Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor brought together many things that I loved both in gaming and in the world of Tolkien. It was a Lord of the Rings game with a solid story and had taken inspiration from my favourite gaming series by modelling the combat on that of the Arkham series and gameplay mechanics from Assassin’s Creed. The main highlight however was the Nemesis System which created random Orc Captain Enemies that would truly challenge the player and shape their gaming experience. Now the long awaited sequel is here and I have been chomping at the bit to get back into this world, but does it live up to the hype and promise?

Shadow of War brings our two heroes Talion and Celebrimbor back together once more following the climatic end to Shadow of Mordor. Their fight against the evil that is Sauron continues and now Celebrimbor has forged a brand new ring of power in the fiery heart of Mount Doom to challenge the power of the original One Ring he was tricked into making. However no sooner as the ring is completed the two are torn apart leaving Talion to search for Celebrimbor only to find him captured by the shadow spider Shelob. Taking human form, Shelob forces Talion to give up the new ring in order to free Celebrimbor and gives him a dark ominous vision of Minas Ithil under attack from an Orc army. Celebrimdor wants to go and claim the powerful Palantir artefact before the Orcs can claim it whilst Talion wants to help save this Gondorian citadel to help his people. With the new Ring of Power in the hands of Shelob and our heroes at odds about their objectives, already the opening of Shadow of War is full of conflict.

The opening act to Shadow of War serves as both a taster for what the main game will offer and a tutorial section as Talion and Celebrimbor must work together in order to claim back their new ring whilst defending Minas Ithil as it teaches newcomers the basic to gameplay whilst refreshing it for those returning from the first game. Straight away the sense that this game is bigger in scale than Shadow of Mordor hits you as you approach the Citadel to see it under siege from Orcs. Visually the refinements to the original game engine is striking as you make your way to the citadel to see the building stretching into the sky whilst battle rages all around you. As the player you really do get the sense that battle is raging all over the citadel and not just in the area you are in with the tremendous sound effects really bringing the sensation of a battle to you especially if you game wearing a headset.

The combat is just as slick and responsive as before and is just so dam satisfying when you take on multiple enemies with the counter system, melee attacks and bow for ranged attacks coming together in a beautiful blend of badassery. To stop it becoming too repetitive, the AI of enemies has been tweaked and now different types of enemy will attack you at once from the grunt level Orc to the beserker capable of parrying normal attacks to shield bearers who require attacking from behind. Thankfully the game accepts that it is a sequel and so doesn’t revert Talion back too much in terms of skills with some of his abilities from the first game now making up part of this default movement and combat style before you head into the new look skill/upgrade tree for him. I also loved how war trolls are now part of the regular enemy line up, monstrous brutes capable of sponging damage whilst preventing Talion’s usual trick of flipping over them to attack from behind. The flow of the combat is so smooth with everything clicking in place so effortlessly with each fight and really is just satisfying as hell just as the combat in Arkham will give you that “I’m Batman’ feeling as you stand over the fallen bodies of your enemies.

The stealth side is also back and dare I say it, feeling more Assassins’ Creed then ever as Talion can hide in bushes, kill from ledges and perform stealth killings from above, below and up to unsuspecting enemies. Movement is so fluid now as Talion can pretty much climb anything and jump to vantage points making the stalking and tracking of enemies a real second nature now. The level designs are excellent once again providing many different vantage spots and places to climb as you navigate around an enemy camp or stronghold in freeplay or the impressive main fortresses that I will come to in a bit, but everything just feels more refined and enhanced from the first game with the focus on improving what players loved in the first game instead of just drastically changing just for the sake of it.

