Middle-Earth: Shadow of War - Review

Can you believe it's already November?  There are still so many games I want to play and the year is nearly over.  I have played through and reviewed thirty-five games so far this year (including this one), I would love to make it a round forty but not sure if that will happen with so little time left. What's a gamer to do?  Anyway enough lamenting and onto the review!  Back in 2014 Monolith Productions release Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor and it was awesome, great story and great combat.  The moment I heard they were releasing a sequel I got pretty excited about it and could not wait to play it. 


Have you ever tried dry salt chili spare ribs?  If you haven't you should try because they are damn tasty.   The name pretty much says it all.  A little warning though to any of you with sensitive taste buds they can be a little spicy but to me it all adds to the tastiness.  Generally speaking they are an appetiser, a small portion of them are good but if you have say a little extra or decide to have double then you may end up with some bad results.  Playing Shadow of War I found myself asking, was this the perfect portion or was it too much?  Was I left satisfied or was I left with a sore stomach, tender behind and the desire to never try it again?

Story

The opening of the game provides a slight recap of the first along with showing the current state of play for our protagonist or is that protagonists?  There is Talion the ranger who was not great at being dead so decided to come back to life (sort of) and Celebrimbor a self righteous angry dead elf.  They don't always share the same view points but overall they both agree that Sauron needs to be stopped.   How can they stop him though? They probably need a powerful ring but Bilbo still has that in the Shire, what to do?  Oh yeah it turns out Celebrimbor crafted the rings of power, may as well let him make another. 

The main story is pretty engaging throughout with the exception of a few minors bumps.  One of  the many things I really enjoyed about the game were the smaller stories especially those focusing on Shelob, Carnan and Bruz.  I felt they really helped show the shear vastness of world and that there was so much more going on than just the battle for middle-earth.

Visuals

The game definitely looks sharper and more detailed than Shadow of Mordor. I only wish I had waited and played it on the Playstation 4 PRO rather than the XBOX One as seeing the comparison between the two showed how vastly different they looked.  Damn my impatience.

Visually speaking there were a few really standout things for me.  Shelob's backstory was one of them, it is told through a mini game where you need to angle glass shards into the correct position to get a clear image and you are then provided with some insight about her.  I really liked the look and feel of the Nürnen region which had a forest/tribal look which just blended together and worked really well.  While there were many great character designs the one that I really liked was Brǔz (seen above).   He has over sized spiked metal gauntlets, giant shoulder pads and an awesome facial scar everything about him says 'I am a badass'. 

Music

It must be tough to be the composer of any Middle-Earth game because you will always be trying to live up to Howard Shore's work on Lord of The Rings films which is a pretty tall order.  The soundtrack for War of Mordor has a pretty epic sound.  There are deep beating drums and horns for the battles, and haunting violin sounds for the more poignant moments in the game.  The two composers for the score are:

Nathan Grigg an American composer who has worked on multiple games including; Fear, Fear 2, Fear 3, Matrix Online, Alien vs Predator 2 and Condemned.

Garry Schyman an American composer who has worked on films, TV series and games, some of his works include; BioShock, BioShock 2, Bio Shock Infinite, Dante's Inferno, Destroy All Humans Magnum P.I. and the A-Team.

Unfortunately I was unable to listen to the entire score as I could only find a few pieces uploaded on YouTube.  I am unsure as to why but the only way I could get the complete soundtrack is to buy the Gold Collectors Edition of the game (see below), which I will not being doing.  My favorites pieces (of the one's I could listen to) were; 'Main Menu Theme', 'Seige of Minas Ithal', 'Minas Morgul' and 'Sauron Boss Fight'.

Gameplay

So much to talk about so let's get to it.  The combat is really smooth which works really well especially when you get into a brawl with twenty orcs.  Outside of combat you have the option of using stealth which for the most part works well, this is especially true later when you can chain stealth kills.  There are plenty of skills to upgrade but don't worry it's pretty easy to get skill points.  Weapons and armor get better as you level up, there is legendary items that have a secondary ability that can be unlocked by completing challenges.  No need to worry about health as long as there is an ally or enemy nearby you can just drain them.  

Building an army is a big part of the game and there are quite a few elements to it.  The are worms that carry intelligence on Captains including locations and weaknesses.  Hunt them down, dominate them and make them part of the Bright Lords Army.  Of course it can be a little tougher than than, they are always surround by their allies and in combat can adapt to your fighting style.  They will sometimes regenerate health when near death or simply retreat.  All of this adds varying degrees of difficulty and that is before you look at laying siege to fortresses.  

Taking a fortress is a lot of work, it requires planning and a lot of currency.  It is recommended you take out all Warchiefs before attempting a siege as it will help reduce the fortress strength.  Once that's done you will need to choose your Captains along with purchasing upgrades to help you get inside.  The next task is capturing points inside the fortress before finally taking on the Warlord himself.

I had some really great experiences while playing Shadow of War and I wanted to discuss a few of them.  I don't want to give you too much detail but I am going to say this - you get to fight a Balrog and yes it is fun.  Caragors are a great way to get around the map and are a great way to stealth kill enemies it was one of the first challenges I completed which was awesome. You never forget your first siege, breaching the walls, battling multiple enemies, dethroning the warlord it feels really good.

I saved the best for last, it started with me being over ambitious and getting killed by an orc called Grom.  After he killed me he was promoted to Captain and was given the title Tark Killer, naturally I wasn't happy about this so I went to kill him only to have him escape moments before his death.  I found him again and this time killed him, it felt really good.  Later on in the game it goes quiet and out pops Grom the Machine, turns out his friends put him back together with metal.  I got to enjoy an intense fight before killing him.

Well I have talked about many great things, what I am going to discuss next is not so great.  There are the Captain introductions, each time you are about to fight one (or sometimes during) they give a speech which really interrupts the flow of battle but is made worse by some really poor voice acting choices.  The controls for Drakes are not great and it often felt like I was trying to control a lead weight with wings.  When trying to hang or drop from ledges there were often times when Talion was completely unresponsive, it had me nearly throwing my controller in frustration especially when trying to infiltrate a camp.  However all of these things pale by comparison of the final thing on my list - Shadows Wars.  In my mind once the first three acts are completed that's it you are done and that is where the game should have ended but no.  The studio thought lets make the last act as annoying as possible and ensure that you will have to put almost an equal amount of time into it as you had for the first three acts combined.  The object is for you to defend the your fortress twenty times!  Of course leveling up your Captains to keep up with your attackers takes time and if you lose then you have to retake it from scratch along with having to rescue or find new Captains.  It requires you to do one of two things; grind like crazy or buy lots of loot crates with real money to get Captains to replace ones that you lose and you will lose them.  What is the pay off you ask? A three minute cut scene that helps tie the game into the movie franchise, I think the clip below says it all.

Final Thoughts

Well after over 30 hours how did I feel?  Not awesome. There was some really great gameplay and I did have some fun.  There were was good story, with three really good acts that was followed by a really bad one.  Shadow Wars should have been a separate mode which would have worked well instead of just a poor way to tie the game in with the movie franchise.  I expected better as so many others did, I am sorry to say I am giving this one 3 out of 5