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Middle-Earth: Shadow of War

Belegarsson

Think about hairy dwarfs all the time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Holy fucking shit, listen to this. I knew there's something shady about it when they wanted us to pay for it.


I noticed that line at first, but I thought only those states are the exception, NOT every country outside of US. It's a fucking charity DLC yet they still try to pluck every single dime from it and profit from a dead person. Disgusting, truly disgusting. I pity everyone who buys this fucking degenerate piece of turd.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yeah ... I've been rolling with one questionable thing after another, but this is going to take a substantial apology for me to keep shilling for them. Like, "WB will pay the family straight out of our secret yacht champagne account for every copy of the game sold" substantial. This is outright fraud.
 

Mynon

Dumbfuck!
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Holy fucking shit, listen to this. I knew there's something shady about it when they wanted us to pay for it.


I noticed that line at first, but I thought only those states are the exception, NOT every country outside of US. It's a fucking charity DLC yet they still try to pluck every single dime from it and profit from a dead person. Disgusting, truly disgusting. I pity everyone who buys this fucking degenerate piece of turd.

There are obviously legal reasons for this. Issue here is the lack of transparency, which was obviously intentional. Greediness and sneakiness of someone from their marketing department just inverted all the good will they initially earned with this.
 
Joined
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Legal issues are no excuse, though. As stated in the video, if legal issues were really a concern, then WB could've matched alll donations from foreign countries/the states that couldn't donate to the family directly and sent money to a charity or something like that. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if WB themselves could've just sent matched donations to the family directly, screw a third-party charity. Everything about this screams greed, laziness, and exploitation. Even only giving $3.50 of a $5 purchase to the family is absolutely fucked up. They're monetizing a supposedly charitable DLC, ffs. Maybe I'm just mad, but I can't remember the last time a company has done something this shitty.
 

Makabb

Arcane
Shitposter Bethestard
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And to think that Monolith back at the day did

Blood, Shogo, No one lives forever, AvP 2, Fear


and now since 7 years they are doing shitty middle earth games
 

Hellion

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If they had focused solely on such interactive trailers and skipped the audiovisual cancer that is the "Orc Tribes" trailers, I might have actually felt a morsel of excitement for this title. Probably too late now.
 

Zombra

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If they had focused solely on such interactive trailers and skipped the audiovisual cancer that is the "Orc Tribes" trailers, I might have actually felt a morsel of excitement for this title. Probably too late now.
Really? Out-of-engine cutscenes are more interesting to you than faction information? Can't please everybody I guess.
 

Hellion

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Compared to the in-game footage regarding the Ninja Orc Tribe and the Gold-Plated Gangsta Orc Tribe, for me personally even video footage of the Lead Designer's vasectomy would be able to stir up more excitement for the game.
 

Zombra

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The gangsta trailer was awful. A stealth-themed tribe is interesting, though. Hopefully will have some gameplay implications.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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A bit odd that the Mystic Tribe is the least talkative ... quieter than the ninja tribe and less expository than the beast tribe. But they nailed "spooky"!
mystery.png
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


Miicrotransaction and DLC drama: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...oper-discusses-games-controversial-loot-boxes

Shadow of War developer discusses the game's controversial loot boxes
"It's frankly complicated."


Last month, big budget Lord of the Rings game Middle-earth: Shadow of War revealed it would supplement its full-fat price-tag by including loot boxes purchasable with real-world money. It was an announcement which, predictably, did not go down well with fans.

The single-player action adventure has an in-game store, called the Market, that sells orcs and other items for use in the game's Nemesis System. You can also buy loot chests, war chests, XP boosts and bundles. The loot chests contain gear (weapons and armour) of varying rarity. They can also contain XP boosts which, as you'd expect, help level up playable character Talion faster. War chests provide orc followers of varying rarity which you can use to help create a strong army. They can also contain training orders to level up and customise orc followers.

Publisher Warner Bros. accompanied the announcement with reassurances - that anything gained from the loot boxes could also be earned by simply playing the game, that the microtransactions could be ignored completely, and that they were simply an option offered to players as a way of saving time.

So why include them at all? The commercial argument is clear - these things make money and, yes, some of this money will go to supporting the game's developer. But by acknowledging the need to reassure fans it was clear Warner knew this announcement would draw fire Shadow of War's way.

