14 DAY TRIAL // Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is out for all the world to enjoy, and if we are to look at its review scores and at the hordes of gamers having a blast with it, it's most likely going to stay with us for a while.
There are a lot of impressive elements to the open-world action adventure video game, but the ability to chain together masterful attacks and parkour in order to get combo scores that are almost over 9000 is perhaps the most astounding one of all.
The video game follows the story of Talion, a ranger guarding the Black Gate, who is ambushed by Sauron's troops and is killed together with his family. In a strange twist of fate, his spirit connects to an ancient Wraith who shared a similar fortune, the one and only Celebrimor, the forger of the Rings of Power.
The duo shares the same body, and the ranger's cunning combat moves are enhanced by a slew of wraith abilities, making the usual sneaking and brawling action seen in similar open-world titles much more exciting.
In addition to this, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor also adds some depth to the campaign through the Nemesis system, a feature that enables you to track various orc captains and glean information regarding their strengths and weaknesses, and even manipulate them into doing your bidding, in your quest for revenge.
One combo chain to rule them all
The game received a lot of praise for its engaging combat system, similar to the one in the Batman Arkham series of video games, featuring attacks, parries, counterattacks and finishers, but nobody expected things to get out of hand the way they did in the video below.
YouTube user Rabbit's Respawn shows how combos can be chained all across the map and built up to incredibly high scores, his own personal best being over 400, which seems insane.
Of course, not everyone can pull it off, as it requires mechanical perfection on your part, but also some pretty specific abilities and runes, ones that enable you to move hastily across the map, extending the combo timer, in order to get from one pack of orcs to the next in a timely fashion.
The video shows just how to pull the insane combo scores off, and delivers some handy pointers for what to do against specific opponents, and how to make judicious use of the Shadow Strike skill to quickly navigate from one place to the next.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is currently available for Windows PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 edition scheduled to come out on November 18 in North America and November 21 in Europe.
