Once upon a time, EA had the rights to the Lord of the Rings (film) series, and they made a bunch of games. Many of them were surprisingly good, like Return of the King, but two in particular stood out: The Battle for Middle Earth RTS games.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, the latest video game set in the world of Lord of the Rings, looks like some crazy Tolkien fanfiction. Its most recent trailer went even wilder, and introduced us to, among other things, the giant spider Shelob... in the form of human woman. How? Why? The team behind the game has a reason, and it's a weird one.

Sidekicks. Always there to lend a helping hand, or sword, or wand, as the case may be. A hero is nothing without his or her sidekick, but these companions rarely get the recognition they deserve. A few second bananas may get the spotlight on occasion — your Robins, your Chewbaccas, your Igors — but they all originated in comics, films, or on TV. This list is for the truly forgotten, the most overlooked of the overlooked. Here is a ranking of the top 10 best science fiction and fantasy sidekicks that originated in books.

After years of fighting, with twists and turns and reams of legal writing to rival the books that caused them, the legal battle between Warner Bros. and estate of J.R.R. Tolkien has been settled.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, the newly unveiled video gaming sequel to Shadow of Mordor, looks like it's ramping up things up in every possible way. The last game already played fast and loose with Lord of the Rings lore, but now you're a human leading armies of orcs into an invasion of Mordor. With your own ring of power. Also, there may be dragons?

One of Shadow of Mordor's biggest features is the "Nemesis System," a mechanic that gradually beefs up unique Uruk rivals for the player. The more you progress, the more menacing your Nemesis becomes, and the more gratifying it is when you finally kill it. But what happens if you go out of your way to avoid nemesis assignments?

This is Alexey Konstantynov from Ukraine (a member of Arthammer Workshop) in a 40K Inquisitor outfit that is just incredible.

Dayshot: It's one thing to draw or paint a character you like, and another to model them in high definition — as Nimlot26's version of Éomer (his version of the Karl Urban version of Éomer) shows.

Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd from Back to the Future, Stephen Merchant and Ellen McLain from Portal, Gary Oldman as the game's big bad and two different Chris Pratt performances — LEGO Dimensions' definitely got talent.

Just when I thought I was sick to death of seeing these kind of things, along comes a Tolkien tribute to blow my socks off.

Briefly: A $US50 "Game Of The Year" edition of Shadow of Mordor is coming out May 5 — as in, next week — for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC. No word on last-gen versions. If you haven't played Mordor yet, this is a good chance to get all its post-release goodies without having to pay extra for the crappy parts of its DLC.

Some time ago I was a huge fan of 30 Second Movies As Reenacted By Bunnies. I'm not sure why, but after so many of them, they kind of lost their spark. This short YouTube clip is pretty great though, and I'm thinking that maybe Lego just makes everything better.

The Bright Lord, Shadow of Mordor's new DLC campaign, promises an epic showdown with Lord of the Rings head honcho Sauron. It was designed in part to address a common fan complaint about the original game's anticlimactic ending. But while it does give players a chance to fight Sauron, I'd hardly call it an epic battle.

One of the few things that wasn't computer-generated in the recent Hobbit movies was all the sweet Middle Earth calligraphy, which was done by the same artist responsible for the most of the books (and maps) of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Dayshot: Osgiliath, capital of the Kingdom of Gondor, was the Kingdom's greatest city before it was eventually abandoned in the Third Age. Now, you can take a walk in Osgiliath, both in its glory days and beyond, courtesy of two fantastic Minecraft builds.

Just in case a four-hour version of an eight-hour trilogy was still too long for you, professional video editor David Killstein has now gone and made an even more drastic cut of Peter Jackson's overblown Hobbit adaptation.

Shadow of Mordor surprised everyone with its unique features like the oft-praised "nemesis system". The game's novelty and ambition meant that it couldn't accomplish everything it set out to though. Developer Monolith opened up this week about some things that were left on the cutting room floor.

The first thing I thought after watching The Battle of Five Armies was "boy, that's a movie that didn't need to be made". Now, thanks to the power of fans and the internet, we can pretend around half of Peter Jackson's entire Hobbit trilogy never happened.

Shadow of Mordor is one of the best games I played this year. I had high hopes for Lord of the Hunt, its first major expansion, as a result. "New monsters!" I thought. "More nemesis orcs to fight, some of whom ride on top of the new monsters! What could possibly go wrong?" So many things, apparently.