Shadow of War is not the first triple-A game to include loot boxes in it and it will not be the last. Still, it is the latest, and until it is launched and in the wild for people to play for themselves, fans remain at best sceptical and at worst distrustful of the inclusion.

I sat down with Shadow of War's design director Bob Roberts at EGX 2017 to discuss the thorny issue - and to hear his reassurances loot boxes would not distract from the full Shadow of War experience.

What can you say to reassure the fans who will never buy a loot box that Shadow of War has still been balanced with them in mind?

Bob Roberts: We're working our tails off to make this massive game and as a designer - the design director - I focus on balancing it. We do a ton of playtesting and make sure it is tuned to a setting where people can enjoy it. We kept all of the loot boxes and the economy of real world money turned off in playtesting so we know we are balancing around an experience which is rewarding without any of that stuff.

Because some people think you guys have ulterior motives - that you're waiting for a tough bit to pop up an onscreen prompt saying 'hey... have you seen what we're selling...'

Bob Roberts: No - absolutely not. 100 per cent not. It is important to clarify this as there were a couple of misconceptions. First, the concern about balancing - hopefully when it is out there and people are able to talk about their experiences then the balancing question will be answered, hopefully by people you trust to play through it and see that.

The other big misconception was whether the game had to be online too - and it's important for people to understand that no, it's not required to be online to play the game, and it's a massive game where you can enjoy the full experience without putting any extra money in.

Which begs the question - why put it in at all? As a design director your life is spent ensuring players don't get bottlenecked in certain places, that people never run out of resources when they really need them. Why complicate that?

Bob Roberts: Yeah, in the game you earn resources at a regular pace and the systems are tuned to that so you don't need another option. At the same time, it's there as a player choice. It's there, from my perspective, for people who are protective of their spare time and scared when a massive game comes along that they're not getting to see the full experience.

It's the same design philosophy as us adding in difficulty modes. So we now have Easy mode, and we've added Hard mode at the other end of the spectrum. Frankly the Nemesis system comes to life when you are dying loads, so you could see Easy mode as a system which makes the game less enjoyable if you are the type of player who really should have put it on Hard. It's putting more control in people's hands - saying, you know how you play best, you make that choice.

The ideal for people who set it to Easy is if they are just finding things too punishing, not because they don't want to die. We'd rather you die regularly to get the full experience of the Nemesis system.

Right. And you're not saying switch it to Easy and pay for loot boxes.

Bob Roberts: *laughs* Right.

Will you pay for loot boxes?

Bob Roberts: I personally, probably, will just let the systems feed me the rewards as we've balanced them. It's a weird question as a designer - I want to have the experience I think most people will have so I can relate to what people are saying around balancing. I wouldn't want to shortcut anything and then have a skewed perspective of what people are saying around balance in case we do need to go in and update anything later.

Speaking generally, do you think it's fair for full-price triple-A games to feature loot boxes like that? I have chosen to pay for them in the past in other games on the odd occasion - and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

Bob Roberts: You put your 60 bucks in for a big game like ours upfront and our focus is that its initial purchase price is more than worth it. You want people to be pleasantly surprised by how much stuff is in it.

But I understand the argument that the fact they exist at all as a distraction.

Bob Roberts: Yeah, it's such a charged topic. It's frankly complicated - you see the debate play out online and forum threads where people argue with each other about it.

There's so much complexity to it. Especially when you see articles coming out about our game, or another game, and we have announced a load of new content and we're trying to find out what people think about those things but the conversation keeps coming back to that [loot boxes]. It's interesting to see the discussion but we want to get people's opinions on more than just that.

It dominates the conversation, especially before people have had a good chance to see how it works themselves.

Bob Roberts: Yeah. Obviously we have tuned our game so it works without those things and that including them does not distract from the rest of it.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...s-for-controversial-shadow-of-war-forthog-dlc

Warner Bros. apologises for Shadow of War Forthog DLC confusion
DLC pulled from sale, now a free download. Refunds offered.

Warner Bros. has apologised for the way it handled the controversial Shadow of War Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC and offered refunds to those who bought it.

jpg

Forthog will on occasion appear to one-hit kill whichever enemy the player character is up against. Think the Mysterious Stranger from the Fallout series.

