Middle-earth™: Shadow of War™

Shadow of War is bigger and longer than its predecessor, basically too long or rather too slow? Progression takes forever. And it completely outstay its welcome with its limited and always the same short gameplay loop. In contrast, the first game, Shadow of Mordor, is more enjoyable, especially once you unlock enough combat skills. You literally become a hot knife cutting through hordes of buttery Orcs. To the point where you want even more Orcs to spawn and run towards you. Unfortunately, this feeling is lacking in Shadow of War, even with everything unlocked. At some point the Orc Chiefs become outright annoying and you may want to avoid fighting them. Because they turn into pure Gimmick Fights that repeat constantly. This Chief can't be killed in melee, the other one needs to be attacked from behind only, that one needs stealth attacks or ranged attacks. Because they have complete damage immunity otherwise. There are ways around it of course. But it becomes a hassle after a while, because its a repeating loop. Additionally, all the mini games have time limits and are a low point in the game. They feel like cheap design choices and can be annoying to play through. Instead of meaningful side quests that contribute to character development or lore, the game relies on these repetitive time challenges. Overall, if you enjoy high scores and challenges, you may find these aspects of the game fun. However, for others, they may detract from the overall experience.

The obvious: Screenshots on the game-card are rather flattering, with 3 out of 6 being not at all what the game looks and feels like at any point. The camera follows on your shoulder, so this is not real gameplay. The good: This game picks up where Shadow of Mordor left off. All the original gameplay is back. Most of the story is well told, your wraith friend is as angry as always. Dialogs are sketchy as always. If you liked the first one, or are a fan of Assassin's Creed, which the series takes some inspiration from, you will enjoy the game. A lot. The bad: As its predecessor and similar games of the genre, it is heavily repetitive. While the idea of converting enemy Captains to fight for your cause and take control of enemy castles was and still is an insane level of fun, the implementation is dragging its feet. You constantly carry out the same set of tasks, the same auto-generated mission, and hunt for the same set of collectibles. And in case this wasn't enough, your allies can be overthrown or rebel and castles can be taken back, forcing you to return to an already completed map to do it all again. As amazing as the game concepts are, they are repeated to the point of frustration. The ugly: This installment heavily relied on online content and did include microtransactions at release. Even though neither are present in the GOG version, the menus, quest markers, and "ads" remain unchanged. The game is constantly nagging you with flashy MMORPG-esque warnings about things that happen in your absence, flashing you stuff you could buy, and taunting you with online missions and PvP battles that are removed from the game. In short, it feels like an intentionally crippled title. And even though Shadow of War is arguably better off without those MMO-abominations, it serves as an unwelcome reminder that the original game used to be a poorly disguised cash grab. In other words: If you haven't tried Shadow of Mordor, you may find it to be the more polished title.

If you liked the first, chances are you'll probably like the second*. *Although this definitely feels less tight than the first game, and good lord is the targeting system shit as ever. You wanted to use execute on the only captain around for miles? Nah, the game targets an enemy thats not even on screen instead. 10/10 target priority system. If I had a dime every time that happened, I'd had enough money to give out 10 free copies of this game, while buying it at full price. Too bad you can't just target a specific enemy while in bullet time and then use the ability, but that would make too much sense. The parkour system is also shite as ever, as with the first game, it's more or less Assassin's Creed parkour system, but less responsive and accurate. Talion will be doing the stupidest shit and clinging onto everything you don't want him to at the worst time possible and with the force of a rare earth magnet. Game gets real grindy towards the end, the final act becomes a real sink for the game's currency. I was fine for most of it, even kept getting lucky from my captains saving my ass like 3 fortress quests in a row, but then became literally broke betime the last fortress defense quest. Of course I end up dying from some stupid bullshit, probably from a captain that hit like a truck and with the No Chance attribute, and then said f*** it and changed it to easy at the last literal second. About half the game is fortress attack/defend quests. I get it's part of the plot of the game and such, but holy shit does it get old. First game was better. And GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY THAT 100 GIG FILE SIZE. I thought Cyberpunk had a big file size. That's a bit absurd for a 2017 game. Does nobody care about compression anymore? It would certainly help if you didn't prerender 90% of the cutscenes for no reason. Let me guess, bloating the game's size is to deter piracy, am I right? Could be that they just don't give a shit, either is equally likely.

This game is an 8/10 for me, as it has 2 major problems: -The splitting headache inducing "plot" that breaks Tolkien's lore in every way imaginable and wouldn't even make sense if it wasn't borrowing from said lore. -The absolutely unfair encounters that can and will randomly occur to disrupt the flow of the game. Maybe it's my fault for playing on Nemesis for my first playthrough, but according to the difficulty description, it is the setting that will let you experience everything the Nemesis system has to offer. Now, onto the positive things: The gameplay has been expanded in every conceivable way, with gear and skill progression being revamped, QoL improvements across the board and most notably more than double the number of playable regions. The biggest change is the new siege mechanic which is introduced very early on, where you use your wachiefs and captains to capture and defend each region's fort. It's great that the GOG version comes without Denuvo, but I would rather the online features would be emulated or removed outright rather than giving me an error message when trying to activate them. They're not integral to the experience tho, thankfully, and thus it's not a big deal that they're not working. It's just irritating. Now, the DLC isn't great. I would only buy the expansion pass on sale, as Eltariel's story was - albeit a nice change of pace - completed 100% in just 4 h. And the tribes don't add a new region each, they're just plastered into the existing 5 regions. The DLCs feel very tagged on, despite the fact that the main story leaves a hook for both story DLCs to latch onto. In the end, you're not missing anything by not having experienced them.

So it's assassin's creed with their counter based combat and having to listen to long arse cut scenes mid combat with a LOTR theme. The jump mechanics (or lack there of) of sleeping dogs. As in you can't jump willy nilly you can only jump jumpable objects and you better believe that's going to make for some awkward running into walls and not leaping off ledges when you want to which leads to swift death by the orcs chasing you. But as that doesn't impact the game much I guess eh? It's interesting not to have a save game and just roll with dying all the time. Spawning is also fairly broken, you might clear the area for a mission and be innocently looking at where you ended up and suddenly the map repopualtes and you're in the middle of a orc camp. Or you're just instakilled. Did I mention the long arse cut scenes? Like every death (alright incentive not to die) or any time a captain sees you. I just don't get why the whole world slows down (well obviously otherwise we'd die in the conversation) just to listen to the green skin ramble on. No it's not racist to call them greenskins they started it by calling me a pink skin.