But perhaps the biggest improvement and most natural of evolutions in this sequel have to be the new and improved Nemesis system. I did feel that in the original game that the Nemesis system was being held back by the limitations of the world but happily Shadow of War not only gives it the breathing room it needs but now the entire game itself is really focused around the Nemesis system. For those unaware, the Nemesis System generates random Orc Captains to challenge Talion with the aim that they are more then just sword fodder for the player. At times defeating an Orc Captain may lead to them suddenly appearing again, remembering that you killed or defeated them and showing the battle damage of that encounter as they seek their vengeance upon you having learned from that first encounter. Should they take Talion down then they will grow in power and strength making them a more difficult fight next time around. But the enhancements made in Shadow of Mordor really take this up to a new level. Orc Captains can now have blood brothers, another Orc who can come to their aid in battle or seek vengeance upon you if you slay their brother. Each one has their own personality and I love the dialogue exchanges between them and Talion before, during and after a fight. It also means that every player will have different Orc Captains so no two playthroughs are the same, though the names and scripted dialogue may be the same, how the captains look and their skill sets will be randomised through the nemesis system.

This also comes into play once you unlock the ability to Dominate, to literally take control of orcs and make them join your army and fight for you. This really is the bread and butter of Shadow of War, with the aim to take back control of Mordor from Sauron from within but dominating his own forces to take his fortresses in different regions to weaken him and his army. By Dominating Orc Captains you can start to build your own army so choosing which captains to dominate or to remove will lead to having a strong diverse army needed to tackle a fortress and then to hold it once the region is yours. Through the Nemesis system, Orc Captains can grow stronger with every victory or weaker should they lose and so side missions will appear for each Captain which Talion can help ensure their victory which will make them stronger such as helping them in a duel with another captain or going on a camp raid or hunting mission. Now Captains can only be at or below the current level of Talion so for example if you are only at level 20, you can only dominate a level 20 or below captain and any captains in your army already will only be able to reach level 20. The stronger Talion is the stronger his captains can be and therefore the stronger his army will be which is very important when it comes to fortress sieges for two reasons. First the story mode will require a strong army in order to take on the different fortresses and their overlords in each region in the game but also in the new online mode of  “Online Conquest” which will task you to raid another player’s fortress in order to gain rewards.

How this works is that once you capture a fortress you must then defend it, by placing your own overlord there and positioning your captains to serve as war chiefs and defenders. The stronger the captain you use the higher your defence level will be and can be bolstered by giving them additional upgrades such as a fortress defences to command like poison spouts from the walls to damage attackers climbing the fortress walls or having a legion of shield bearing orcs to meet anyone should they break through the gates. You can even have siege beasts who can serve as catapults to rain down fire, poison or to curse the attacking army. However this is not a live interaction as what you tackle is only an AI representation of how that player has set up their fortress. Capturing that fortress will gain you rewards but it won’t effect their main game so killing or dominating their captains will not be reflected in their own main campaign efforts as it will not yours in the same way. Vendetta missions also return but this time are now online as well so where in the first game, should anyone on your friend’s list with the game, fall to a captain in their game, you would be given the chance to get revenge by taking on a mission to kill that captain with rewards shared. Now it is online, you can have anyone who is playing Shadow of War appear as a Vendetta mission in your game. Completing this mission and an Online Conquest raid will gain you gold chests as rewards, which can give you new gear for Talion to wear.

The new gear system is a vast improvement on the first game with Shadow of War allowing players to equip Talion with new armour and weapons to aid him in battle. Previously all you could do was add runes to his basic weapons but now you can equip new swords, daggers and bow with new armour and cloaks and rings. Each new weapon will have attribute boosts as well as a special skill such as the quick throw knife being able to have an elemental effect such as lighting the enemy on fire or to poison them. Armour can reduce damage from ranged attacks or boost combo damage for example. The higher the level the greater the bonus from them and some of the rare/epic or legendary pieces will have an additional challenge to complete to unlock an upgrade for it which can make it stronger and unlock an extra bonus effect. I also love the nice little touch that upgrading the armour will also enhance the look of it. Everything is designed to give you even more things to do in the game around the main story missions and I honestly spent hours ignoring story missions just to experience the Nemesis system and the world it creates.