Monolith executive producer Michael Forgey, who died from a brain tumour last year aged just 43-years-old, was set to appear in Shadow of War as a DLC character Forthog Orc-Slayer.

Warner Bros. sold Forthog for £3.99 on Steam and Xbox One, and said it would donate a portion of every purchase to Forgey's widow and children.

But Warner Bros. came under fire for small print that indicated the publisher would only donate money to the Forgey family from purchases of the Forthog Orc-Slayer DLC made from most of the states in the US. This suggested if you were in Europe and you bought the DLC, none of the money would go to the Forgey family. Warner Bros. seemingly confirmed this in a tweet from Shadow of War's official Twitter account.

This small print, buried as it was at the end of a trailer and in a YouTube video description, led to some to accuse Warner Bros. of profiting from the death of an employee.

The publisher then issued a statement insisting the company wouldn't make money from the sales of the DLC, but the statement failed to detail how that was possible given the small print on promotional material.

Now, Warner Bros. has issued a new statement, and it finally goes into detail on what went wrong.

The company said even though it decided to donate all profits to the family, it only planned to actively promote the donation in the US, excluding certain states based on their charitable promotion laws. "We hoped this approach would raise as much money as possible for the Forgey family in compliance with the law," Warner Bros. said.

Many had questioned where funds from other territories, such as Europe, would go. Why didn't Warner Bros. answer these questions at the time?

"Answering that direct question itself could have triggered compliance obligations or put us in violation of cause marketing laws in some of the 241 territories in which the content was available," the company explained.

"Additionally, a factually incorrect tweet from our team exacerbated the confusion by stating that international funds would not be going to the family. For absolute clarity; our intention was always to give all profits from the DLC, worldwide to the Forgey family."

Warner Bros. has now pulled the DLC from sale and made it a free download. The official videos about the DLC have been taken down from YouTube. If you bought the DLC, you'll get a refund. Warner Bros. will instead make a donation directly to the Forgey family.

"We now recognise that tying our donation to sales of the DLC was not the best way to achieve our goal of offering financial support to the family and creating a lasting memorial to Michael Forgey. We sincerely apologise to the fans and to the Forgey family for the confusion we created."

So that's that. Throughout this entire PR debacle, Monolith was praised for its heart-warming gesture - and indeed the effort it must have taken to make the Forthog Orc-Slayer a reality. It was publisher Warner Bros., which had already come under fire for its controversial microtransaction plan for Shadow of War, that was accused of nefarious motives. I imagine the developers were pretty exasperated by the whole thing.

Those who wish to directly donate money to the Forgey family can do via YouCaring.com.
 
Last edited:

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Amazed that WB recanted their sleazy ways of profiting from the dead. This was the one road they could have taken to redeem themselves after the Forthog controversy. Way to go, Warner Brothers? Did I just say that?
 

orcinator

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Oy vey, we got called out for being absolute scum so now we're giving you the shitty DLC for free to save face. We're such nice people!

Remember to buy loot boxes goys, we could have made our p2w elements less scummy but why would we want rich casuals to pay for the specific piece of p2w content they want when we can make them play a slot machine instead!
 

Deleted member 7219

Guest
Fuck them. They are the worst video game publisher out there and this "Sell DLC by using a dead guy" was just the cum sprinkling on top of a turd sandwich.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-05-middle-earth-shadow-of-war-review

Middle-earth: Shadow of War review
Attempted Mordor.

jpg

A greatly expanded and improved action game let down by a dreadful story.

In the music industry, people often refer to Second Album Syndrome - a phenomenon whereby a popular artist sets about making their sophomore record, only this time the stakes are considerably higher due to increased exposure and fan expectation. This sometimes leads to artists trying to reinvent themselves, or go bigger in order to keep up with demand. Middle-earth: Shadow of War is kind of like a difficult second album, only the band has hired a 90 piece orchestra and asked Matt Bellamy from Muse to do the lyrics. And he's turned up with 20 new effect pedals.

That's not to say Shadow of War is bad, mind you - it isn't. It's more that everything about this game is a statement - where Shadow of Mordor was something of a sleeper hit, Monolith Studios went into production on the followup knowing for sure they had something big on their hands. Considerable expectations were there to be met and so everything about Shadow of War is bigger, which is good in some respects but decidedly bad in others.

