Middle Earth: Shadow of War is a pretty typical sequel, in that it takes the things that worked in the original, and then expands on it. it does not strive to re-invent the wheel, just give some more of the same, but slightly better.

If you've played Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, you'll have a good idea of how this game works. Defeat Sauron's army, take control of his orcs, fight the forces of Mordor. It's pretty much the same thing as last time. The nemesis system, which was the highlight of Shadow of Mordor, returns, and it's pretty much the same (which is a bit disappointing, as I thought it had room for improvement). I would say that the biggest difference here is the focus on taking over regions, which ends up with larger siege battles. These battles do end up being a bit repetitive, as they never really change.

As for the story, it's nothing amazing, but it does help contextualize what you're doing. You're fighting the forces of Mordor, and you're effectively controlling two different characters, with different motivations. Talion, the ranger, wants to protect Gondor from the forces of evil, while Celebrimbor, the elf smith who forged some of the rings of power, and who wants his revenge on Sauron. This creates an interesting dynamic in the story. I'm not going to spoil any more of the story, you'll just have to play the game yourself.

The game also has some DLC, which I would not recommend getting if you did not get the Gold edition of the game on sale, because darn are these things overpriced.
The two "tribes" DLCs are priced at 15€ each, and adds a new orc tribe. These tribes have their own looks, and some abilities unique to them. You also get a smathering of small filler quests that clutters up the map, and which just boil down to "defeat this orc", similar to the regular encounters with orcs, only now you get some more experience from them. I suspect that these mini-quests were added just to make sure that the player feels like they actually got something from the DLC. Had these DLCs been 2€ each, I would have said that their price was slightly too high, but possibly worth picking up on a sale. At 15€ each, they're likely the most overpriced DLC I've seen.

Blade of Galadriel adds a 2h story expansion, which re-uses the same areas from the main game, and mostly just adds a few new unique orcs, plus a new main character. The new main character controls like the main character from the main game, but lacks the ability to dominate orcs, and can instead shoot light projectiles. At 15€, this is severely overpriced, and the DLC is kind of lackluster in general.

The Desolation of Mordor adds another 2h to the game, and costs 20€. This is overpriced, but the new main character and area do at least feel significantly different from the main game. Had this been a 10€ DLC, it would have felt worth it.

Overall, Shadow of War was pretty nice. It's just a shame that the DLC is so overpriced.

Cosmic Star Heroine is a JRPG by the same devs that gave us Cthulhu Saves the World, and much like Cthulhu Saves the World, it tries to fix many of the small frustrations that are typical for the genre.

In Cosmic Star Heroine you play as the titular heroine, who tries to save the solar system from a plot that threatens everyone living there. It's a pretty standard story, really, but it's told relatively well, and it never really feels like it slows down. New characters and locations are introduced at a brisk pace, which helps keep the game interesting to the end.

The game tries to make combat a bit more interesting than most JRPGs, by making it so that you can't just spam attack. Each ability can only be used once before "resting", which restores all your abilities. This means that mindlessly hitting the attack button in combat is impossible. You also get full health after each fight, so no need to worry about potions and such.
This is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it prevents combat from becoming a mindless grind, on the other hand, it does meant that you need to pay attention even during the easiest of fights, and this can cause them to feel like they drag a bit. In fact, this is the games greatest weakness. When combat is frequent, it gets tedious in a way that most JRPGs don't (frequent combat can feel tedious in JRPGs, but in a different way).

So overall, this is a nice game, but it's nothing spectacular. Worth playing if you have it, but not worth going out of your way to play.

I can't help but feel like Reverse Crawl was not quite what was advertised. The description made it seem like you would be trying to stop the heroes with the help of your monsters, in a way similar to how it is in an RPG, where the heroes are few but powerful, and your monsters are weak but plentiful. This is not really the case here, the monsters and heroes are fighting on equal terms. You pick a group of monsters, and they fight until they die, and you face groups of "heroes" who do the same. Each encounter is just a small set of tactical battles, where you need to wear down the enemy before they wear you down.
Reverse Crawl is not bad, mind you, but I feel like it's a missed opportunity. It's a short playthrough though, so anyone interested in trying it, and who have got it from any of the bundles its been in, should give it a shot.

I got Age of Empires 2 back in 2000. And now I've finally beaten the original campaign. So it was about time, eh?

Age of Empires 2 is a classic RTS, where you're leading a civilization through the ages, crushing any other civilization that stands in your path. Unlike something like Civ though, this is an RTS in the same vein as StarCraft or Command & Conquer, and match generally lasts less than an hour.

First of all, for a game so steeped in history, it's interesting to see just how wrong they got things. They list the wrong nations as the winner in specific named battles, claim that the wrong crusading army sacked Constantinople and so on, and this is in a game that seemingly tries to present its history as actual history. It does not really detract from the game, but I find it interesting how wrong they got things, for no apparent reason.

It's interesting just how varied they managed to make the different levels in the campaigns. Every level feels unique, despite most of them using the same basic mechanics, and many of them having very similar objectives. What the levels lacked though was balance. There seems to have been no rhyme or reason to how hard a level was, with them placing some of the hardest battles early on in the first campaign, and the final mission in the final campaign being laughably easy. It's as if the level designers did not aim for any form of difficulty curve.
The campaigns of the main game were by the way about 20h in total. The 55,6h also includes time I've spent in skirmish mode, and playing the game in MP with friends.

As part of this month's theme, I looked into one of my oldest unplayed games on Steam. I think I got this game from one of the earliest Indie royale bundles.

Max and the Magic Marker is a simple puzzle platformer, where you've got a pen that can be used to create simple objects. This is clearly not a game meant for an older audience, as the puzzles are very simple, and there's little variety in the solutions. Draw a line to cross a gap, draw a box to gain some height, draw a seesaw to launch yourself into the air. It's cute though, and kind of fun. Had this been longer, I would have got really bored with it, but 2h is a fair length for a game like this.

Every time I turn the camera, the framerate drops into the single digits. Kind of hard to play a game about fast movement when that happens.

At some point a patch was introduced that added achievements, and broke the physics, and made you take damage from silly things like trying to cross an edge of a platform too fast. Apparently the version you can buy from the developers website still works, but the steam version is broken.