Recent reviews by Star

Let me get this straight, I really enjoyed the first game. The nemesis system felt fun the first time around, the combat was solid and it never felt bloated.

This game is not a properly curated experience, resulting in it feeling like a big grindy sandbox. It doesn't feel like you're a ranger trying to survive/get vengeance in Mordor, you're just confused as to why you're even there in the first place. Whole map(s) are littered with icons guiding you to repetitive tasks and clashes between various orc captains who are nothing more than evil Disney caricatures of their former selves. They're all comically "menacing" and it ultimately feels like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Marvel movie, not a game set in the Lord of the Rings universe.

Combat was solid in Shadow of Mordor, it was pretty much copy-pasted Arkham style, but it did have a certain flow and weight to it. Somehow they managed to completely ruin it. There's no flow to it now, and you're constantly interrupted by a barrage of colorful icons telling you to dodge, stun or parry while there's barely any time to actually land an attack yourself between all of these QTEs pretending to be a combat system. And when you do land a hit, your strikes feel weightless and lack any sort of impact, like you're swinging a blade made of rubber. Sure, executions look nice, but you can no longer build up a combo meter to perform them, now there's a bar you have to fill which feels a little clunky and unintuitive. While in the first game I was certain that I could perform a special move at x5/x10 combo, now it takes up to 15-30 hits to fill the damn bar, unless you take a specific talent which makes it fill slightly faster.

Talking about talents and skill points - it almost seems like core parts of the toolset were gutted and padded out throughout the story to give an artificial feeling of progress that would have been lacking otherwise. Whereas in the first game you could have several upgrades to a certain skill at the same time, now you can only choose one. Why? Like why can't we have both dominate and a way to refill our arrows mid-combat? So either every orc you brand dies instantly or you're forced to run around the area looking for ammo like a fool, after just a couple of shots. Even the climbing/parkour system was destroyed in favor of making it faster, now you just teleport to the top of every structure in two leaps.

As a game bearing the Middle-earth title, it should have some memorable vistas and great environments right? Wrong. The only decent looking zone is actually the one most hated by the community, which is Minas Ithil/Morgul where the tutorial takes place. Every other area is just an empty field with some sparse ruins and a big citadel sitting in a corner. The world does not look dark or grim and the "upgraded" lighting system makes everything look flat and bland.

Having a good story in a videogame is an important aspect as they give meaning and purpose, they immerse you into doing what you're supposed to be doing. There is no good story here, however, as both Talion and Celebrimbor feel like completely different characters when compared to the original.

In the end everything revolves around playing Pokémon(Pokeorc?)with your orcs. If that's your thing - be my guest. But you would be much better off playing the first game in that case, because it is a much more refined and guided experience, way more polished and never outstays it's welcome. Shadow of War just feels like a soulless and disappointing sequel that ultimately killed the franchise. More of the same doesn't always mean better, especially when the quality decreases significantly as a result.

There's barely any exploration or discovery - you just move from puzzle area to puzzle area across some empty spaces and those puzzles are of Skyrim variety. The world feels barren and artificial, it's open world just for the sake of it. Story is barely there. Movement could have been nice but eagle gliding reduces your speed and breaks the flow.
The graphics/artstyle are both nice, but there's unreal engine stutter, as usual.
Ultimately - it's nice to look at, there are some cool set pieces, but the gameplay is just tedious and overly simplistic. I expected so much more after Abzu and Journey

Everyone praising the game so much, did you people even finish it? I'm not usually a person to bash an ending, but never have I felt so cheated out of being invested into a piece of media than this abomination.
It's more than a slap in the face, it's a disgrace.

The music is REALLY good though and your first hours, when you're just to trying to figure out the set up, are pretty cool, I admit it. And it gets even better when you think you have an understanding of what's going on and get some unique tools which were fun to use.
But then...


...the great reveal happens and it's justLOL ALIENS, HAHA SPACE MAGIC LOL
All the mythology, history and philosophical questions. None of it matters. Everything is resolved in the final scene no matter what your perspective or choices might have been.

I only recommend this game because there's nothing else like it, its completely unique; The melee combat is thrilling, the animations are weighty and impactful, it's extremely complicated and varied with multi-directional attacks, blocks, feints and dodges. If you can, you should at least try it. However, it's probably not for me.

Starting off with the campaign - It is short and cool, covers multiple characters and every faction, the visuals are gorgeous and there's a story too. But it mostly serves as a preparation for the real meat of the game - its multiplayer.

This is where they lost me, because even with good skills and reflexes you will get nowhere unless you sink several hundred hours at leastto learn every single character. So picking your favorite warrior and just fighting it out doesn't really work, you either play all of them until you memorize every single move, in order to read your opponents properly, or you will get stomped over and over until you do.

This game might be my biggest disappointment in a while.
Once the novelty of playing as a space marine wears off, the cracks start to show. Unfortunately, after more than 10 years without a proper action game set in the wh40k universe people are willing to accept and forgive mediocrity(at best). What we get here is a disappointingly shallow and tedious representation of the stagnation the Warhammer video games are currently suffering from.