The good news is that the nemesis system returns for the sequel in fine shape. The core experience of tracking down a named orc and learning every last detail about their strengths and weaknesses before destroying them - or getting destroyed - is very much intact, but it now boasts both considerable depth and greater purpose. Enemy types and traits have been greatly diversified, leading to a cast of enemies who are varied, if not exactly nuanced. The particular weaknesses or invulnerabilities of each of these captains, warchiefs or overlords have a palpable impact on how each fight is approached, building on Shadow of Mordor to deliver a combat system that's as much about preparation and poise as it is doing someone in with a sword.

jpg

Mind your head.

Exploiting the various machinations of the nemesis system - including a number of new nemesis mission types - now feels genuinely productive where before it largely felt petty. This is largely down to the introduction of forts, the headline improvement for the nemesis system in Shadow of War. The game world is split into five distinct regions, four of which you need to capture by conquering a fort. You accomplish this by working your way up the nemesis system hierarchy for that region - starting with the captains and moving onto the warchiefs before tackling the all-important overlord. As you chew your way through these strata, you can choose to either murder your targets or assimilate them to your ranks - the whole point of Shadow of War, of course, being to build an army big enough to take on Sauron himself.

Plotting against an overlord is an absolute treat. Turning all of a warchief's bodyguards against him before setting up a deadly ambush is a very rewarding experience, but so too is deciding that, actually, your army is probably strong enough to take the fort without worrying about stripping away every last one of its defences in advance. You become an entire court's worth of conspirators, in other words, acting as both mastermind and assassin as you pick away at each region's nemesis tree.

The fortress assaults themselves are also very satisfying, staging the grandest battles seen in the Shadow series. Mechanically they offer up a series of capture points leading to a boss battle, but the sense of driving an enemy army back to its keep is both palpable and exciting. The only real drawback is that the final encounters with the overlords themselves are diminished somewhat in impact, owing to the fact you never encounter these particular orcs before the fortress assault actually begins. While the other characters in the nemesis system are free to roam the world and cross swords with you, these big bosses are strangers by comparison, stripping the final confrontation of the same sense of import.

The nemesis system isn't the only thing to receive a bit of an overhaul, however - twin protagonists Talion and Celebrimbor have also been tweaked considerably for Shadow of War. The skill tree has been expanded to feature all sorts of new skills including a double jump, ally summons, and a spectral glaive that dishes out heavy attacks. Each of these abilities can also be customised, allowing you to tweak the skill tree to suit your playstyle - giving you greater survivability and a few frost-based attacks, for instance. With a host of powerful new abilities, Talion is extremely capable - almost, in fact, to a fault. While Shadow of Mordor took nearly the entire game to equip you with a full set of abilities, Shadow of War throws skill points and XP at you almost constantly, opening up the skill tree and its numerous customisation options very swiftly. It makes for a very powerful feeling character, but one of the side effects is that it's very easy to steamroll most of the captains and warchiefs you encounter. While the advanced classes and additional traits in the nemesis system are great additions, they struggle to have quite as much impact as they perhaps should simply because you have so many different ways to do damage to your opponents. Having an enemy be immune to ranged attacks and executions, for example, no longer feels like the roadblock it did in the previous game.

jpg

Get used to this screen, you'll be seeing it a lot.

As a result, I never really felt like I developed a proper nemesis in the same way I did playing Shadow of Mordor: aside from story characters, there was no one orc put in my path that really gave me enough trouble to be memorable, which is a bit of a shame. Part of that, however, is likely down to the sheer number of orcs you encounter in Shadow of War. With four different nemesis trees to contend with, you meet a lot of potential nemeses and it's in your best interests to assimilate them as swiftly as possible. It's difficult to develop a true rival in Shadow of War partly because you're so powerful, but partly because you're romping across Mordor too fast to form that relationship with any one orc. While there's not much to be done about the scale of the nemesis system, it's fortunate that difficulty settings have been introduced for Shadow of War, allowing players to increase the challenge should they feel they're simply walking into (and all over) Mordor.

