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

4. The Nemesis System

The one core feature that's completely unique about Shadow's setup is the idea that every single Orc enemy in the game could become your main antagonist, should they be able to fell you in battle. Where in Assassin's Creed you felt pretty happy diving into the biggest sprawl you could find and Jackie Chan'ing you way out of it again, in Middle-earth although this is possible, chances are one of your many bloodthirsty enemies will bring you down instead. What's brilliant though is they'll then do a number of things from screaming abuse your face to walking away knowing you're helpless to get up, and then bang - it's over to you to track them down across the world, Red Dead-style upon your resurrection. Oh did we not mention? You have infinite lives as your fate is tied to your seemingly immortal Elven friend. Handy, that.

In addition whatever rank this Orc was who brought you down will be given a promotion alongside most likely armouring up, leaving you to grab one of the other specific enemies in the world to learn exactly how to take them down. Each enemy has different stats and ways to enact your revenge, so upon preparing for vengeance it could be as easy as planning the perfect stealth kill, a poisoning, decapitation or an arrow straight through the eye from afar. It's always different, and depending on the many factors from how they beat you to what you're attempting to do and your standing in the world itself, hundreds of individual lines of dialogue bring every showdown to life perfectly.