As with the best Star Wars or Star Trek games on PC, the best Lord of the Rings games stretch across a bunch of different genres. Among the following entries, you'll find an RTS, a MMORPG, a text adventure and a couple of decent open-world adventures, among others, based on both the books and Peter Jackson's classic movies. 

We've expanded the remit here to include some games based on The Hobbit and other parts of Middle-earth lore—we've done this because the PC has such an extensive history of Tolkien games compared to other platforms, and we wanted to reflect that. 

We've updated this list following the release of Shadow of War, which, while bloated, is still more than good enough to make the cut.  

The Hobbit

Released: 1982

Melbourne House’s take on Tolkien is something of a legend in the UK, where systems like the Spectrum ruled. As well as (for the time) excellent graphics, it featured wandering NPCs, interactions like the infamous ‘Say to Thorin "CARRY ME"', and the full, albeit condensed story. The most memorable thing about it though is its combat 'engine'—a purely random system that lets Bilbo be the ultimate badass. Actual quote: "With one well placed blow, you cleave his skull. Gandalf is dead." Thorin says: "Well, are we just going to stand around all day?"—Richard Cobbett

The Lord of the Rings Volume 1 and 2 

Released: 1990, 1992

Interplay’s take on the series switched the action from adventure to RPG, with an admirable focus on both following the novel’s story, complete with features like a day/night cycle that controlled how often the likes of the Nazgûl would show up, and scattering in assorted sidequests and bonus content like finding the pieces of Anduril. The sequel, The Two Towers, also offered the novelty of multiple parties on their own adventures. Sadly, it didn’t click. Even The Two Towers went largely unnoticed by RPG fans, and the third part never ended up happening.—Richard Cobbett

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Released: 2003

EA's The Lord of the Rings games were a mixed affair, but a couple of strong efforts made their way to PC. This hack-and-slash adventure based on the third movie faithfully tells its story in three different parallel strands, following Frodo, Sam and Gollum, then Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli, plus Gandalf doing his thing. It looked nice for the time, and though we called out the controls for being built for consoles rather than PC in our original review, it remains EA's highest-rated Lord of the Rings game in PC Gamer UK history, with 85%. Like all of the publisher's old LOTR games, you can't buy it digitally, only in old boxed copies.—Samuel Roberts

The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle-Earth II

A familiar-feeling but well-produced RTS that improved on the first game, particularly with the CPU AI, this was a decent large-scale translation of The Lord of the Rings. With good and evil campaign paths, a gorgeous (for the time) version of Middle-Earth with extravagantly realised locations and well-animated units, this is probably as good as a LOTR RTS will ever get. It was certainly better than The War of the Ring, a non-starter 2003 effort from Vivendi based on the books rather than Peter Jackson's movies. 

You could even create your own heroes for skirmishes, and new content for the game is supported by an active modding community. The only issue now, of course, is getting hold of a boxed copy, since EA's licence lapsed and that means no one can sell it digitally. Find a way to play Battle for Middle-Earth II, though, and there's still a community hosting multiplayer servers, which now also support the game's expansion, The Rise of the Witch King.—Samuel Roberts 

The Lord of the Rings Online 

Released: 2007 

While it never really undercut World of Warcraft as its creators hoped, Lord of the Rings Online is easily one of the best Tolkien games around. Rather than try and recreate Middle Earth in one go, creators Turbine started in relatively quiet areas like the Shire, with expansions since then roughly following the Fellowship’s path to Mordor while filling in the gaps around the sides. For fans of the world, there’s no better way to jump in and explore—especially as the base game is free.—Richard Cobbett

Lego The Lord of the Rings

Released: 2012

This is one of the better Lego games, featuring a truncated open-world version of Middle-Earth that somehow stands as the most faithful translation of the settings as seen in Peter Jackson's films. Each region is pretty detailed, and the colour palette is surprisingly spot-on. It's not the best choice if you want to take Middle-earth super seriously, but the oddly effective use of voices from the movies, combined with the Lego games' now deeply familiar slapstick humour, make it an ideal all-ages choice. Plus, unlike most of the games on this list, it's readily available from Steam.—Samuel Roberts 

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Released: 2014

Shadow of Mordor is one of the most talked about games of the last few years thanks to the Nemesis system. This generates unique orc commanders for your hero, Talion, to face off against, and depending on the results of their encounters, they can blossom into grudges that play out over the course of the game.