Speaking of difficulty levels, it would be impossible to review Shadow of War without addressing the inclusion of loot boxes and microtransactions that caused such a stir just a couple of months ago. In essence, loot chests can be bought from the game's market using Mirian, an abundant (and free) in-game currency, or gold - which is given out in much smaller measures and can, crucially, be bought with real money. These chests give out gear, XP boosts, new followers and training orders (essentially follower upgrades) for you to put to use, improving your fortunes as you go about the game world. Given how freely the game gives you skill points, gear and orcs to turn into loyal soldiers, however, these chests are wholly unnecessary. If you need them in order to get by in Shadow of War, in fact, you are almost certainly playing on the wrong difficulty setting.

The fact these chests aren't necessary, however, does little to diminish the awareness that they're very much a part of the game, especially when you're reminded of the market's existence by way of an announcement carousel every time you pause the game. With the market itself lacking the same polish as the rest of the game - the market keeper is an unvoiced orc who quite literally rubs his hands with glee when you make a purchase, by the way - it feels like something that was tacked on late into development at the behest of the publisher. Would it have been easier to ignore if the backlash to the announcement hadn't been so great? Possibly, but it still leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

On balance, then, the core gameplay experience of Shadow of War is a lot of fun and greatly improved over the first, if not without its foibles. The bad news, however, is that it's a system that struggles to shine in quite the same way as it did before, even in spite of its expansions and refinements, thanks to the sheer volume and hyperbole of the story.

To be blunt, the story in Shadow of War is bombastic nonsense. A slow, exposition-laden first act sets the stage for some quite enjoyable substance about the struggles of building an army and saving as many Gondorians as possible, before jumping the shark so enthusiastically that it could probably clear Mount Doom. The sheer exaggeration of the story is matched only by the sincerity with which it is told, creating an effect that's both off putting and, frankly, a little embarrassing. An overblown story is nothing new in a triple-A game, of course, but it's hard to point at any story facet in the second half of Shadow of War and say why it's been included if not for the sake of doing things bigger for the sequel. I'm veering dangerously close to being that guy here but, without giving too much away, you discover the identity of two of Sauron's nine Ringwraiths over the course of Shadow of War. One, canonically, was born 400 years after the wraiths were first seen in Middle-earth - the other, nearly 1000. Their inclusion, presumably, was to add a sense of increased grandeur or weight to these characters, but all it left me with was a feeling the lore had been thrown out the window for the sake of a couple of schlocky and unnecessary reveals.

This isn't exactly news, of course - fans watching the story trailers were certainly perturbed by the casual forging of a new ring of power, or by turning monstrous spider Shelob into a woman in a flowing dress - but there's a thin line between riffing on a beloved work of fiction and disrespecting that fiction. Shadow of War, I fear, steers closer to the latter than the former.

And so Shadow of War ends up the very epitome of the difficult second album. A lot has been added in order to scale it up for a full blown sequel and much of it has been implemented with style and aplomb. As fun as the core is, however, it is often overshadowed by an onerous and self-indulgent story. What should be the game's crowning feature is instead reduced to an undeserved supporting role, like an exquisitely carved plinth groaning under the weight of a gaudy bronze bust of an elven wraith who's looking very, very serious indeed.

http://www.pcgamer.com/middle-earth-shadow-of-war-review/

MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF WAR REVIEW

The orcs are the real stars of Shadow of War. Decorated with skulls, piercings, and plates of battered iron armour, these grotesque, toothy brutes sneer, jeer, and brag like rowdy drunks. And before you fight them they delight in detailing all the ways they’re going to kill you, gut you like a fish, and present your head to Sauron. It’s almost endearing how much they obviously love being orcs and serving their Dark Lord, which is more than can be said for the game’s dreary human characters—and that includes hero Talion, an undead Gondorian ranger with all the joie-de-vivre of a concrete bollard.

The lauded nemesis system, first introduced in Shadow of Mordor, is back and expanded. So if an orc captain or warchief kills you, they’ll gleefully taunt you about it next time they see you. And if you defeat them, but they manage to escape, they’ll remember and reassure you that this time you won’t be so lucky. Forging bitter feuds with these expressive, unique enemies is the heart of the game, and easily the best thing in it. They’re the only characters who seem to be having any fun in this cursed world, and the vast array of positive and negative traits they have make them infinitely interesting and entertaining to fight.

