Saturday Morning Gaming: Goodbye to Monolith Studios

Warner Brothers has shut down Monolith Productions. Monolith Productions was *AWESOME*. Most recently, they’re known for the Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War games (both absolutely amazing) that graced us with the “Nemesis System” where your undead character’s “death” at the agency of different orcs would create unique micronarratives in the larger game.

Like, an orc would kill you, stand over your body, and say something like “I killed the gravewalker! I’m going to get a hat!” and then, the next time you saw him, the unnamed orc would show up as the named “Blarg the Hat” and, sure enough, he’s got a hat now. The main storyline had bad guys, sure… but that was business. Going up against Blarg the Hat? That was *PERSONAL*.

Monolith came out with a bunch of awesome games, though. Well before the Shadow games, they came out with some bangers that are familiar to everybody who was gaming since the 90s (or 80s (or 70s)).

Back in 1997, they came out with Blood. We called it a Doom clone at the time, but it was a *GOOD* Doom clone. You started out with the normal weapons, but then eventually got the weird stuff that included a can of hairspray and a lighter or a voodoo doll. The game was goofy fun and felt like it evolved the whole FPS thing instead of just rehashing it.

In 2000, they came out with No One Lives Forever. This was a 1960s British Spy FPS that was obviously cashing in on the whole Austin Powers thing while allowing a wide berth for the studio to say “Austin Powers? What are those?” and keep everybody safe and free from lawsuits. A fun and goofy FPS that has a surprising amount of replayability.

In 2001, they came out with Aliens vs. Predator 2, a pretty good sequel to the absolutely *AMAZING* Aliens vs. Predator. This was a FPS but it was an FPS with three parts: You played a human Marine, an Alien, and a Predator for different chapters of the game. When you were a human, you had tons of machine guns but they all felt downright worthless making it a horror game where you kept screaming and emptying clips and dying. When you played as a xenomorph, you were made of tissue and half-sucked Life Savers so you had to sneak around everywhere. Luckily, every surface in the game was available for you to scurry on. Drop on your enemies from the ceiling. Wander through an air duct. Travel under a bridge instead of over it. When you played as a Predator, the game once again was a horror game but, this time, *YOU* were the monster. Jump between different light spectrums as you wandered through the map killing everything effortlessly. (This made multiplayer, something of which I am normally not a fan, exceptionally fun to play with friends. The asymmetry of a match was a lot of fun.)

In 2005, they came out with F.E.A.R. and made a horror FPS where it’s you versus a world where one of your enemies was the girl from The Ring (but in a perfectly deniable way, like No One Lives Forever pulled off).

THAT SAME YEAR, they came out with Condemned: Criminal Origins for the 360 and it was a pretty dang good FPS that introduced “Detective Mode”. You know the mode in Batman’s Arkham titles where you can see through walls and check to see what weapons bat guys are carrying? Well, this was that. I guess that other games might have done it before, but this is where the concept was introduced to me.

And back in 2012, there was a little goofball game called “Gotham City Impostors” where a bunch of Batman cosplayers went up against a bunch of Joker cosplayers for a bunch of FPS capture the flag kinda games. It didn’t break any new ground, but the theme was fun and goofy and it was a blast to play with friends (sadly, all the servers are shut down).

The studio gave us a *LOT* of really good games and they were in the middle of working on a Wonder Woman-themed game.

The idea was something like Wonder Woman but it’d use the Nemesis system. Heck, the game had a handful of red flags associated with it but the chance to play a new Nemesis System game? Hey, I’m on board. The leaks sounded interesting (the Nemesis stuff was, reportedly, associated with the bosses you fought rather than with the mooks… and the open world was more like Far Cry than Arkham City…).

Alas, the studio and game have both been shuttered.

Thanks, Monolith. You gave us a bunch of *AWESOME* ones.

So… what are you playing?

(Picture is Weeping Angel by Theodore Scott, used under a Creative Commons License)