Its borrowing of Assassin's Creed-style systems is pretty successful, too, with high-quality melee and ranged combat. I'm not in love with the two sparse-feeling overworlds, or the main story—Talion, killed by Sauron's Black Hand, is brought back by Elven wraith Celebrimbor to exact revenge—but you could rightly argue that the real story in Shadow of Mordor is the relationships you form with both your orc opponents and brainwashed pals.—Samuel Roberts 

Middle-earth: Shadow of War

Released: 2017

Shadow of War isn't a total slam dunk, thanks to more open world busywork than its predecessor, but it also builds on the first game in some decent ways. Conquering Nemesis fortresses with your army of orcs gives the sequel a sense of scale the first didn't really have, and the improved Nemesis system means even more meaningful encounters with the cockney warriors of Middle-earth. 

Take Tim's encounters with Mozû the Blight, for example, where the large orc who looks like he's had cheese melted onto his face began bullying him. Then there's an orc who will track you down to sing to you. These minions are the true stars of the game, and it's amazing we haven't seen the Nemesis system implemented elsewhere in games yet. Shame about the loot boxes, then, but they didn't spoil Andy's enjoyment of the game.—Samuel Roberts

And here are some Tolkien games we're less keen on

We hesitate to call these the worst Tolkien adaptations—some of them are—but like a lot of big licensed properties, The Lord of the Rings is more prone to average or disappointing games than outright disasters. Here is a selection of them. 

Lord of the Rings 

Sadly, lightning couldn’t strike twice for Melbourne House. Its take on Lord of the Rings arguably shows why so few games have dared take on the full trilogy—even with three games and the success of The Hobbit to build on, the designers couldn’t live up to the scope of the book and struggled from the start to turn its adventure into a series of puzzles. With most of The Hobbit’s advanced features jettisoned, the only thing it really became remembered for was its scale.—Richard Cobbett

War In Middle Earth

Released: 1989

While most games up to this point tried to tell the story, this one used the power of more modern computers to provide a slightly different take. It was primarily a strategy game focused on the clash of armies and heroes. The clever parts, though, were in the victory conditions. To win, you could defeat Sauron’s armies fairly, or get the Ring (not necessarily carried by Frodo) to Mount Doom, while the baddies could win by retrieving it and making it back to Mordor. A clever set-up, even if the strategy side was too simple for most players.—Richard Cobbett

Riders of Rohan 

Released: 1991

Set during The Two Towers, Riders of Rohan is somewhat reminiscent of the better known Defender of the Crown—a mix of strategy and minigames that sees you leading armies against the orc hordes, while also getting your hands dirty with duels and magic and shooting invading soldiers with a crossbow. Like most games that mix flavours, the result was that no individual part of it ended up being particularly great. Still, there were definitely worse ways to combine both the macro-scale of the fight against Sauron with the importance of individuals down on the ground.—Richard Cobbett

The Lord of the Rings: Conquest

Released: 2009

This was a disappointing translation of LOTR into a different genre, this time a Battlefield-esque competitive game. Conquest came from Pandemic, creators of the rough but vividly film-like Star Wars: Battlefront games, and this should've been fun and authentic like those. Unfortunately, it felt a lot cheaper, with bad animation, poor combat and underwhelming small-scale adaptations of the movie's best set pieces. 

