4.5/5 ★ – MechaniChris's review of Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

So, story time. I used to be REALLY into video games. I would stay in my room all day doing nothing but play games until I went to bed. Then, some time in college, I made a hard pivot into being a cinephile and stopped buying video games for several years. This was mostly due to money and time constraints, combined with dating someone who liked movies but didn’t play games. So aside from games I HAD to play (new Halo, SSB, Mario Kart) I pretty much was unaware of what was going on in games for almost 10 years. CUT TO NOW. In quarantine, I started playing games a lot more. My big project was playing every Mario game, but mostly I was nostalgic for old games I used to like as a kid. This prompted me to seek out a game called Lord of the Rings: Conquest. It wasn’t a great game, but it was a comfort game that I was mostly in the mood for because I just watched the trilogy again. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it anywhere nearby and had to order a copy on eBay. In the meantime, I did find THIS game. I’d never played it, but I had a LotR itch I needed to scratch, and thought this could hold me over for a couple weeks until I got the one I really wanted. Oh my God you guys. What happened in the past ten years? Did games get INCREDIBLE while I wasn’t paying attention? I feel like so many people in the gaming community are jaded by modern gaming that something like this can have such a minor cultural footprint. Look at the score for it! It’s not a great score! I have a friend who told me this game was review bombed because of micro transactions, but coming at it after the dust has settled from all that, it’s absolutely amazing. I was already having a great time powering through Minas Ithil for way too long. The Orc AI was astounding and the gameplay was so much better than what I was used to for these LotR games. THEN I beat the Minas Ithil portion and the actual game opened up to me. I was absolutely dumbfounded. It’s so grand in scope with so many features and abilities. I’m glad they limit you so much in the beginning because it would honestly be too overwhelming all at once. Keep in mind, I never played the previous entry (though I have since purchased it), so I had NO IDEA what the concept of this game even was. I’m sure a lot of people were frustrated by how long it takes for them to let you dominate orcs/beasts, but I was just constantly in awe. This is the game that reinvigorated my interest in games. Also I finally got LotR: Conquest in the mail. It’s fine.