An excerpt from our official Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor review : Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is the best Lord of the Rings game I've ever played. It's that simple. It takes the gameplay of franchises like Assassin's Creed and Arkham City, throws new gameplay wrinkles into the fold, and adds a...

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor doesn't exactly redefine the open world action combat game genre. Its less than memorable story line, repetitive gameplay and the lack of a co-operative mode won't have Shadow of Mordor on many folk's game of the year lists.

A Darker Lord of the Rings

Delivers high on adventure and gaming. Middle Earth comes to life.

"A welcome surprise. Other games need to copy the Nemesis System. "

Everyone who even remotely follows gaming knows that everyone is just raving about Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor , with the game itself gaining excellent reviews across the board. So, you can be damn sure that I wanted to try it for myself to see what the hype was all about.

Excellent Music; Engaging Vocal Performances; Satisfying Combat; Nemesis System Is Revolutionary; Takes A Lot Of Inspiration From Other Games & Builds Up On It; Photo Mode; Gollum

Only 20 Story Missions

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor puts you in the middle of The Lord of the Rings universe as you combat orcs with unique wraith abilities. With strong combat, a large open world it's a high quality action adventure with a lot of gameplay to offer. Set during The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a...

Excellent combat and progression – Impressive voice acting

Some imbalances cheapen gameplay – Generic and repetitive elements

With the big-screen adaptations of The Lord of the Rings at the beginning of the noughties, a slew of Middle-Earth-based games appeared, across various platforms and genres; most oriented around some interpretation of an action-adventure title.

Polishes familiar action/adventure gameplay mechanics; Expands on Tolkien's world with imagination whilst staying faithful; The Nemesis system is an exciting and promising feature for gaming

Skill tree doesn't branch in a meaningful way; More finisher animations wouldn't go amiss; Death by rampant Caragors; over and over again

While the novels and the films certainly had a high quality level, the actual games haven't been all that great, either in terms of stories, gameplay, or both, although the Lego ones from Traveller's Tales managed to transform the films into some pretty fun interactive experiences.

Amazing Nemesis system; Huge open world; Lots of varied activities

Can be difficult at first; Combat becomes frustrating when surrounded by enemies; A few animation glitches

Great game, but they definitely approved on this game, because Shadow of War is way smoother and the gameplay is a lot better. It's a great game, but dont feel like you need to play this before you play Shadow of War. Great game, no major complaints and was shipped really fast!