I wish I could still play Conquest as a curio against the AI, but I know it's the sort of thing I'd buy in an Origin sale for $8/£6, play for 20 minutes and then never again.—Samuel Roberts

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North

Released: 2011

Play as some nobodies in this floppy appendage to the films, that shows you parts of Middle-Earth lore previously unseen in the games or movies. The hope with War of the North was that it could capture some of the co-op magic of Snowblind's Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance games on PS2, but it's instead a repetitive and clunky action game that didn't capture the drama of the films or the appeal of that fictional universe. 

War in the North not a disaster, mind, just one that only patient LOTR fans will enjoy. Releasing it shortly after Skyrim (or just before, in the US) was a death sentence.—Samuel Roberts 

Lego The Hobbit

Released: 2014

If you're going to adapt a movie trilogy, at least do all three films before you release the game. Instead, the trigger was pulled on Lego Hobbit before the turgid third movie even hit the multiplexes, and hopes that it would be covered via DLC never materialised. Chances are, you've got three or four other Lego games in your Steam library that are more deserving of your time.—Samuel Roberts 

Once upon a time, if you wanted to expedite your progress in a video game you'd slyly enter a cheat code. Nowadays, you cough up your cold hard cash. So is the case in Middle-earth: Shadow of War, which will allow you to buy things like loot chests and XP boosts if you couldn't be bothered earning them the normal way.

"An important aspect of the Nemesis System now comes in forging, customizing and leading your own army of unique Orc followers against the fortresses of Mordor," the announcement reads. "There are different ways to do this, including dominating Orcs by exploring the vast open-world and encountering them as part of Orc society, or players can acquire Orcs and other items through the Market (in-game store)."

You'll be able to purchase loot chests, war chests, XP boosts and bundles of all of these. Loot chests contain gear "of varying rarity", while also sometimes containing XP boosts. War chests reward with new Orc followers, again "of varying rarity" as well as Training Orders which can help customise the Orcs in your command. So it looks like most of what you'll be "buying" with  real money is reliant on RNG anyway.

There are two in-game currencies: Mirian and Gold. The latter is awarded in game, but can also be purchased with real money. The announcement stresses that "no content in the game is gated by Gold".

You can read the whole breakdown over here. It's not unusual nowadays for microtransactions to feature in singleplayer games: the first example that comes to mind is Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.

The team behind Middle-earth: Shadow of War have re-imagined the ginormous spider Shelob as an attractive woman with a posh English accent, in a new trailer for the Shadow of Mordor sequel, which you can watch below. The trailer later shows Sexy Shelob turning back into a big arachnid, so there is some continuity with the books and films.

When she's not wrapping Elijah Wood up in silk, or getting stabbed up by one of the Goonies, Shelob likes nothing better than turning semi-undead rangers against their elvish ghost pals—the above trailer showing the spider queen sowing seeds of doubt in protagonist Talion's mind.

The uneasy relationship between the ranger and his spectral buddy Celebrimbor seems to play a large part in Shadow of War's narrative, which you'll be able to experience for yourself on October 10th.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor didn't have the greatest story, but it did feature some excellent voice acting, especially when it came to the dozens of orcs you'd make nemeses out of. Well, Warner Bros. has revealed who'll be lending their voices to its sequel, Shadow of War, and the cast this time around features some excellent actors (via GameSpot).

Of course, Troy Baker and Alastair Duncan return as the protagonists Talion (the human ranger) and Celebrimbor (the grumpy elf wraith) respectively, while Laura Bailey returns to play a brand new character in the assassin Eltariel. Silicon Valley's Kumail Nanjiani and The Walking Dead's Pollyanna McIntosh also have roles, but it wasn't revealed exactly who they'd play.

Warner Bros. will be holding a panel for San Diego Comic-Con, which is likely where we'll learn more about some of the actors' roles. We'll also see some "never-before-seen content" from creative director Michael de Plater. The panel takes place on July 21 at 2 PM.

