Yeah, Shadow of War is a bit of an upgrade, there's more to do. I spent almost 73 hours in Shadow of Mordor and 99 in Shadow of War. I enjoyed it. I even decided to re-watch the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies. Shadow of Mordor got me addicted to the game play and I loved continuing it in Shadow of War, but Shadow of War had a few issues. If you read this review, good for you and thank you. I know it's very long and I didn't format it nicely.

These games are now more relevant due to LotR: Rings of Power on Amazon. Celebrimbor is a main character, so I'm very familiar with him. I'm so glad to see him in the flesh (pun intended!). The show is great and now I want to replay these games.

I think it looks "modern," but maybe I don't understand your definition. Yeah, this does seem like "The Matrix again." Remember (spoilers!) Neo formed a truce with the machines and gave up his body. We see images of that in this trailer. It also seems as though someone is watching The Matrix via screen projection.

I don't know about "90's goof," I never felt that, but I really enjoyed it. I didn't hate the sequels, but it seems sequels never live up to the original. The movies are a true sequential trilogy, though.

I'm massively impressed you've seen and loved The Animatrix! I don't know of anyone else that has seen it.

One thing I wanted to note is that I love Neil Patrick Harris's glasses (obviously, because they're blue!). However, I came to believe they're specifically blue. This wasn't some random color the costume designers chose, they're blue as in "blue pill." I think that's real fitting (and an original thought). The blue pills make a seriously obvious come back, but we do later get to see the choice to be made again (red vs. blue).

Thanks for posting this reply, because I just posted my Shadow of War review and it looks like it pushed this down. I wanted this to have the attention, because I'm sure others here want to see this, too.

Yay, Travis finally spoke up! I was waiting for that! :) I remember when we were college roommates. In my memory, I still have an image of seeing that Matrix DVD and I remember us watching it, maybe at least once. I don't recall if I saw it in theaters, but I think maybe so. I had already graduated high school by the time it came out and was in community college.

I don't recall a "Matrix Online" though I've recently seen that it existed. I think the one I was familiar with was Enter the Matrix, which I'm sure I saw in the database here. I think I remember it came out on all three consoles at the time; GameCube, XBox, and PS2 (I still have all three). I specifically remember seeing it for the GameCube. I don't recall if I played it though. I may have played a little bit of it, but not enough to get any story out of it. I seem to remember Niobe.

That's odd that Morpheus is canonically dead, because of the the events of The Matrix Online. I guess that's a bit of the Matrix lore I missed out on. And yes, it's been confirmed Yahya is indeed playing a younger version of Morpheus, if his style wasn't obvious enough. He confirmed it on Twitter.

Once again, New Rockstars (on YouTube) has a great trailer breakdown and analysis.

Cool, man! I was about to ask about "modern hardware," but I decided to Google my question, I didn't know it's also a PC game. I'm just not sure where to buy it, I don't see it on Steam, not that that's the only place to buy games...

Oh, cool! I have an XBox, but the only game I have for it is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That sounds good! There's a site I've never heard of before, too!

New trailer! This one looks very interesting as it shows the parallels between this and the first movie. It talks about making "copies" and deja vu, "it happens when they change something." This month is an awesome month for movies! It looks like I'll be going twice this month. The last time I saw two movies in the same month was probably decades ago. Check it out: https://youtu.be/IgYs_NDyaLs

Awesome ideas!

Here's a new trailer: https://youtu.be/nNpvWBuTfrc

Thank goodness this movie is streaming, because my theater isn't playing it. They're only playing Spider-Man: No Way Home and Encanto, the latter is one I know nothing of. I can't blame them for continuing to play Spider-Man: No Way Home. That was without a doubt the best movie of the year, maybe even the best Spider-Man movie ever!

I think the best word to describe this movie is "meta" (and I don't mean that new Facebook company). I enjoyed it. If you're a Matrix fan, I don't think you should pass this up.

I like the new stuff, but I’m disappointed with Campaign mode. JWE felt like a long game. Steam is telling me I’ve spent about 247 hours playing it. I know I went through it’s Campaign probably three times. In order to progress to the next map in JWE, you have to achieve a 3 or 5 star rating for your park. JWE2’s Campaign mode doesn’t even touch this subject. It doesn’t show you things you need to achieve any rating for your park such as amenities. It doesn’t even show you all the cool new additions like the aquatic stuff.

JWE’s 3 or 5 star progression necessity takes time and strategy. This actually makes it fun and prolongs the Campaign. At the same time it also makes the game a bit boring, because you’re often waiting for something to complete (like egg incubation). Fortunately, there’s a great mod that gives you time controls. JWE2 includes this as a feature. JWE2’s Campaign mode only lasts for a few hours. It’s fun, but once I reached that point I was left unsatisfied. An interesting way to look at this though is JWE’s Campaign centered on the archipelago named “Las Cinco Muerte,” which means “The Five Deaths.” Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna are recognizable as they are in the movies. Each island is a new map, although some islands actually have more than one playable area, especially if you have the story DLC.

JWE2 does have 5 maps. They are Arizona, Washington (state), Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Yosemite National Park in California. However, instead of working towards the goal of a park rating, you just have to finish story missions. Those missions are pretty much chasing dinos to put them in an enclosure and that’s about it. That’s pretty much the extent of each map, just in different biomes.

(Continued in next comment as I exceeded the character limit again.)

JWE2 introduces Chaos Theory mode and it seems to be much closer to JWE’s game play. The point of Chaos Theory mode is revisiting the setting of each movie and doing something different. On the Lost World map, you actually get to build and run the San Diego park, which never got a chance in the movie. It was introduced and the Rexes were supposed to go there, but it didn’t quite work out.

The first map, Jurassic Park, is quite similar to JWE’s DLC titled “Return to Jurassic Park.” That was a fun DLC. The voice acting was great, because you could tell one of the characters sounded much younger. It’s main mission is to fix the park and get it back up and running. It gave us Jurassic Park variations of the buildings in the game. JWE2’s Jurassic Park Chaos Theory mode is similar, but more like a nearly complete tutorial. The only reason I say it isn’t complete is because it doesn’t include things that were not in JP such as the aviary and aquatics. I haven’t finished this one, but I’m quite sure that’s the case. I’m quite sure the mission I’m working on now is the final part of it. I’m not sure how the other maps for the other movies work, but so far Chaos Theory seems to be a great new feature that isn’t disappointing.

I may write a full review of JWE2 after I play more. I just wanted to share my initial thoughts here. I can’t decide how to rate this on Steam. I want to give a positive rating, because I love the game, but my thoughts about it are negative simply because of the brevity of it’s Campaign mode.