Latest news with #MonolithProductions
Metro
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Tron: Catalyst review - I'm sorry I haven't a CLU
As a new movie prepares for launch, the latest attempt to adapt Tron into video game form comes with a very interesting and purposeful glitch. Tron has always seemed like a franchise on the edge of greatness. The original 1982 movie was a hugely important milestone in the evolution of computer-generated imagery, but it wasn't really that great a film. Likewise, Tron: Legacy is most fondly remembered for its amazing soundtrack, rather than anything that actually happened in it. Naturally, there's been many video game adaptations over the year, with two separate waves around the time of the two movies and an unconnected 2003 first person shooter from the now sadly deceased Monolith Productions. The most recent tie-in was low-key visual novel Tron: Identity in 2023, from Thomas Was Alone developer Bithell Games. Despite being a small indie studio, the team was also responsible for the only John Wick game so far – which we loved but nobody else seemed to. Tron: Catalyst takes an equally daring approach to its subject matter, but this time the gamble hasn't paid off. The unavoidable problem for all the modern Tron games is that Legacy was a much less visually interesting movie than the original, with an almost monochrome colour scheme and less fantastical costumes and designs. New film Ares, to which this is only nominally connected, is set in the real world and yet still everything looks bleak and dark, which really doesn't seem appropriate for a concept as inherently silly as Tron. Nevertheless, designer Mike Bithell, who we had a good chat to about the game last year, does what he can, with an original story based on a different grid (aka server) than the one seen in the films. The idea is that the grid has been left alone for so long that most programs no longer really believe in humans and those that do have turned the concept into a kind of religion. You play as a courier named Exo, who becomes involved in a plot to reset the server, caught between a dystopian police force and a growing band of resistance fighters. It's a perfectly reasonable set-up and does involve some interesting sci-fi ideas – like the super-evolved programs that have lost all connection with humanity – but the wider plot could be transposed to any other fantasy setting with very few changes needed. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The game is played from a very distant top-down view, which doesn't help with the sense of immersion or your connection to the character, and only makes the drab art design look even more uninteresting. What makes Exo unique is that she has a bug, literally called a glitch, that lets her reset the server whenever she wants. This means starting the current chapter of the story again, while retaining any abilities you unlocked or information you didn't previously have. So, for example, if your need a code for a locked door you can go off and find it, even if that ends up altering all the guards, and then come back later and use it. It's a very neat idea and there's always a shortcut, literally or figuratively, involved that means you don't have to repeat everything a second time. However, it never really feels like the game is making full use of the ability, as there's generally no reason to use it except when the game tells you too and nothing that surprises you with its cleverness. The combat involves melee fighting and using the (relatively) iconic identity disc, which is basically a Frisbee. This works fine in theory but there's very little sense of feedback for your attacks and as you face down armies of respawning enemies it gets old worryingly quickly; especially as the skill tree and the ability to steal enemies' moves make little practical difference. The top-down view really doesn't help either, given how much it distances you from the action. Combat soon becomes a chore, with too many bullet sponge opponents, while minor enemies are easily confused by level furniture. Ironically, the AI is quite glitchy and often you end up taking advantage of its brokenness to get the action over with more quickly. More Trending The other main action element is driving a light cycle, which is fun because of how fast they are, even if there's often little room to manoeuvre. Given the original Tron included a version of what would today be recognised as the game Snake (but actually started out as a coin-op called Blockade in 1976) none of the modern Tron games have done the concept justice and while Catalyst is perhaps the best of the bunch it still feels fiddly and random. Catalyst is quite cheap but it's also very short, at around five hours, and with no real reason to ever play it again. Annoyingly, the ending is filled with hints at a third game (since this is technically a sequel to Identity) and yet there's been no announcement so far that one is happening. The end result is a disappointingly joyless gaming experience, whose story and characters are surprisingly uninteresting, given Bithell's talents. The gameplay doesn't take any particular advantage of the Tron setting and the whole thing is just so ugly and bland to look at. John Wick Hex was much the same, but we easily forgave that because of the fun and original gameplay, but unfortunately Tron: Catalyst doesn't have that same advantage. In Short: A disappointingly drab Tron tie-in that wastes some interesting ideas on dull and repetitive combat and an unequally unengaging story. Pros: The glitch concept has lots of potential, even if it's not fully realised here. For better or worse, it looks like Tron: Legacy. Cons: The storytelling is mostly uninteresting and there's barely any resolution. Combat is dull and repetitive. Glitch gimmick is never used in any particularly clever ways. Bleak and unengaging visuals. Score: 5/10 Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: £19.99Publisher: Big FanDeveloper: Bithell GamesRelease Date: 17th June 2025 Age Rating: 7 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 is 15% off if you pre-order now MORE: PS Plus games for July includes one of the best dungeon crawlers ever MORE: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 climbs chart after 'unusual' sales boost
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
After Suicide Squad's $200 million flop and a massacre of studios, Warner Bros acknowledges it has "no releases" out, it's spending 66% less on game content, and the Hogwarts Legacy boom is wearing off
