Middle-earth: Shadow of War

really fun and addicting until it gets a bit too repetitive. but the open world aspects are infinitely more fun than the quests/main storyline

woo woo wooooooo

This is one of my pet favourite games. Everything good about the Nemesis system returns and is greatly improved and expanded upon. Yet just like the original I absolutely lose my shit trying to deal with the awful fucking controls. Trying to wrangle Talion's dumbass into doing what I want is the real epic conflict at the center of the game. Miraculously the game manages to still be more than fun enough to just deal with it, but sometimes it feels like I'm deliberately punishing myself by playing it. Oh, and Celebrimbor is probably even more annoying here than in SoM.

Also the sheer breadth of orc dialogue is insane. You can hear other captains yell out a captain's name when you kill them, which I can only imagine being an astronomical amount of work to go through and record those reactions for different names with each voice actor. The orcs are the end-all-be-all of this game, no question about it.