  • "Runes are a waste of time" - Doesn't have any good runes and only one of the Epic ones.
  • "You need to grind for runes" - Not true, I have full Epics on Sword and Dagger before finishing the main story without grinding. I'm going to assume he hasn't unlocked and/or used Death Threats yet.
  • "You can easily just take out an entire camp" - Immediately gets spotted from stealth, countered by a Berserker, then says "You just jump over these guys" only to be immediately proven wrong since Berserkers actually need to be stunned unless you hit them when they are already stunned or staggered.

Now, some of the underlying criticism he is very poorly trying to make have some validity, but since his delivery of these points is so mired in elitist bullshit, exaggerations, and outright wrong information it is no surprise that almost no one gives a crap about what he has to say.

Let's not act like the game isn't easy. But I wouldn't go so far to call the combat just QTEs. Game really needed some sort of difficulty option, waiting for the Orcs to level or sacrificing yourself to them isn't very fun IMO.
 
Let's not act like the game isn't easy. But I wouldn't go so far to call the combat just QTEs. Game really needed some sort of difficulty option, waiting for the Orcs to level or sacrificing yourself to them isn't very fun IMO.

It's easy until it's not.

Difficulty modes would just exacerbate the "wow its easy/wow its hard" split in opinion. It wouldn't really add anything more than a tedious increase in challenge unless they did something beyond traditional "more hp / more damage" bonuses for the enemies.

If they cut out the story missions and made it some sort of ironman challenge... say, also without counter prompts or something... that would be interesting.

so can you buy all the skills and upgrades, or do you have to plan out your character?

If you spend enough time playing you can get them all. Just get what you need the most right at the moment and don't worry too much about the long-term.
 

jett

D-Member
Just finished. I'd say the Nemesis system deserves a game entirely suited around it. Kind of a lame end to the game.
 

Levyne

Banned
I think only Y+B is the execution, the others ( trigger plus x on grounded enemy, last part of wraith flurry) are just other combat finishers.

Edit: Also the combat brand.
 
I was having trouble getting outnumbered and killed all the time, plus the same Uruk, Flesh Gobbler or whatever, kept showing up and humiliating me. I spent a while running around and I'm starting to get a handle on sneaking, attracting and stealth kills (sneaking is your friend). I'm getting much better at combat and I finally won some fights. I interrogated a bunch of Wyrms and cleared my first side mission. I'm about 4 and a half hours in.

Oh, then I hunted down Flesh Gobbler, made him my ever-loving bitch.... then put a sword through his mouth.

This game is awesome.
 

BigDug13

Member
I was having trouble getting outnumbered and killed all the time, plus the same Uruk, Flesh Gobbler or whatever, kept showing up and humiliating me. I spent a while running around and I'm starting to get a handle on sneaking, attracting and stealth kills (sneaking is your friend). I'm getting much better at combat and I finally won some fights. I interrogated a bunch of Wyrms and cleared my first side mission. I'm about 4 and a half hours in.

Oh, then I hunted down Flesh Gobbler, made him my ever-loving bitch.... then put a sword through his mouth.

This game is awesome.

Do some story stuff. You get to unlock some really useful abilities.
 

kamicowzi

Banned
I finally unlocked death threats and it paid off handsomely. Issued my very first threat against Pugrish the Poet (bastard rhymed while he killed me and always called me sweet). I found him at an execution, and hacked his health away and the punk tries to flee. Oh, hell no. I chased him down, chopped his head off, and got a sweet epic rune that gives me 50% more sword damage!
 
Well, that ending was... interesting.
Sauron sucks at fighting forever, how was anybody ever afraid of this punk?

Sandbox is definitely awesome in this, will probably keep manipulating just that. The nemesis system is just begging to be expanded upon in another game, like some kind of evil overlord styled thing where you corrupt heroes and use them to raid castles.
 

friday

Member
Branding enemies is the best part of this game. I know have a handful of captains that I can do what ever with. Love playing in this game.
 

mstevens

Member
Oh my god that was satisfying.

Trying to kill the 4 war chiefs as a part of the story (and then hopefully get the "kill 5 war chiefs before an uruk replaces them" trophy). Keep in mind, I don't have very many combat upgrades at all at this point. The third one (Luga the Relentless) is immune to combat, combat finishers, stealth, ranged and beasts. Only weakness is fire. I do the "Kill 20 uruks in 2 minutes" or whatever, which was tense, and then he kills me but thankfully has some attribute where he lets me live. I chase him to a different fortress and this time I have to survive waves of alerted enemies (35) which was also intense since I couldn't run.