That said, it would be amiss of me not comment on the elephant in the room, the controversial inclusion of micro-transactions in the form of loot crates. Now everything in Shadow of War is a single player experience as everything that comes with the online element is still AI controlled so you do not really tackle any other player in true competitive ways. What this system is designed to do and tries to capitalize on is player grind, offering a fast track solution to gain good to high quality gear and orcs for your army by simply spending real world money to unlock them. The game has a new ‘Marketplace’ which is an online only feature that allows players to spend the in game currency of Mirian to purchase Silver War or Loot chests with War adding new orcs to your army garrison or loot giving you new gear for Talion. Real world money will get you Gold to spend on either Gold or Mithril chests that do the same thing. But yes, chests purchased with real world money do contain better quality items then those of the silver chests; there is just no way of saying it. A Player can quickly get legendary orcs or gear simply by buying a Mithril chest for example. The game will also entice players to the market place by advertising special timed deals on loot chests on the main menu, pause menu and any time you want to bring in an orc from your garrison to your army you have to do it via the market. However, by completing Vendetta missions, Online Conquests and putting your captains in the fighting pits once a fortress has been captured, you can earn gold loot chests up to your current level of Talion so everything is fully obtainable via gameplay but it may take much longer to do so that way, which for me is just fine. I do wish the marketplace was not thrown in my face on each menu but I can ignore it and I have done and my Talion and army is pretty epic without having spent any real money and I am more than happy to continue to use in game play to gain new gear and to build my army.

Shadow of War is truly everything that made the first game amazing for me but bigger and better. From the combat to the story told and the refined Nemesis system, there is a crazy amount of things to do during and after the main campaign to keep anyone fond of the style of gameplay happy for many hours. I like the new online missions and the freedom to explore the world and see what the Nemesis system can throw into the mix for me. I already have many tales worthy of song of adventures with the Nemesis system where in instance I am about to fall to a captain in battle only to have one of my own Captains suddenly appear to save me at the last moment or by not paying attention and killing an orc captain only to discover he was the blood brother of one of my dominated Captains which triggered their instant betrayal to me costing me their place in my army, which on occasion just happened to be the highest and strongest Captain I had at the time. I would literally have bought this game if it had just been the Nemesis system itself but the whole package is just so amazing that as a follow up to Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War is everything I hoped it would be and more.

I have already spent more time just enjoying the freedom of the world and joys of the Nemesis system then any other game so far this year. There is always another battle, another orc to fight or dominate and mystery person online to avenge or take their fortress. With the promise of more content coming in DLC, there is just so much value in this base game as it is for fans of the original and just Lord of the Rings in general. Yes the marketplace and micro-transactions are annoying because they do take the shine off it all a little but it can be ignored and putting in the effort and time into the game itself is far more rewarding then any shortcut system. Oh and an important thing to add, if you are playing this on PlayStation 4, make sure you have the Dual Shock 4 speaker volume turned up, trust me!

This has jumped right into my top five games of the year, and happily it has a hold on me just like a certain Ring of Power might have in real life….my precious!

Hard to believe that the Forza Motorsport series is 12 years old now, the flagship driving series for the Xbox Console has changed much over those years. There are so many racing games right now fighting to claim the crown of best looking and best performing that the benchmark Forza set for such games is a crazy high standard and right now with Xbox gearing up for the release of their first 4K gaming console in the Xbox One X, a lot is riding on this latest entry to the series to be the best yet. Time to rev up the engine and see how this performs on the race track!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QITXLdS3eW0

Forza Motorsport 7 is the more series side to the Forza series with the spin off Forza Horizon more focused on arcade style fun and presentation which for me, is just how I like my racing games. Forza 7 is simply stunning, it is a beautiful game that wants to showcase the world’s most stunning looking cars and put players in the driving seat of them but at the same time it wants to be more simulator than arcade racer. Focus shifts to how you tune your cars to get the best performance from them and to become the best driver ever. Unlike Forza Horizon 3 however, this process feels far more rigid and by the books with less freedom to just pick a car and go tear it up on the streets and race tracks and as a result definitely fits in the more business style I have always viewed this side of the franchise to be.

Starting off we have the Forza Driver’s Cup mode which is the career mode for the game. This is broken down into six brackets starting with the Seeker Championship and moving on to Breakout, Evolution, Domination, Masters and finally the Forza Drivers Cup bracket itself. In order to unlock the next bracket you must earn enough Forza driving points from racing and hopefully winning races in the previous brackets. This style of forced progression is a natural part of racers but after the huge freedom in the world of Forza Horizon 3 this year, it just felt rather cold. Each bracket has races that focus on a particular car type and race tracks with a top 3 podium finish giving you points and credits to help you progress through the mode. I really enjoyed the special one off Showcase races which put you in the seat of a special car for a single victory race in which you get that car added to your collection. Showcase races help break up the normal races you take on.