Middle-earth: Shadow of War launches for PC on October 10. The first game, Shadow of Mordor, is free to try out on Steam right now, but not for long: the Steam free weekend lasts until 1 PM Pacific Sunday. However, you can pick up the entire package, DLC and all, for $6 US until July 10 at 10 AM Pacific.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's "Nemesis system" was great—so great that we wondered why it hasn't been more exhaustively ripped off by other games. Monolith revealed earlier this year that the system, which personalizes the game's procedurally-generated enemies to give it a greater sense of connection and continuity, is being expanded for the upcoming sequel, Shadow of War. 

Today it announced that it's also going to let players take the worst of their enemies (and the most stalwart of their allies) with them from the old game to the new one, thanks to a Shadow of Mordor update called Nemesis Forge. 

To use it, just fire up up Shadow of Mordor and select the Nemesis Forge game mode. Assuming you've played it enough to have some bad blood, the game will automatically sort through and select your highest-ranked Nemesis, and also your most loyal Orc follower, and make them available for import into Shadow of War when it comes out.   

The Steam listing states that Nemesis Forge is "available only with purchase of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War on PC," but that appears to be a poor bit of phrasing rather than actual exclusivity, since the Nemesis Forge is in fact available to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 players as well. 

To mark the release of the update, and maybe convince a few newbies to give it a shot, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is free to play until July 9. The Game of the Year edition, which includes The Lord of the Hunt and The Bright Lord missions, the Trials of War challenge series, and additional Warband Missions, Runes and Skins, is also on sale for $4/£3/€4 until July 10. 

When our James got to grips with Middle-earth: Shadow of War at last month's E3 he described it as a "violent Tolkien fan-fiction generator" whose "new tools at every level make for unpredictable, dramatic, and memorable encounters." Developer Monolith held a livestream this weekend that showcased some of the above, and also offered a glimpse at the Shadow of Mordor follow-up's PC settings. 

Within the section of in-game footage featured below, Talion is hot on the heels of the forest-dwelling Carnan—the spirit of nature—which sees our hero battling a number of powerful otherworldly beasts, each of which is powered by Carnan's evil soul. 

Some of the battles look pretty neat as QA analyst Ellie Knapp adopts a range of attacking strategies that include a mixture of hands-on melee and at range bow and arrow fare. Most interestingly, the stream offers a quick peek at Shadow of War's PC graphics settings around the 2.35 mark. Check it out: 

It's the briefest of glimpses, however we can see the demo above is running on an Nvidia Titan X at 4K at 60FPS. Likewise, graphics settings are set to 'Custom' whereby Lighting Quality is 'high', and Mesh Quality, Shadow Quality, Texture Filtering and Texture Quality are set at 'ultra'. 

Blink and you'll miss it, but it seems Shadow of War is shaping up pretty nicely ahead of its October 10 launch later this year.

Thanks, PC Invasion. 

My biggest concern going into Middle-Earth: Shadow of War was stealth play getting sidelined for the large-scale combat of the fortress assault missions and a renewed focus on managing uruk forces. So at E3 when I got free reign over how to spend my time in an entire region, I figured I’d attempt to infiltrate a fort, coax the captain out, and kill him without anyone knowing I was there. Classic Shadow of Mordor stuff. Good news: stealth play is definitely viable, especially in the more freeform open world missions. At the same time, it's entirely possibly everything will go completely sideways, and you should expect that in Shadow of War. It wants you to have stories to tell, and perfect stealth runs aren't one of them. 

As in Shadow of Mordor, in order to draw out a captain, you need to meet a specific goal within the fort. In my case, I had to kill about a dozen marked guards in plain sight. Huh. Yeah, so I’m not going to get through this without being seen.

To cause a little chaos and distract the guards in the meantime, I summon a beast near the center of the fort. Dozens of guards get in on the action and I sneak along the perimeter, taking out the archers keeping watch. I manage to stealth kill five or so of the marked guards using a new Wraith Pull ability. In Shadow of Mordor, you could teleport to an uruk and kill them instantly, and in Shadow of War, you can teleport them to you. Convenient. Welcome to the bushes, boys.

