Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor - 10 Reasons It's Your First Essential Next-Gen Title

7. Combat Is Incredible

The Arkham series did it first, and Sleeping Dogs did it with environmental-destruction for good measure, but nobody has done the so-called 'Batman combat' system with bucketloads of gore and brutality quite yet. Enter Shadow of Mordor, and the inclusion of everything from special-move decapitations to slitting throats and even just popping dudes' heads with your bare hands. Yes, that's how powerful you'll become over the course of unlocking your Elven buddy's full potential - and each new animation has just the right amount of application and weight in the field to feel incredibly powerful when you get everything down. The majority of encounters have at their core the Batman-style attack, counter, stun and evade buttons, but on top of this you'll gain access to directional throws, interrogations, ranged attacks and floor-finishers - among a bunch of one-use moves you can pull off should you combo meter go high enough. Our favourite combination though? Choosing the 'Brutalize' command on an Orc to send his companions running in terror, only to target one of the retreaters from afar before instantly zipping across in a blur of spectral rage to take their head off in one swift slow-motion fatality. It's sublime.