Progression is not just about winning on the track, but now you have two other aspects that you have to work on outside of racing cars, Driver Milestones and Car Collector. Driver Milestones are essentially rewards for earning XP as a driver and leveling up with each new Milestone giving players the options to select one of three rewards be it in game credits, Driver Gear or a new car. But keeping in tone of the rigid linear progression comes the Car Collection which adds Car Tiers to the mix. Forza 7 really wants players to care about the cars they desire to own so it makes players earn the right to be able to have them by locking away car classes in Tiers. Only when your own collection has a certain value will the next Tier of cars become available and there are 5 Tiers to unlock and broken down into Common Cars, Uncommon, Rare, Super Rare and Legendary cars. This adds a really annoying grinding element to Forza 7 as some of the races you find in the campaign mode will be locked out until you have unlocked one of these Tiers and own a car in there. Making it worse is the pitiful amount of credits you actually earn from winning or doing well in the races themselves when you then see how much the cars cost and what value they bring to your collection in order to improve your Tier worth.

This grind is painful and even with the credit boost of Milestone rewards, it can feel like an unreachable goal at times as a player when you see how much it costs to get a better car or knowing that the car you really want to drive around is locked in a car Tier three away from where you are. This then brings me to the most annoying and disappointing aspect to Forza 7…Prize Crates. Oh how this not only angered me but is definitely a backwards step for the series that brings in micro-transactions to the series in a very obvious and ugly way. Well I say micro-transactions, but currently you cannot spend real world money to buy these Prize Crates but Turn 10 Studios has confirmed that the plan is indeed to bring that element into the game down the road and it is a repugnant money grabbing plan this series and Xbox can certainly do without. Prize Crates are basically loot boxes, with different quality ones that promise the chance of getting new cars, new Driving gears and the other newest addition to Forza 7 in Mod Cards. Mod Cards at first you would imagine to be something used to modify the cars themselves but no, with the need to earn as much credits as you can when you can, Mod Cards modify the races you take on by adding ‘side challenges’ such as performing a certain action in a race like making ‘Two good passes” or overtakes in a race to changing how your car performs by taking out the driver assists for that race. Three mod cards can be applied at a time and again, they have a tier system of gold legendary mod cards, to purple rare and then green common. Green mods tend to have a single use where gold mods can run for a number of races. All designed to give the player extra credits at the end of the race for their completion.

The game itself will even push you or suggest to you to go try out the prize crates in order to collect more mods or to get better cars right before the game suggest you actually just buy a new car. The more expensive prize crates give the player a chance to gamble on the result, buy a crate for 300,000 credits in the hope you get some nice mods to help out or a really cool car to add to your collection but here I found that whilst at times I did get a new car of high worth, it was a car I would not pick to drive in so its just put in the collection to improve the tier and will just gather dust in the garage. The grind is now very obvious and clearly put there to entice players to use the Prize Crate system to bypass that gind and I do not like it. I am all for the normal progression of doing well to earn money to buy or get better cars in order to progress further but I am certainly not a fan of being held back so a loot box can be dangled in my face with the game’s own narrator suggesting I use them to get a head in my career mode.

Which is a real shame because Forza 7 is so much fun to play and is probably the most accessible entry into the more serious side to the series to date. The game wants everyone to give it ago whether you are a racing game fan or not and it is fully possible to just pick up a controller and race thanks to the driver assists which kick in on the lower difficulties but can be manually turned off if you want. This all brings the player into the world easier than ever before with the free play mode in the single player menu that allows you to set up any type of race on any track with as many AI opponents as you want. AI drivers feel more believable now which has less of having one AI driver in a really powerful car just blasting away never to be caught up with but now the AI controlled cars will pack together much like in a real race and slowly take their places in the race as they look to overtake each other as you the player to the same. I do find that at times the AI can be a little too aggressive in that there is a racing line to follow on each track and the AI will doggedly stick to this even if it means them just ramming into you knocking you aside or hitting you from behind just to let you know that you are in their way. It would be nice to have them maybe show a little more realism is say trying to avoid collisions instead of just happily tanking their way through but it does make it all the more sweeter then you overtake them cheekily on the inside of a bend or blast past them on a straight. I love how the driving feels in this game and it is just so beautiful with the best visuals seen yet in the series which is only going to be more mouth watering in 4K on the Xbox One X in a month’s time.