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Warner Bros. Games has been going through a massive rough patch lately, with three of its studios – including Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and open-world Wonder Woman game developer Monolith Productions – all recently shut down. Now, in a new financial report, it's revealed that its revenue and spending is down compared to this time last year, which isn't a shock when it has "no releases" to speak of. Spotted by PC Gamer, in Warner Bros. Discovery's results for the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year (which cover the three months ending on March 31), the company notes that games revenue has "decreased 48% ex-FX" (excluding foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations). This, it says, is "due to the prior year release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League compared to no releases in the current year quarter, as well as higher carryover from Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 in the prior year." Unsurprisingly, no releases means no big spikes of revenue, with continued sales of Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 doing a bit more heavy lifting this time last year, alongside sales of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League when it released out of early access last February. The game really didn't go down well with fans or critics – we gave it two and a half stars out of five in our Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review – and it's been no secret that it didn't perform as well as Warner Bros. would have liked. In fact, it was previously stated by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that the company "wrote off $200 million" because of it. Even so, it was obviously still able to offer more revenue than the company's blank slate of releases at the start of this year. Warner Bros. Discovery also points to Suicide Squad when discussing its decreased "games content expense" compared to the same quarter last year, which is down by "66% ex-FX, primarily driven by the prior year quarter impairment related to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and lower games revenue in the current quarter." This is telling of what an impact Suicide Squad had on the company's finances last year. It's worth noting that in a financial context, "impairment" is most likely referring to sudden large drop in an asset's value, a situation which requires companies to assess the difference between the value of something they'd previously accounted for versus its actual, current market value (thanks, Investopedia). Basically, it sounds like Warner Bros. is referring to the fact that it lost a lot of money last year because of Suicide Squad not doing as well as expected, which it conversely isn't having to spend this year. In a way, that's a win, but obviously with the recent closures of Monolith Productions, MultiVersus developer Player First Games, and the mobile-focused WB San Diego, it doesn't seem like things are looking up for the company just yet. Experts say Monolith's patented Nemesis System doesn't have to die with its Lord of the Rings games: "You can see some similar design language in the Mercenary system in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Legendary Studio Monolith Shuttered, Assassin's Creed Shadows Leaked, And More Of The Week's Top Stories
This week, Warner Bros. shuttered Monolith, the legendary studio responsible for games ranging from 2000's The Operative: No One Lives Forever to 2017's Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The closure means that the studio's promising Wonder Woman game, first revealed in 2021, has been cancelled as well. In other news, Assassin's Creed Shadows has leaked a month prior to launch, a gorgeous new 2D, pixel-art game based on Terminator 2 was revealed, and we got a look at what the Pokémon franchise has in store this year. All these stories and more await in the pages ahead. Monolith Productions revealed it was making a Wonder Woman game back in 2021. Now,publisher Warner Bros. Games has announced that the project has been canned, and the studio best known for the Middle-Earth: Shadow of War games is being shut down as well as part of larger cuts. The shakeup comes after 2024's Suicide Squad bombed and platform fighter MultiVersus failed to make a comeback. - Ethan Gach Read More Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players have been accusing various loading screens and calling cards from the game of being AI-generated since it came out last fall, but it was only ever based on vibes and the occasional very convincing piece of seemingly obvious AI slop. Now Activision has admitted to using AI-generated assets in the hit multiplayer shooter on its Steam page. - Ethan Gach Read More It's that time of year when Pokémon fans get to have an early Christmas. It's Pokémon Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the launch of the original Pokemon Red and Green in Japan in 1996. Each year, The Pokémon Company puts on a livestream to talk about upcoming games, updates on current ones, and other projects within the franchise. Last year's was a little lowkey because it was the first year in a while that Game Freak didn't release a new RPG or DLC, but this year, the studio is releasing Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the second installment in the Legends subseries set in Kalos. That wasn't the only announcement, although things were still pretty quiet. If you want to watch the full livestream, you can check that out below. If you just want the highlights, read on: - Kenneth Shepard Read More It looks like at least a few people have got their hands on physical copies of Assassin's Creed Shadows ahead of the game's official March 20 launch. Reportedly, one player streamed themselves playing the next entry in Ubisoft's long-running franchise online. (No spoilers are included below.) - Zack Zwiezen Read More It's looking like a good Game Pass harvest this year, especially because Microsoft's backlog of big first-party Xbox games like Doom: The Dark Ages and Fable are coming in 2025. But tons of other cool stuff is headed to the subscription service as well, and a bunch of them were announced during the company's ID@Xbox showcase on Monday. - Ethan Gach Read More Terminator 2D: No Fate, a newly announced game based on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, looks like a rad retro-inspired side scroller. And you luckily won't have to wait too long to play it. - Zack Zwiezen Read More Oh no. A new Sims 4 update went live yesterday, and it seems to have added a very disturbing bug. According to some players online, kids are now walking around with big pregnant bellies in The Sims 4. Yikes. - Zack Zwiezen Read More