3/5 ★ – stephenhill777's review of Middle-earth: Shadow of War.

If I had one complaint about Middle Earth: Shadow of War, it would be that it has almost no identity. A fairly unique flaw, considering it's based on one of the most recognizable, and bankable, franchises of all time! And yet, it doesn't feel remotely like Lord of the Rings, either the books nor the movies. The moment to moment gameplay is as good as expected, following on from the previous game. Hack 'n slashing balances nicely with sneaking around and free running up castle walls. And the Nemesis system, which turns the hordes of mindless orc grunts into a fully functioning hierarchy, makes for a far more engaging system than most. The problem is that each gameplay loop gets weaker, the further it is from your immediate actions. Almost every map is completed once you overthrow the main fortress, which gets easier the more commander-in-chief orcs you defeat. That's fun enough in its own right, but it never feels like it's building towards anything except the end credits. The story feels like one incredibly drawn out epilogue to the previous game which, lest you forget, ended with Talion deciding to bring the fight to Sauron himself. And this games ends on more or less the exact same note, albeit with an obscenely drawn out end-game that is clearly in place to encourage players to engage in the equally obscene micro-transactions (which, thankfully, have been retroactively nullified. All DLC is now free, following a patch applied in 2018). The major narrative difference here is that Celebrimbor (Talion's elvish Patronus that lets him jump really high), has made a new ring, a nice ring, one that will cancel out Sauron's bad ring. And this ring is stolen by Shelob, who is no longer a giant spider but a sexy lady, something that must have been buried pretty deep in Tolkien's appendices. It's a lazy attempt to pad out a game that doesn't have much story hanging off its bones, and has even less in the way of stakes. There are also limited appearances of several prominent Ringwraiths, all of whom the game expects us to be able to remember and distinguish between. And perhaps most bizarrely, Gollum shows up for exactly one mission in which he guides Talion from one point to another and then disappears for the rest of the game. The slack ideally should be picked up by the new, original characters, but they're a milk toast bunch, the lot of them. There's an elf assassin and a lady knight from Gondor, both of whom I thought were the same person until one literally walked in stage right after the former exited stage left. To me, this suggests the game director was aware of the problem, but not bothered enough by it to ask for some kind of rewrite. And there's also a token black character who, admittedly, is better characterized than anyone else, but only in his DLC. The fact that he does so little in the main game stings. There's even some kind of forest god who contrives a reason for you to fight a Balrog, though one suspects this was in order to have something flashy to put in the games trailers. It all feels like a greatest hits of Middle-Earth, with no consistency, and no reason for us to care about what happens. It is, ultimately, up to the orcs to make this game worth picking up and, luckily, they manage it pretty well. The Nemesis system remains a fascinating gameplay mechanic, and the orcs bring an element of levity that is sorely needed in such a dour game. Giving the majority of them cockney accents was a canny decision, the playful aggression serving their characters well. They have an annoying habit of making a little speech every time you encounter a toughie, but that aside, it's a gold star of a combat system. It has improved since the previous game, the nuances of which bring a lot of organic story-telling to the table. Not enough to carry the game, but much better than nothing. Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is essentially a bucket of popcorn. Few people crave it, fewer still reminisce on how delicious it was. But put it in someone's hands, and they'll find it difficult to resist in the moment.