This game takes place between lord of the rings and the hobbit. This game could have been just a poor videogame adaptation of a blockbuster movie. But it isn't. With the nemesis system the developers give us the power to build our own experience.

Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis system is the most interesting thing about this game, and we've likely seen the last of systems of this type. Visual fidelity, frame rates, and resolution have been the top selling points for many games that follow identical, popular formulas, lately.

For those who don't know I have YouTube channel, and we were planning on playing and recording this long before it came out. Our problem was we didn't think it was going to be that good of a game, not to sound like we weren't excited to play it because we were.

Smooth Gameplay; Nemesis System; Combat; Voice Acting; Traversal

A 'Meh' Story; Average Graphics

At first, everything about Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor screams Assassin's Creed: Hobbit Edition . The cloaked hero, a ranger named Talion, unlocks fast-travel options by scaling giant towers, uses deadly stealth and ranged techniques to dispatch foes from the shadows, and relies on an...

But what this does is make you experience the rest of the game; your quest for revenge and dominance propels you to want to play the game in order to...

Beautifully crafted world; Enjoyable combat; Densely populated environments

Average story and conclusion; Mimics Assassin's Creed too much

A splinter of procedural creativity keeps this derivative open-worlder feeling fresh.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is a monster of a game. It is a huge, sprawling thing that demands your time and effort. It wants your hours and your upkeep. At times, it feels like The Silmarillion in game form: an endless list of names, 90 percent of whom you either kill yourself or watch die.

Monolith Studios surprised everyone in 2014 with the success of their new IP based in the Tolkien universe with Shadow of Mordor. Now, three years later, players take on the role of Talion once more to finally put an end to Sauron and his grip over Mordor and Middle Earth.

Monolith and Warner Bros. Interactive risked a lot in creating Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. They obviously risked the ire of diehard Tolkien fans around the world (I'm looking at Vader), since they created new characters and wrote a story outside of Tolkien's words.

Solid gameplay that requires real strategy and planning and really forces players to be against dying; as crazy as that sounds

Generic protagonist and safe-ish storyline walk a very fine line to prevent hardcore Tolkien fans from rallying against the game too much; and at the same time; it's not entirely open to those who know nothing about Lord of the Rings

When Talion, one of the last Gondorian Rangers keeping watch at the Black Gate, and his family are brutally executed the night of Sauron's return to Mordor, he awakens to find himself inhabited by an Elvish Wraith, "banished from death" – trapped between the worlds of light and dark – and bound to...