The game’s fun, crunchy combat is in the Arkham mould, with timing-based counters and an ever-increasing pool of moves and powers that increase its complexity. But before you wade into combat it’s worth interrogating weak-minded orcs to discover intel about their superiors: things they’re scared of, weapons they’re weak against, and so on. There’s something gratifying about making a scarred, snarling orc called Lûga Skull-Cracker flee in terror because one of his underlings revealed he has a secret fear of morgai flies. Waging psychological war on orcs like this is often more fun than fighting them.

But it’s not all about rivalries: you can make a few friends too. Thanks to the power of the ring crafted by surly elven wraith Celebrimbor in the first game, it’s possible to weaken orcs, bend them to your will, and recruit them as allies. The brilliantly named Az-Grels Mountain-Eater, a hulking great lump of ugly muscle wielding a six-foot club, was my personal bodyguard for a while. Summoning him in battle and watching him charge in with his enormous club swinging was hugely satisfying. You can also call upon a handful of Gondorian soldiers to fight by your side, but they’re ultimately little more than squishy, expendable orc fodder.

I love the new tribes system, which dramatically increases the variety of the orcs you encounter—both visually and in how they behave in battle. Orcs belonging to the stealthy Dark Tribe are fond of ambushes and trickery. Machine Tribe orcs are clad in thick metal armour. And the Mystic Tribe uses dark magic and cursed weapons. There are more, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself. The important thing is that, because of this added variety, almost every orc you meet feels like a distinct, original character, which makes the friendships and rivalries you form with them seem somehow more personal.

In Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum briefly stop at Minas Morgul, home of the Witch-king of Angmar and the Nazgûl. In Shadow of War you get to visit this place before they claimed it as their fortress, back when it was the city of Minas Ithil in Gondor. The game ties into Peter Jackson’s films like this often, and in some clever ways, but equally has no qualms about hammering its own ideas into the established lore. Talion forms an uneasy alliance with the giant spider Shelob, who appears to him as a beautiful woman; a pouting goth Galadriel who slinks about in black silk speaking in riddles, but never once gets hopelessly stuck in a bathtub.

It’s a shame about the story, where the writers have focused squarely on the mystical, doomy side of Lord of the Rings. People solemnly discussing Sauron’s growing power, lamenting the war ahead. But where’s the warmth? The heart? People love this series because it mixes its grand fantasy with humour, humanity. Legolas and Gimli’s unlikely friendship. Anything involving the hobbits. In comparison, Shadow of War is almost entirely self-serious and in love with its own sense of grandeur. Its only really funny character, an Aussie orc called Brûz the Chopper, is wasted as a walking tutorial.

And Talion is one of the least likeable heroes I’ve ever encountered in a game. He's a morose charisma vacuum who spends most of the game bickering with the equally humourless Celebrimbor, his spectral tag team partner. The game tries to paint him as a stoic, heroic force for good who’d rather not be fighting this war at all. But then, on the battlefield, he gleefully pops heads and elaborately executes people, clearly loving every second of it. It’s telling that any of the game’s randomly-generated orcs has more personality than this bearded bore. A new character called Eltariel, an elf chosen by Galadriel to hunt the Nazgûl, would have made for a much more interesting protagonist.

As the title suggests, war looms large in this sequel. When you arrive at Minas Ithil you find the streets filled with battle-hungry orcs, siege machines, and Gondorian soldiers defending their home. The sense of scale is impressive, and you can climb to the top of the immense tower that gives the city its name. Monolith has brilliantly captured the grand, epic feel of the films, but the world has a sludgy, muted look that, while appropriate for a place like Mordor, makes for some bleak, uninspiring environments. Núrnen is an exception, however, with its green forests offering a welcome burst of colour and vibrancy.

Continuing the war theme, conquering enemy strongholds—or nemesis fortresses as the game describes them—is one of Shadow of War’s most elaborate new features. Once you’ve built an army using Celebrimbor’s ring and weakened the enemy’s defences through killing warchiefs and destroying monuments, you can attempt to capture the fortress for yourself. These battles are wonderfully chaotic and you can join the fray, making use of siege machines and helping your soldiers gain territory by capturing victory points. Capture them all and you get the chance to enter the fort and challenge its overlord.

