Talion prepares to assault the orc citadel at Gorgoroth.
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Middle-earth: Shadow of War hands-on — fighting an orc swarm in a huge citadel

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

The more I play Middle-earth: Shadow of War at preview events, the more I realize how fun it could be, as well as how challenging. There’s nothing wrong with a challenge. But the latest gameplay event I attended showed me how I’d probably have to fight some battles over and over again.

Now, some people probably have no faith in my ability to judge these things. But I played the 2014 game, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, for a good 80 hours before I finished it. Shadow of War is much bigger, and the Gorgoroth level that I played at Microsoft’s recent event showed me that it could also be much harder and more of a time sink than Shadow of Mordor. I captured video of my battle, and you can see it above.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.