It's only been a month since Pokémon TCG Pocket's Diamond and Pearl-inspired Space-Time Smackdown expansion released, and it looks like the mobile card game's next set of cards is already here. A promo for a set called Triumphant Light, starring the god Pokémon Arceus, leaked earlier this week. Now fans with unfinished collections are already freaking out about all of the new cards they'll need to collect. - Ethan Gach Read More After a year of waiting, we finally got our first look at Pokémon Legends: Z-A during the annual Pokémon Presents showcase. The Switch game seems like a significant departure from the untamed open zones of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which is exciting because we don't know what to expect. The stream gave us a trailer as well as a general breakdown, and we skimmed through both to see what details we could find. Here's everything we noticed. - Kenneth Shepard Read More Forza Horizon 5, which launched over four years ago on Xbox and PC, is making the leap to PlayStation 5 soon, but because it's 2025, the game will lock 'early access' to Xbox's open-world driving sim behind a pricey special edition. It's the next evolution in publishers holding games hostage for extra money. - Zack Zwiezen Read More For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Incredible Horror Shooter F.E.A.R. Just $1 As GOG Races To Save Monolith's Old Games
Following the news that Warner Bros is closing video game developer Monolith Productions, digital storefront GOG has stepped in and announced that one of the studio's most beloved games, FEAR, will join the store's preservation program. And it sounds like more Monolith games will also be joining in the near future. On February 25, as first reported by Bloomberg, WB confirmed to Kotaku that it was closing three of its studios: Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. WB also revealed that it was canceling Monolith's Wonder Woman game, too. Many online were angry and sad about Monolith's shutdown as the studio had been around since the '90s and had produced some beloved games, like No One Lives Forever, Blood, and FEAR. Some of Monolith's classic PC games are hard to play in 2025 for various reasons. But hopefully, that will change soon, thanks to GOG. On Wednesday, digital game marketplace GOG (previously known as Good Old Games) announced that next month it will add spooky FPS FEAR and its two expansions to the GOG Preservation Program. Currently, FEAR and its expansions are just a dollar on GOG. Launched late last year, the program is a curated and growing collection of old PC games that GOG is dedicated to supporting and making sure they are playable on modern hardware and new computers for years to come. FEAR was set to join the program later, but after WB killed Monolith, GOG is accelerating its plans to 'properly recognize' the studio's contributions to gaming. 'At GOG, we believe in celebrating the creative minds that have shaped gaming history,' said GOG in a statement on Twitter. 'Monolith Productions has given players some of the most unforgettable experiences, blending groundbreaking gameplay with rich storytelling. To honor their legacy, we're proud to announce that F.E.A.R. Platinum will be joining the GOG Preservation Program—and sooner than planned, with other Monolith icons to join eventually as well.' GOG further added that it will have more news to share about its wonderful preservation efforts tomorrow, February 27. So what other Monolith games might be coming to GOG's program soon? Well, there's one title a lot of people want: No One Lives Forever. This spy-themed FPS and its sequel have been famously MIA for many, many years now due to rights issues and other boring nonsense. Unfortunately, based on a follow-up post shared by GOG asking people to vote for No One Lives Forever on the Preservation Program's Dreamlist, it seems unlikely that NOLF or NOLF 2 will be coming to GOG's program anytime soon. Still, it's nice to see GOG doing the work to preserve and save gaming history even as corporate overlords and terrible executives continue to destroy and gut the video game industry. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Comic Book Writer Says Unfinished Wonder Woman Game Was 'Gorgeous And Expansive'
The sudden closure of Monolith Productions and the cancelation of its Wonder Woman game has left many scratching their heads. Could it really have been that far off from releasing? Was it really going to cost that much to take it the rest of the way over the finish line? Answers to those questions may come in time, but some of those who worked on the game said it was shaping up to be something special. 'The game was gorgeous and expansive,' comic book writer Gail Simone recently wrote of the unreleased action-adventure game first announced back in 2021. 'It was beautiful to look at. I am not going to give details for a number of reasons, but every effort was made to make this not just a great game, but a great WONDER WOMAN game. A showpiece epic.' Simone is best known for her past runs on DC Comics Secret Six, Birds of Prey, Batgirl, and of course, Wonder Woman. She's currently writing the latest Uncanny X-Men reboot and says she was doing long-term consulting on Monolith's game, a dream come true in part because of how much she loved the studio's Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor games known for their groundbreaking nemesis system. 'Everyone who worked on it brought their a-game,' Simone continued. She said the team was also dedicated to making sure Wonder Woman was lore accurate in every way. 'I know there's a lot of finger-pointing going on, but everyone I worked with from Monolith and WB both was enthusiastic and supportive. Everyone wanted to make the best game ever. Sometimes, you give your all and it doesn't work out.' One of the game's developers was similarly optimistic in the Monolith Discord. 'Don't listen to anything anyone's said about the project stalling or failing,' they wrote. 'It was going to be absolutely killer.' Bloomberg reported that the project underwent a reboot early last year, switched directors, and may have still be years away from shipping despite already costing $100 million. 'I know every dev will say this about something they worked on, but it was going to be amazing,' the developer told Monolith fans. 'I am not allowed to say much but I can at least say that every single person was pouring their heart into it and it showed. Our narrative team had a fantastic and deeply meaningful story. Especially in these really difficult times, I felt the world really needed the story we were telling.' . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