Cars can be customised and when you buy a new car you will automatically be offered the chance to had a visual style to it from the Forza community who again have and do come up with some amazing designs for each car, I particularly enjoyed the Batman theme I gave my first racing truck to give it a ‘Bat-van’ look. This aspect continues from previous Forza games and it is something that will only get better with the tremendously talented Forza community coming up with new designs daily which you can add your own designs to.  Multiplayer was smooth and solid for the most part but having so many great cars locked out until you add them to your collection can make racing options limited at first.

So right now Forza Motorsport 7 is a very mixed bag for me with the gameplay and stunning visuals being hugely impressive once again only for the new loot box and forced grinding tarnishing it so far for me. That and seeing how several modes are currently in the “coming soon” meaning the full game has yet to even launch now a couple of weeks after release. Multiplayer will be getting online Leagues and something called the Forzathon mode could offer something very interesting. For those in the community who like to share their own designs or just want to sell those cars in your collection you may never drive, an auction house is also coming soon, probably once the Xbox One X launches.

Forza 7 right now is quite a mess where you have the gameplay side sadly colliding with the business money making side of video games creating a culture clash instead of the game itself just being celebrated. The grinding makes this a slow paced game and each time I get it suggested to me to try out a prize crate I just want to fire up Forza Horizon 3, grab a cool car and stick on a good song and go tear up the Australian countryside instead of playing Forza 7. The developers have already responded to player criticism regarding the VIP part of the more expensive game editions or those who pick up the VIP Pass and hopefully more changes will help improve some of my criticisms along the way to the Xbox One X console release but right now, the accountants have gotten into the mix with this game and it just doesn’t feel like the Forza game experience I expected or wanted from this and fortunately I can go back to Forza Horizon 3. Some strange and horrible decisions were made in an office somewhere in Xbox Tower and it has cost this game a lot.

Forza Motorsports 7 is a visually stunning and satisfying game once you have the controller in your hand and you are in a race. But the shenanigans around the Prize Crates and the additional grinding put in place to unlock the best of this game just takes the shine of what could have been the best racing game on Xbox in years.

By now there can only be a handful of gamers who have not heard of Cuphead. The screams of rage and broken controllers and keyboards have filled the channels of Twitch and most living rooms since this released with more saltiness than an ocean. It has taken a few years for this game to finally release and especially on Xbox One where exclusives are thin to say the least, Cuphead is here and oh boy is it one glorious barsteward of a gaming experience!

Studio MDHR have created one of the most unique gaming experiences of 2017, there is simply no better way to say it. I normally avoid games that simply do everything they can to just troll players with cheap deaths and AI designed to just kick your butt to the point of cheating to do it and going into Cuphead, this was indeed a fear for me. But Cuphead is very different; it is old school style difficult and a kind of difficulty that reminds you why you fell in love with gaming back in the day whilst it also teaches this modern gaming generation that sometimes you have to work for that victory screen!

So Cuphead is the story of two brothers; Cuphead and Mugman (greatest character name this year btw) who lead a fairly normal happy life by following the rules and being good lads. One day they stumble across the tracks and find themselves in a Casino, as you do, and begin having a really good run at the craps table. This luck soon grabs the attention of the Casino owner, the Devil himself who makes the lads one final offer and should they get one more winning roll of the dice then the Devil will give all the riches of the Casino to them but should they lose then he will claim their souls. Well of course this is an obvious “nah we’re good mate but cheers” kind of moment but much to the horror of Mugman (Still the greatest character name this year) Cuphead greedily grabs the dice and rolls….snake-eyes! They have lost and now begging for their very souls and lives the Devil agrees to do one last deal. He sends the boys out into the world to retrieve all the souls of the debtors he has, failing to do so means he will collect theirs. So off the lads go to save themselves on an adventure filled with danger and peril.

