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

5. It's Open-World Nature Is Essential

Remember L.A. Noire? It was a game that seemed to have an open-world setting crammed in just for the sake of it. Too many titles saw the likes of GTA's approach to mission design and decided that spreading their mission start-points across a gigantic map somehow made them better - regardless of what little there was in between. Shadow of Mordor is something that specialises in that key ingredient so few open-world titles manage to do well - making going off on tangents and potentially meaningless excursions so damn fun and rewarding. You may be on your way to do a main mission, only to happen across a group of Orcs beating some human prisoners. Upon freeing them you could gain intel on a Warchief further up the ladder, which on the way to them you'll end up activating a quick mini-mission where you're challenged to sneak through an encampment and take out some specific archers, and so on. There's always an icon on your map beckoning you to interact, and with gameplay that seamlessly goes from exploration to tenacious combat at the drop of a few pints of Orc-blood, you'll want to do every one of them.