Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a great game, but one that fails to explain itself properly. Thrusting the player into one of the most hostile open-worlds in recent memory, glancing through online forums reveals that many are finding the game to be off-putting within its first couple of hours, due to its high learning curve and penchant for throwing insurmountable waves of enemies at protagonist Talion, leading to multiple frustrating deaths.
However, despite it giving an admittedly poor first impression, Shadow of Mordor eventually opens up to reveal itself to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding games of the year, and one that doesn’t deserve to be ignored due to its initial disregard for helpfully introducing players to the mechanics of its violent world.
While Shadow of Mordor is no Dark Souls, it is similarly obtuse when it comes to laying down the fundamentals of its gameplay. As such, we’ve devised a guide to help prevent you from dying over and over again, which should hopefully ensure that you persevere and learn to appreciate perhaps the biggest sleeper hit of the year.
Note: All screenshots are taken from the early stages of the game, so there are no spoilers here.
Don’t always rely on head-to-head combat
Stealth is made to seem like an afterthought in Shadow of Mordor, but in actuality it’s your greatest strength.
Shadow of Mordor‘s Batman Arkham-esque combat is a huge component of its gameplay, though you could be forgiven for thinking that every encounter you have with the enemy Uruks should devolve into fisticuffs and swordplay. Unless you stumble upon a group of enemies who have strayed far away from a stronghold and therefore do not have the luxury of calling for backup, when you decide to face the vicious denizens of Mordor head-on you’ll often be alarmingly outnumbered.
In other action/adventure game of its ilk this isn’t so much of an issue, as you’re often placed in the shoes of a one-man army who can swiftly kill enemies by the dozen. However, this isn’t the case with Talion, as trying to take down a group of enemies is surprisingly difficult given their differing attacks – some will throw spears forcing you to quickly dodge roll out of the way, some will have impenetrable shields while others require you to “Wraith punch” them in order to lower their defences.
Shoot a hive of Morgai flies down and cause chaos.
If you are required to launch into combat, then you should carefully form a plan of action. Each stronghold is littered with various traps you can use to your advantage, such as barrels you can explode, Morgai fly hives you can shoot down and bait you can drop to lure in beastly Caragors. “Attracting” enemies should also be high on your list of priorities, as Uruks are generally stupid (we’ll get to this later) and can be picked off easily without their comrades even knowing that you were the culprit.
Approaching each scenario cautiously will immediately reduce your likelihood of dying, something which the game fails to explain in its opening hours despite it being absolutely crucial to progressing in its story.
Take advantage of stupid Uruks
Such a discrete hiding place…
In the Lord of the Rings mythos, Uruks are essentially stronger and more competent Orcs. That doesn’t mean they’re any more intelligent, though.
The stupidity of the enemy AI in Shadow of Mordor helps to make the game a whole bunch easier than it would be if they were as smart as a whip, with them completely forgetting they’d ever seen you if you run out of their line of sight for a few seconds. You can cause as much mayhem as you please, but if you drop hang from a wall that they’re on the other side of, then Talion’s reign of terror in their stronghold will be but a thing of the past.
Obviously, you should use their foolishness to your advantage. If you’ve got yourself into a particularly sticky situation and find yourself bombarded by multiple Uruks, standing around and taking them all on will inevitably lead to your death. What you must instead do is clamber up the nearest vantage point, wait until all of the icons above their head turn from red to yellow (which means that they’re still looking for you, but don’t really have a clue where you are) and then proceed to pick them off again.
Feel free to fire away at traps. They’ll never guess it was you.
Their stupidity also means that you needn’t worry about distressing them with explosions, traps and such. If you simply leave the area you were standing in when you set off a trap they won’t for a second consider that the perpetrator of it was Talion, and will simply carry on with their day after watching their fellow Uruks die in front of them.
Never launch into battle with a tough enemy you know nothing about
Go on the hunt for intel and then hunt for Captains. You’ll then find yourself bumping them off with ease.
As will have been highlighted to you in the game, you learn of a Captain’s identity by interrogating Uruks, but can then only discover their strengths and weakness by finding/interrogating intel (the green marks on your map). While a lot of the lower-level Captains can be defeated by taking a risk and trying out everything on them, more powerful Captains are much more difficult to put down if you know nothing of them.
Get to know your enemy if you want to survive.
Each Captain is different. Some are afraid of fire, while others are vulnerable to stealth and combat finishers. Others become petrified at the sight of a Caragor, while many can fell those beasts with ease. Going toe-to-toe with one of them without doing your homework will result in a needlessly lengthy game of trial and error, where you throw all of your tools at them in the hope that something will work. You can multiply this experience by ten when you’re fighting one of the game’s harder enemies, such as the Warchiefs.
Don’t ignore the side-missions
If you’re the kind of person who usually ignores side-missions in favor of continuing to pursue the main story, then you’re going to end up feeling a little underpowered in Shadow of Mordor. Completing side-missions will see you leveling up your Power and Mirian (the game’s currency) faster, which will be crucial to your progress.
Power allows you to give yourself new abilities while Mirian will allow you to increase Talion’s health, bow shots and rune slots. You’ll need as much help as you can get if you want to survive in Mordor, and improving upon Talion’s list of skills is a great way to do this. Side-missions are hugely important, then, and should absolutely not be glossed over. They’re also quite fun, too, offering an array of timed challenges and the like that break the pace of the game’s sneaky/action gameplay.
