Middle-Earth: Shadow Of War - PlayStation 4

I'm playing this on my white PS4 Pro. Oh I’m so glad Shadow of War finally arrived. I preordered the moment I could because I LOVED Shadow of Mordor. I rarely 100% a game (Arkham Knight is another open world game I can actually think of where I did fully complete it) but when I do, it’s because the game is incredibly fun. The Lord of the Rings franchise sucks but these games don’t bring up to much from them. It’s self contained and gets very interesting. I’m at mission 5 (The Seeing Stone) and level 6. Decided to run around and learn about the new stuff like finding all the Ithildin for the Ithildin door poem and it’s treasure (received powerful Bright Lord armor). I probably shouldn’t have because I’m realizing just how complex this sequel is.The graphics are awful. This looks similar to how Shadow of Mordor looked which is UNACCEPTABLE in 2017.I never saw anything about paying for loot boxes with real money until I saw people on here who DIDN’T EVEN BUY THE GAME complaining about their first world problems with a feature that is wholly unobtrusive in every way. I had to go looking for it and I finally found them. It’s ONE option in the menu that takes you to another menu where it FIRSTLY introduces you to buying look boxes with the in game currency. You can then move around and find the others. I’m reporting the haters who haven’t purchased the game for misuse of the review section here. You can’t review something you haven’t tried and you definitely can’t review something that you’re already biased against based on false hearsay. You don't even have to buy gold! You earn gold by doing stuff in game.I wholly recommend getting this if you loved the first game. It combines the best of the Arkham games combat with Assassins Creed stealth to create an amazing game. Two of the best franchises combined into one game really made something incredible and now we have the sequel to that! Buy this game.

Got my butt whooped by Glubnik the Tark Slayer (he got the name by killing me once before). But... he didn't kill me.He just laughed in my face and walked away for a humiliation. I never saw that before and said... very cool, and I was happy I survived!Well, it turns out that it was not awesome and I wished he had killed me. As soon as I was humiliated, my loyal level 20 bodyguard Tarz popped up and said he could no longer fight for a weakling such as me -- he's an olog (bigger than uruk) and he's got some nasty traits. We proceeded to fight because naturally I do not tolerate betrayal. I lose the fight quickly. I told you... he's big and nasty and super tough. I only beat him the first time because I had a poison barrel and a explosive barrel nearby.I lick my wounds and I get a new bodyguard and I track him down... this insult shall not pass!I ambush him during a war council meeting of some kind and proceed to whoop some orc booty with my bodyguard. I came prepared and knowing his weaknesses, I was confident! It didn't last.Within about 20 seconds, an alarm went off and more uruks arrived. The tactic that I used to defeat him before... he "adapted" to and it no longer worked. It all went down hill from there. My new bodyguard... he literally ripped his head off and then proceeded to bash me with his fight flame mace. I survived.... but he will not doubt remember that I ran away in terror.Long story short.... I hate you Glubnik the Tark Slayer... you ruined my relationship with Tarz and I may never recover.This game is the best game I have played in years. It blows the original out of the water... and then sees it in the sky and blows it out of the sky... It's that good!Best part about this story? It wasn't scripted. It was entirely random created by the nemesis system. Amazing!Important Note: Don't listen to the 1 stars and negative nancy reviews (unless they actually review the game on it's merits). They are complaining about DLC and micro transactions which can be completely ignored while playing.

Absolutely fantastic game. All the people griping about how repetitive it is don't realize that they're the ones making it that way. This game gives you SO MUCH FREEDOM to play how you like. You can create a wide variety of synergy between weapons, armor, and your vast pool of skills and talents. And vast is an understatement. There are 33 different talents/abilities, and almost every single one has three modifiers to it. That's a lot of variety! The story is decently long, with plenty of side quests to keep you going. I spend hours and hours just maintaining and bulking up my army to better attack or defend against other players. Long after the game is beaten there is enough content to keep you going. The devs create new quests every week that the entire community is also working on, and the game also gives you the chance to enter other player's worlds to avenge their death and earn rewards. There are in-game transactions, sure. But I have felt zero pressure to spend anything other than the currency you easily earn by playing the game. There is literally no need to spend real money.One awesome feature they added was photo mode, letting you take fantastic pictures with a HUUUUGE amount of settings. From typical brightness/contrast to different backdrops/facial expressions/art styles, you can get lost in photo mode alone. I've attached one of my favorites that's fairly simple, but marks the moment when I finally upgraded all my legendary gear <3