I must begin by talking about the incredible art style and visuals to Cuphead which truly take animation in gaming to a new level. Inspired by the early animation of the 1930’s, Cuphead is a stunning tribute to that art style and deceptively simple use of retro cartoon visuals. Everything is so beautiful to see on screen from simple movement animation to the levels themselves and finally the boss battles themselves. What is staggering to know is that it all hand drawn by a very small team of just two developers although I believe their wives also helped out in the final run to launch but even so, all this animation and art being hand drawn is mind blowing. There is literally thousands of frames of animation per boss fight and when you consider that no two boss fights are the same, that is a huge amount of animation work per fight. You just have to appreciate that dedication and amount of work and it shows through in everything Cuphead is as a game.

Cuphead is all about the boss fights as Cuphead goes about collecting the souls from the names on the Devil’s list, joined by Mugman if you have a co-op partner next to you on the sofa but I will come to that later. I did go in expecting platforming levels that lead to boss fights but nope, it is all about finding those on the list and boy each fight will make you work for it. The fights are multistage battles which will test your skill, patience and ability to adapt and learn on the fly as the boss’s strategy can change on a dime. The AI of the boss characters is one of the best designed adversarial systems I have encountered in a good many years. So yes Cuphead is just as hard as you have heard, it can be very unforgiving as it starts difficult and only gets harder the further in your progress as you work your way through the Devil’s list. Boss’s will change their attack patterns so just when you think you have it down it will suddenly switch to catch you of guard.

So yes Cuphead is very hard, it is completely designed to test player in their skill and patience but for the majority of the time when you fail it is your fault that you failed. Maybe you didn’t jump at the right time for failed to notice that one enemy or bullet heading your way. The fact that enemies do not have health bars means you never know how well you are doing until the next stage of the boss fight kicks in just adds that little extra edge to the fights. It blends the action of a side scrolling shooter with bullet hell so effortlessly that it all comes down to player skill to be victorious, something I really relish and like about Cuphead. Adapting to each boss fight means there is a lot of trial and error here and should you die you have to replay the entire fight again, no hand holding checkpoints here so there can be some frustration to battle your way to what feels like the final stages only to make a mistake and have to redo it all again. To make it worse, when you die a cheeky progress bar will show you just how close to the end of the fight you were which at least gives you some indication of how well you were doing.

There is a lot I really love about this game but it does also have one of the most annoying things that has surfaced this year in games for me, a co-op game without online co-op. Cuphead just screams at you to grab a friend and play this game, hell I would love the chance to be a Mugman in a friend’s game. But sadly the co-op is local only and as a result really sticks up an unnecessary boundary to really unlock the potential of this game. I want to share this game with friends or to be more honest, to share the pain of failure in truly wondrous rage outbursts. I really am fed up now with the sudden push to have local co-op after it had been put aside for many years in gaming to now have it but at the expense of losing online co-op, just have both and believe me, players will be far happier for it.

Also some of the boss battles can feel a little unfair at times, with AI that will just outright overwhelm you randomly. This does make each attempt feel different but after fighting the same boss five times in a row only for the 6^th time the boss whips out an attack you haven’t seen before just makes you all the more Hulk Smash type of rage. That random sudden change up in difficulty just for the sake of not letting you win no matter how well you are doing can stop you in your tracks for a while and I found myself moving to a different fight to come back later if I felt the game had just decided to stick me on the naughty step and not let me have a real chance of defeating that boss.

But niggles aside, for the asking price of just under £17, Cuphead is amazing value for money if you want to be truly challenged and a fan of side shooters. Every boss fight felt personal and I have yet to finish the game because right now, I am just not good enough but like all good personal crusades, I will beat this game and all the rage-fest angry saltiness moments are balanced against amazing joyful moments of success and admiration for this game that on the surface looks like a friendly little cartoon game but is arguably one of the top shooters this year.