Muzman on 3/9/2012 at 17:49

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"Jason Hall could invent a photo of Jennifer Love Hewitt's tits that converts dirt into hundred dollar bills, and it still wouldn't make up for the Blood 2 mission pack"

Ahh why aren't they still here to keep games honest? Although they didn't really, did they. At least they heaped abuse on them for our entertainment.

People like Fear a bit I guess, but NOLF 1&2 were kind of anomalous in the Monolith catologue. I wonder who was behind them happening really, and where they ended up?

redrain85 on 3/9/2012 at 18:44

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Condemned was probably the last half-decent game to come out of Monolith. (I can't speak for FEAR 2 or Gotham City Imposters, since I haven't played them yet.)

Even then, I didn't find Condemned all that great. It was extremely linear (to the point where it would actually create obstructions behind you as you progressed, to herd you along and prevent backtracking). The use of forensic tools was dumbed down from what they originally had planned. The ending was terrible. But, the melee combat system and a few genuine moments of horror almost made up for all that.

FEAR was overrated, in my opinion. The only thing it had going for it, was the fact that the slow-mo combat and the weapons worked very well. Other than that, it was derivative (rip-off of The Ring, and Max Payne's bullet-time) and the level design was lazy (endless offices and utility room corridors).

Since Warner took them over, they've been on a steady decline. Which I hardly find surprising. It's EA syndrome, all over again. Large Hollywood studio or game publisher buys developer, slowly turns them into a sausage factory churning out mostly formulaic pap, if not enough games sell they shut the studio down. Quantity over quality. Whether a game is actually good isn't as important as whether it sells a lot of copies. If a game happens to turn out well (Arkham City, Asylum from Rocksteady) that's swell and all, but what about those all-important numbers.

Since I make mods for Tron 2.0, I've been following Monolith fairly closely over the years. I fear they're likely going to be shut down, soon. Their output has slowed to a crawl. The Jupiter EX engine they developed and still use, lags far behind the competition these days. They're also sharing the same offices with Snowblind Studios, rather than having their own.



I believe Craig Hubbard was the main person driving the development of NOLF 1 and 2, and apparently he's still at Monolith.

A good source of information on all things Monolith is the Blood Wiki. They (http://blood-wiki.org/index.php/Category:Blood_Staff) have a page with bios and history of staff and the company.

Pyrian on 3/9/2012 at 19:27

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I liked the ending, albeit in a "man that's f'd" sort of way.

Muzman on 3/9/2012 at 21:44

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One way or another they took the smart route and didn't make a Powers inspired game, but instead made a pretty faithful 60s spy show game (albeit trading on the popularity of Austin Powers I guess).

Hubbard took his foot off the creative gas a bit over the years I s'pose. NOLF was never wildly successful I don't think. I guess there's no real reason for them to think going all out like that would be likely to pay off.
It's probably a good Kickstarter candidate actually: one of those things publishers' need for exponential profits could never get behind, but go direct to the public and there's probably a lot of interest.

EvaUnit02 on 4/9/2012 at 07:23

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Do Warner even have the rights to NOLF? Last I heard, Activision/Vivendi was still sitting on it.