Bushwhacked

But soon enough I have the entire camp on my tail. I hastily finish off the remaining marked uruks and the captain emerges, ready to bully. With enough player skill and abilities unlocked, I wonder if it’d be possible to just murder every uruk in the camp in combat, which was a mid-to-late game problem in Shadow of Mordor. Here, I worry players will be able to sidestep participating in the Nemesis System’s strategic layer through perfect combat play. The number of enemies on screen has certainly ballooned, but players have had an entire game to practice. Hopefully, it’s harder than that. 

I enable Wraith Vision to highlight all the uruks in the area in red against a blue background. It’s a damn swarm. By now, someone’s sounded the alarm and more uruks come pouring in from elsewhere. I manage to get away from the crowd and hide in a bush. These bushes, they’re good.

As soon as the uruks return to their patrols, the camera pulls out and focuses on a new bunch behind me. They’re led by another captain, who says something uncalled for and charges. I’ve been ambushed while stealthily concealed in a bush: a random event that can happen at any point as part of the Nemesis System. That's a feature sure to piss some players off, but I welcome the chaos, as long as it doesn’t happen often enough to become boring and expected.

With even more uruks on my ass and a new captain in tow, I book it up a massive tower at the fort’s perimeter, where I check out the scene in Wraith Vision again. All red. There’s something like 60 uruks down there hunting me. If I could interrogate one of the uruks, a wyrm, with a green symbol over their head, I could find out the original captain’s weakness, but I doubt I can pull off that kind of move at this point.

Towerfall

I get a clever idea. I ask the person running the demo, who has mostly just laughed through all my mistakes, if I can also Wraith Pull captains. ‘Only if they’re weak to ranged attacks,’ she says. I don’t have much wraith energy left and only a few arrows, but I figure I'll look for the captain of the fort, aim with my bow, and try using ghost magic to teleport him into my arms.

Schwoop. He staggers for a second and I do the same, a bit bewildered my idea worked. Of all the possible weaknesses the uruk captain could have, he’s weak to ranged. It’s just us at the top of a huge tower, two grumpy looking fantasy characters with cool swords. I want this to be as dramatic as possible—why waste the opportunity?—so we duke it out in Middle-earth’s familiar rhythmic combat as I try to back him towards the edge. If I wanted, I could just break him and hold a button to make him join my forces, but no. I stun him with a quick blast of ghostly energy and then pull off a finisher move. I lop his head off and his body crumples to the ground and slides off the tower. I never want to see a hobbit again. This is my new canon.

I’m happy to see new tools and technology so readily produce a memorable scenario in Shadow of War’s open world. Regions are smaller, but there are more than in Shadow of Mordor and they feel denser than before. This region has several forts, a fortress, monster caves, patrolling uruks, side missions, and thick vegetation at every turn. The area feels much more alive, like an entire faction of uruks are mobilizing to prepare for war—it’s in the name after all. 

Better level design doesn’t necessarily make the open world traversal or simple side missions any more fun, but at least we’ll save time between. Most activities in Shadow of Mordor were designed to set up nemesis encounters anyway, and at a glance, Shadow of War’s open world looks to do the same, except every aspect of the game has been expanded, with more combat abilities like Wraith Pull, more layers to the Nemesis System, better tech to support more uruks on screen at once, and more creatures to commandeer and influence. Icons and missions on the map might look disappointingly familiar, but what can happen inside those instances won’t be.

With something as simple as extra variables, Shadow of War will inevitably produce more unique water cooler uruk-murder conversation than ever before, even if the controls and character feel like they've been imported directly from the first game. The real test will be in how Shadow of War produces longer narratives—tales of betrayal and friendship, revenge and tragedy—over two dozen hours. The Middle-earth series’ Nemesis System has proved that it can evoke surprise and anger. Now I want to know if it can make me feel anything else.