When you're starting out, the campaign, while somewhat short and linear, is a fairly enjoyable experience. The levels are quite long, they look great, there are some nice set-pieces scattered around the chapters. In fact, the structure and the story are both very similar to the first game, where at first you're fighting a common enemy, only to be sidewinded by a new assailant halfway through. The story does get more ridiculous, however, with some major lore inaccuracies as you go on, it also favors the space marines above all else. You might call it a power fantasy, where your squad always wins due to having massive amounts of plot armor. Bolter porn in video game form.

There are some big cons I would like to point out though. First of all, the iconic voice of Titus is gone. Mark Strong was one of the best things the first game had, along with a fantastic soundtrack, neither of which are present in this new installment. What we get here is not just unremarkable, I'd say it's offensive to the quality of the original. Your whole squad both sounds and looks painfully generic and, until I got used to them halfway through the story, it was sometimes a challenge to tell apart who is actually speaking in the midst of combat. I can't point my finger on what exactly went wrong because the voice acting itself is fine. The ost is also lacking in many ways; aside from the title theme, which is a new spin on the old one, there were no memorable tracks at all.

The whole combat system also leaves much to be desired once you're past the flashiness of it.
Melee weapons feel floaty, like you're slicing through thin air(even the thunder hammer lacks impact), followed by repetitive combat executions that stop looking cool after the 10th time. Most ranged weapons also don't feel right, they don't do enough damage and some are wildly inaccurate for gameplay reasons. The fact that on higher difficulties, enemies simply become enormous damage sponges while dealing massive amounts of damage doesn't help either.

The meat of the game lies in its co-op mode, called Operations, which is EXTREMELY repetitive. What you do here is just walk from point A to point B through mostly the same decorations you've already seen many times during the campaign, but without any of the cool set-pieces, facing the same repetitive enemy encounters. There's no objective variety, so if you've played through a map once, it's gonna play out exactly the same on each subsequent playthrough.

How and why do people clock hundreds of hours in this mode is beyond me. It has no replayability at all aside from grinding exp to upgrade your weapons and unlock some cosmetic pieces of gear. Even though there are multiple classes to choose from, which do play differently from each other, all the core mechanics always stay the same. Which just makes it feel like a dull monotonous mess.

The grind also gatekeeps the harder difficulties, as you cannot jump straight into them without spending many hours slogging through the easier ones first. I personally despise when games do that, it's less reliant on skill and more on the amount of time you might be willing to sink into it.

There's also a PvP mode. With no customization for the traitor legions, a lack of map variety and gameplay objectives, a single match was enough for me. Some people do like it, but multiplayer pvp is just not my thing anymore.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a grindy co-op shooter masquerading as a story driven title.

I'd only recommend getting this on a deep discount if you're interested in the story, which is serviceable if you like Ultramarines, or thirsty for a Warhammer action game.

The Thousand Sons are offensively and laughably misrepresented here, so if you were looking forward to seeing them perform in a video game setting - look elsewhere.

Love the vibe, the artstyle, the story seems interesting. However, the performance is seriously shoddy and there are broken animations, making the experience janky and unpleasant. Example - character turn animations are completely missing in the latest version. Combat is also quite unwieldy and clunky. Might give it another chance, but the first impression is very disappointing, which is a huge shame, cause I've been looking forward to a lovecraftian metroidvania

The only good thing about this game is that it made me want to replay Dusk or Amid Evil

Strip the Warhammer name and it's a terrible unfun slogfest at it's core. Extremely repetitive, weapons lack any feedback, enemies are sponges that don't react to your shots at all on higher difficulties - no sound effect, no flinching, nothing. They just stand their ground until they die, or you do. Sprinting makes you float on ice when you stop abruptly, so toggling it is a bad idea - you either slog through levels or ice skate into every chasm.

Some environments are very open and fun to explore, but for each one of those there are gonna be two linear corridor levels.

The story can be summed in three sentences, there is no voice acting apart from some taunts your main character does for flavor. The skull keeps yapping 40k flair all the time, which doesn't help, it's just annoying. After a certain point I stopped paying attention to it completely cause it was stating the obvious and narrating nothingness. Honestly would have been better if it wasn't there at all.

What about the music you might ask? My answer would be - There was music?
I consider soundtrack a very important part of the experience, especially in a (boomer)shooter game. Here we get some techno slop with some choral parts, which sounds uninspiring and there wasn't a single memorable track during my 7 hours of game time.

The first one stuttered, but this one STUTTERS. It's a mess of a port, avoid if you value your sanity.

A solid, genuinely fun RTS

Campaign is the main attraction here, and honestly, it's great - engaging missions, fairly varied objectives, great looking cutscenes and story bits in-between. Fantastic voice acting and sound design too.

The multiplayer might be somewhat dead, but it's still a fun package overall, since there are additional modes where you can play against the AI. There's a conquest mode, where you have to capture a big overworld map and then fight a boss, and a skirmish mode where you can just pummel the AI

The Trinity of Stutter, I summon you from the deeps!
Traversal stutter! Shader cache stutter! Frame-pacing issues!
Unreal engine at its finest. A strong recommendation for stutter connoisseurs.

UPD:
The game itself can only deserve praise though. The story is nice, it has great graphics and the world design is just fantastic. Combat is meaty enough with melee, magic abilities and various passive skills enriching the flow. The soundtrack is unique, some might like it, some might not, but it fits the overall atmosphere really well and I honestly loved it.

Overall it's a fun experience brought down by some technical issues. I've seen much worse, however, so give it a go if you can tolerate occasional stutters here and there.