I killed the beast with a couple of slow-motion arrow strikes to even the playing field. The war chief himself had flunkies on both sides. There were archers on the balconies above. With all the points under my control, it was finally time to take on the war chief himself, a nasty brute who rides a sharp-toothed caragor into battle. I killed the first two, decapitating one and setting the other on fire with an explosive barrel, and then mind controlled the other, meaning he joined the fight as an allied platoon leader. Luckily, my own platoon leaders are there to help me in a pinch, keeping off the enemy grunts off me while I perform a duel with the lieutenant at each point. To take over a fortress you have to claim three control points, all of which are usually guarded by the warchief's lieutenants, specialized units with more health and abilities that are much harder to take down than your standard grunts. It didn't take long before I was bringing down armored units with a flurry of moves. Fighting functions primarily the same as it did in the original game, with a focus on rhythm more than anything else. We tore through the fortress like wildfire, ripping enemies to literal pieces with sword slashes and arrows. These units allow you to break down walls at various points in the fortress' defenses to gain entry and provide support from afar.ДЄs someone with hours of experience with Mordor's combat, I decided to try and do a straightforward assault on the fortress, blowing through the gates with a berserker. A pre-battle menu gave me the ability to arm my platoon leaders with special units, like creatures carrying catapults, balrogs, and bomb-strapped berserkers.

As is expected with the series, each platoon leader had their own respective personalities, like the cannibal who had toes and arms sticking out of a messenger bag and who spoke in rhymes. During the demo, I was given my own squad of friendly Uruk, controlled by protagonist Talion's will-bending powers, and each of them had their own selectable platoons I could customize before battle. I recently got some hands-on time with the game and glimpsed how the Nemesis system has evolved and what it's like to try and take on a war chief in his Uruk fortress. Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel to Shadow of Mordor, is nearing its August release date.

Shadow of mordor the messenger