Middle Earth Shadow of War

If you love the source material you love this game 

Genre: Action 
Platform: PS4
Release Date: 2017

Well when I first played this game I found out that this game is a sequel to another game (Middle earth Shadow of Mordor) and this follows the events after what happen in the last game. You play as Talion a Ranger (think Aragon but less good looking) where you need to stop Sauron's forces of Orcs during the battle to conquer middle earth. Look I am not LOTR fan but from what I gather that this game takes place before the fellowship of the ring where there were a lot of smaller rings and the hero is trying to find them? stop them? Really the plot is complicated since I don't know where in the timeline this game is from. 

This game is basically you are task with a objective. You complete the objective and you move on to the next objective. During your quest you encounter a lot of orcs (or uruks as they say) and they will try to stop you by killing you every chance they get. What makes this game special is the nemesis system. This system is patented by Monolith Software (makers of the game) where essentially if you kill/spare or be killed by someone they will remember it and find you again to either get revenge, be your friend or just taunt you. I really enjoyed the dialogue since it is super funny and every character is unique in it's own way. You'll never find two of the same captains which on the quest. Combat is basically like the Batman Arkham series where one button you hit, one counter and one evade. The only difference is combat is not as fast as batman since you are swinging a sword. From what I gather you are also part ghost so you have ghost powers as well. The ghost is an elf by the way which makes you have abilities like faster climbing, running, tracking and magical arrows (which sucks since you only can shoot like 5 a time). You tasks consist of stopping hordes of orcs form attacking the base. Find the captains and kill each one of them 

The thing that made me quit the game is that besides going from point A to point B there is nothing much else you are doing. The gameplay is set in a repetitive loop where if you are a fan of the game it can be quite fun. But as for me after a couple of hours in upgrading your weapons, armor and stuff you find that is just the same thing over and over again. Oh what gets me is that the menu system. This is probably the most convoluted game I have played. There are lot of things to keep track of. Each orc has their own strength and weaknesses. There are also a lot of add on to your weapons, abilities and system. It is basically one big mess of things you need to keep track on. I saw the review that a couple more hours of gameplay you have the ability to recruit more orcs and they can aid you in battle. Basically this game as a lot of sim elements and not just a simple action game. They say that this game have microtransactions but so far I haven't found any.

In conclusion that the source material didn't get me. After playing a couple of hours  I am not a fan of Tolkien work and while I enjoy the movies this game really falls on a C-Tier list. If you have the time and patience you can actually finish the game. It is fun. But again you are practically doing the same thing over and over again. So not for me I guess.