He comes out.... I try fighting him for forever but nothing is working. I almost died like 5 times. Then, I see a fire pit in a different part of the fortress surrounded by dozens of archers and other uruks that make it a risky move. I sprint over there, dodging arrows left and right. This #^$& follows me over there, I turn and blast the fire pit, chase him down and put my knife through his skull.


So good.
 
My only complaint so far with the game is that it gets a little easy, I wish they added different difficulty settings.

It's kind of sad that the hardest part of the game is the first couple hours. At first you have so little health and you don't have your full moveset and you probably don't know the combat system very well. A few hours later you have some important upgrades and understand the combat better and everything is much easier. The new enemies that are introduced along the way don't add all that much difficulty and the game just feels easier and easier as you get more powerful.

A lot of games have this reverse difficult curve, actually.
 

Levyne

Banned
It's kind of sad that the hardest part of the game is the first couple hours. At first you have so little health and you don't have your full moveset and you probably don't know the combat system very well. A few hours later you have some important upgrades and understand the combat better and everything is much easier. The new enemies that are introduced along the way don't add all that much difficulty and the game just feels easier and easier as you get more powerful.

A lot of games have this reverse difficult curve, actually.

Certainly seems like a hard thing to balance. I remember Force Unleashed being criticized a bit for putting in super-spongy enemies in the late game so you "never felt like you were getting stronger." But then you don't want to trivialize the game either.

I should try out the Tests of ____ challenges when I get a chance tomorrow. Maybe racing the clock will keep things fresh!
 

Sanctuary

Member
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LLIQHs2RYE

has this been posted? Pretty much gona have to agree with everything he says =[

Yeah, it's pretty accurate. Although what is up with the way he's controlling Talion? He looks like he's running around drunk. He also admits never playing the Batman games, and he's not doing timed attacks, Wraith Stun or any combat finisher. The combat is extremely simple, yet he's making it look way more boring than it actually is until very late game.

I wouldn't even really consider the Arkham games challenging even on he hardest setting. I only ever died when I got cocky and did something stupid, then got The Bat shot right in the face and watched him die.

Have yet to play Lords of Shadow 2, working on my Paladin run on LoS 1 after a break, but honestly the hardest part of that whole game was the damn DLC final boss. That bastard can kick the fattest rock he can find.

Does this game not have a difficulty setting? I don't know if I ever found it.

I'm a masochist with games though. Go hard or go home.

No difficulty setting, but it's still fun, but it started to wear out its welcome for me near the end. You're right that the Batman games are not technically "hard" on the hard difficulty, but I'd say it's actually harder than this game. Yet the combat in SoM was more satisfying longer for me at least. Then again, I think part of that is because I was anticipating some kind of difficulty spike that never happened.

And what's a Paladin run? You should be doing a no upgrade Paladin run.

This happens with every game. People can't help themselves with the initial hype.

I was actually somewhat trashing the game before release, mentioning how pathetically easy it looked, but said maybe they were just playing on a casual difficulty or something. I was told that the developers claimed to be playing on "the lowest setting" and that they were just good at the combat. Lo and behold, that "setting" was actually locked in since you can't actually choose anything higher, but I gave it a shot anyway. I don't regret spending $35 on it at all, but I still wish it did have a difficulty slider. Spawning 1,000 orcs from an alarm isn't the way to go about it.

Thousand_orcs_cover.jpg
 
I've played the game for about 12 hours now (just got to
the other map
), and it sure is a lot of fun. Running around, sneaking, climbing, stabbing orcs, slicing orcs, everything just works and none of the systems are frustrating which is rare for an open world game like this. I'll keep going at least until I'm done with the story, though this is one of the rare games that I might still go back to after that.

I just feel bad for killing one particular captain, <something> the Friendly, he seemed like such a nice fella. I killed him before even checking his name, and he hasn't come back like some of them :(

Lorm the Friendly was my biggest nemesis. Probably died 15 times against him, so frustrating, but all the more gratifying when I finally got him. Such an amazing game.
 

BouncyFrag

Member
So I've killed this one captain at least 3 or 4 times. Each time he comes back he's in an ever bigger mess than before. This most recent iteration is awesome:
Dl3_Ut0_BBH8_Ue.jpg

I love details like this. It was probably fashioned by whatever the orc doctor (do they even have doctors?) could find in his immediate vicinity. Whoever is patching up these guys clearly doesn't give a fuck.
 
Can't wait to finally get my hands on my PS4 copy tomorrow, been fun reading all the Nemesis storeis you guys have posted, hopefully have some of my own soon!
 

Mentok

Banned
Most definitely going to platinum this game....the regenerating nemesis system makes hunting orcs too much damn fun! I just got the poison ability and failed to poison a feast... now some grunt is a captain. I'll get my revenge!
 
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