After the siege you can promote one of your captains to be overlord. This grants you certain bonuses depending on which tribe he’s in, but you do have to invest in defences—and level up your captains—to maintain your control over the region. There’s fun to be had in conquering fortresses, but it does also feel a little like managing a small business. Shadow of War’s biggest problem is being overloaded with systems that don’t feel integrated into the game in an organic way. And it’s constantly screaming at you to do things, which makes it feel like a fantasy to-do list. "Purify the Haedir towers! Reveal Shelob's memories! Open the Ithildin doors! Collect the Gondorian artifacts!" They might sound exciting, but involve little more than finding a thing then interacting with it.

There’s just too much going on. Too many menus, too much clutter on the screen, too many half-baked features. I would have preferred a smaller set of lean, refined systems to all this bloat. I had no interest in half the icons littering the map, and I found it difficult to get immersed in the story because of how unashamedly videogamey it all is. “Our greatest asset is stealth!” Celebrimbor says as he teaches me how to dominate orcs with the ring, which would sound insane if someone said it in the films or books. I never felt like I was in Middle-earth, and I rarely have trouble suspending my disbelief in games.

Other new features include a fashionable tiered loot system, which sees you picking up armour, swords, daggers, and other gear from fallen warchiefs and captains. While this did tap into my collecting instinct and I was, at first, eager to see what loot would drop, I soon grew tired of endlessly finding near-identical items with only minor stat upgrades. This is one of many examples in Shadow of War that bigger is not always better, and if you removed it from the game completely it would barely feel any different. And Talion’s clothes and weapons reset back to their default look in cutscenes which is kinda annoying.

But it all comes back to the orcs. They’re the reason I kept playing, even when I was losing interest in everything else. A motley, gruesome, ill-mannered crew of swines that are a constant joy to fight and befriend. And the increased variety and depth of the nemesis system makes for a much richer experience overall. I just wish the game wasn’t quite so overfed. A lot of developers think sequels need to be bigger and offer more to get people interested, but I’d prefer it if they were just better. Shadow of War is a great action game that feels like it’s yearning to break free from a prison of open world busywork.

THE VERDICT
73

MIDDLE-EARTH: SHADOW OF WAR
The nemesis system shines in this unwieldy, bloated, and occasionally magnificent fantasy epic.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm veering dangerously close to being that guy here but, without giving too much away, you discover the identity of two of Sauron's nine Ringwraiths over the course of Shadow of War. One, canonically, was born 400 years after the wraiths were first seen in Middle-earth - the other, nearly 1000.

Oh boy, this sounds like it could cause nerdrage.

So who are they? http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_Arda

SA 2251 - The Ringwraiths first appear.


:avatard:
 

Belegarsson

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
The bigger and more pressing problem with Shadow Wars is that it’s the main home of one of Shadow of War’s more controversial additions to the first game’s formula: microtransactions. Technically, you can jump into the marketplace and purchase loot chests earlier in the game, but there’s really no pull to do so during the main campaign. You can find plenty of nice armor and weapons and all the orcs you need by playing regularly.

In Shadow Wars, however, things get more complicated. With all other side content drained, the only thing left to do is to play fortress defense missions (and collect more orcs to help with more fortress defense missions). Finding powerful orcs becomes the be-all, end-all focus of the game, and the easiest way to find powerful orcs is, cynically, to purchase them. The cheapest chest on the marketplace (which offers the barest guarantees on the quality of allies you unlock) can be purchased using the in-game money Talion picks up. That money also buys upgrades to your fortresses, though, and between the two I spent all 60,000 or 70,000 coins I had gathered over the course of the campaign in a few hours.

When you run out of in-game money, you have two choices: Make a huge time investment by hunting down orcs in your game world and earning chests via vendetta missions, or spend some real money to get the more powerful orcs you need now. Does the game ever force you to spend money? No. I’m sure you can get to the end of Shadow Wars without spending a dime, as long as you’re patient and persistent. But locking progress through this mode (and, again, toward the game’s true ending) behind either spending more money or doing tons of tedious busywork feels at least greedy if not predatory.

From Polygon review

https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/5/16428308/middle-earth-shadow-of-war-review
 

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