Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Similar to the way Batman: Arkham City built on the foundation of Arkham Asylum, Middle-earth: Shadow of War is bigger and more ambitious in scope than Shadow of Mordor, with great results. The way it expands the Nemesis system with far greater variety and fortress sieges makes even better use of the stand-out generated characters, and its battles with memorable uruk captains remain challenging all the way through the campaign and into the clever asynchronous multiplayer beyond.

The follow-up to Shadow of Mordor is bigger in scope, but not always better than its predecessor.

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

The nemesis system shines in this unwieldy, bloated, and occasionally magnificent fantasy epic.

If you can get past the microtransactions, Shadow Wars seems set to provide a much meatier extended playtime than Shadow of Mordor ever offered. But more than anything, that's my biggest disappointment with Middle-earth: Shadow of War: Everything about it seems to come with a caveat, some small annoyance or two that you need to dig past to get to the still-very-fun game underneath. The Nemesis System is still a wonder that has yet to be replicated. The movement and combat are thrilling.

A huge Lord of the Rings experience that's always enjoyable, although its scale leaves it straining at the seams at times.

You are a merciless tornado of ruin touching down in an unforgiving world of battle and domination, and embracing that unfettered power is a joy

By God, it's delicious.

Middle Earth: Shadow of War builds on almost every facet of its forerunner carefully – and the result is generally very exciting, if uninspiring.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War has a lot of fluff that attempts to sabotage it, but the game succeeds in its effort to make its world worth roaming around and killing things in. Although I wasn't enthralled by the silly story beats that try to dance around telling an actual epic and somber tale, the ability to create my own stories with an expanded level of gameplay was more than sufficient to call this a step up.