Middle-Earth: Shadow of War
PC, PS4, XO | $99 | WWW.SHADOWOFWAR.COM Sevig thû úan.
The first MiddleEarth game, Shadow of Mordor, released during the launch window of the current console generation, and probably benefited a lot from that. It boasted an interesting novelty in the form of the Nemesis system — basically an emergent approach to warmongering, which had enemies remember you and behave according to your past actions. But apart from this very clever system, it was a fairly drab open-world action game. Decent, but a little uninspiring.
Shadow of War does address this last point — it’s a much more varied and colourful game than what came before, but it’s still beholden to the colour palette of the grimmest areas of Tolkien’s world. The combat is as gripping and challenging as it was in the original, and fans of the Nemesis system will find a more substantial take in this instalment — if you’re interested in the slaying of Orcs, the harming of Orcs, and the befriending of Orcs — this game is for you. Actually, ‘substantial’ seems to have been Studio Monolith’s priority, because everything about Shadow of War is big, perhaps debilitatingly so. The game is awash with trivial and not-so-trivial things to do, which is great for those who buy games for their longevity value, and far less so for anyone who values their time.
It seems weird to talk about ‘valuing one’s time’ when talking about something designed for leisure, but boy is there a lot of noise in this game. Whether it’s the nemesis meta — which also involves recruitment and entourage management — or the sheer number of objectives and side activities, there’s a lot to do here for completists but by the same token, a lot to ignore for those inclined to mainline story missions.
When it comes to 2017’s big open world games, Shadow of War isn’t quite as engrossing and beautiful as Assassin’s Creed: Origins or Horizon: Zero Dawn, but if you’re invested in The Lord of the Rings world, love Orcs, and need to occupy around 100 hours of your life: give it a go. Shaun Prescott