The potty mouth 4^th graders, Cartman, Kyle, Stan & Kenny are back. Matt Stone and Trey Parker bring us another adventure in the video game world rather than on the small screen.  Does the new installment in this franchise hold up as well of the first one? Let us find out.

South Park the fracture but whole picks up right where the first one left off. You are still playing the middle age’s game for about five minutes, during this time it will give you a quick over view of the new combat system. At the end of those five minutes, you run in to Cartman, who has switched games to superheroes. Once the game switches over, you start at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to your popularity. You will then have the story of the game explained to you; you are looking for missing cats in
South Park in order for a reward so you can fund your super hero franchise. There is two sides of the super heroes, the coon and friends & the freedom pals who are in a civil war. In the story line, they are making fun of the marvel cinematic universe. As you progress through the story you find out there is more to it than just finding the cats for a reward there is a darker side to it than just what meets the eye.

The Game Play in South Park is just about the same as the first installment but a little bit more in depth, especially when it comes to the combat. This time you move along a certain amount of spaces along a grid to reach your target. Each move you do has a different range of attack, which adds a nice variety to the combat. Don’t worry about going in alone it never happens. On your side you can have up to three different sidekicks like The Coon, Captain Diabetes, The Human Kite, Mosquito and much more. Each of them offering their unique abilities to help you on your journey throughout South Park. A few of the new additions to the game play is crafting, you can build costumes, consumables and more. Throughout your adventure, you will pick up artifacts, which gives you more strength for your attacks it is highly recommended especially towards the end of the game when you need a might of 500 for some missions otherwise you will have a difficult time completing these missions. South Park is a mix of open world; turn base combat, RPG game. When you are travelling through the world you will run in to characters who will assign side missions to you this will help you get new artifacts and level up.

South Park the Fractured But whole is a proper and wonderful sequel, keeping the humor of the show, adding more to the combat and exploration. I loved by 18 hours of game play I completed the story was able to complete all the side missions except for two of them and get all the collectibles & I hope a third one comes out this is one title you don’t want to miss this year.

Score: 9/10

Reviewed by ICE at Gamers of the Round Table

Talion is back in a continuing adventure in the land of Mordor. Following the events of Shadow of Mordor, Monolith Productions and Warner Brothers brings us Shadow of War. Does Shadow of war rule middle earth or should it have been burned and destroyed along with the rings? Let us find out.

Story:  The story picks up right from the events of Shadow of Mordor you are back playing as Talion and Celebrimbor. In the very beginning of the game, we see them making a new ring to fight against Sauron and the Azgul. There is a war happening in middle earth in this installment of the series between the Orcs, Uruks and Olacs and the Minas Ithil. You take sides with Minas Ithil to help them win the war; however, down the line you find out there is a traitor in the Minas Ithil. In the story, we run in to new characters that have an effect in the story like Shelob, a woman who can turn in to a big spider, which is cool in my opinion. She takes Celebrimbor as a hostage in exchange for the ring you created, so that she can take on Sauron herself. As the story continues, it became more confusing because there was so much going on with all the different characters and became less interesting as I progressed through it. There are four different acts throughout the story the second being by far the longest.

Game play: The game play in Shadow of War is pretty much the same as the first one but with more RPG elements. However, it adds a few things as well; we still have the fighting style that we have seen in the Batman series. One thing I really enjoyed and found very annoying at the same time was the fortress raids. In order to progress through some of the story you need to take over these fortresses to clear the region. While doing some of these missions you feel like your weapons are never strong enough to defeat all the captains at one check point, but luckily I was able to beat this game without using the micro transactions. Throughout the game, you will brawl, use stealth, manipulate and climb your way through Mordor. Another feature I found in this game that was a bit tedious was building your own army. How you do this is by recruiting captains after you weaken them and they help you when it is time to do a fortress raid and take on the overlord of the fortress. This is not mandatory but it helps when it comes to difficulty but I just found it tedious. Game play design is not great in this case and unfortunately is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to games. When you clear a camp, it should remain cleared and not have the enemies re-spawn. As you progress through the story you will run in to a fair bit of collectibles like artifacts and memories which are words that go to a poem that unlocks a door and behind that door is a high level armor or weapon.

Conclusion: Shadow of War is a fun game but by the time, I hit the Twelve-hour mark I felt it became very lack luster, and I just wanted to be finished. It has lot of new additions to compare to the first one, but does not feel as polished. The story is far less interesting and has a lot going on with it between the characters and your character that is becomes hard to follow. With some game play flaws that are very noticeable it becomes very lack luster just a few hours in to the game I struggled just to finish it but the pay off at the end of the game was worth it.

Shadow of War 6/10 Average