The year 2024 was ♌a rough one for the gaming industry. Thousands of employees were laid off from their various positions in dozens of video game companies and studios all over the world. Not to mention, a bunch of studios themselves were shut down, with games canceled and developers left without a job. Not even some of the biggest names in gaming are safe from this trend.

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168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 1💙0 Best Game Studi🦩os That Have Closed

Theseꩵ game studios may have closed, but we'll always remember their impact on the gaming industry and𓃲 their great titles.

A very tragic loss we've had during this period is the shutdown of Warner Bros. Games’ Monolith Productions. Monolith always produced high-quality games, with a particular effort on innovating🦄 and trying to push the industry forward, and it rea🔯lly is a shame to see them go like this. It's a tough loss for everyone, considering it also meant the cancellation of the Wonder Woman game that was in the works at Monolith.

6 Blood

A skeleton demon getting killed in Blood.
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Your Rating

Blood
First-Person Shooter
Systems
Released
June 20, 1997
ESRB
m
Developer(s)
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:3D Realms, Monolith Productions
Publisher(s)
GT Inte🍌ractive 🔜
Engine
Build, KEX Engine
Multiplayer
Lo🌊cal 𝐆Multiplayer

WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL

Platform(s)
PC

You could consider Blood one of the many Doom clones that spawned during the mid💃 and late 1990s, the most notable being Duke Nukem 3D. But despite that, Blood achieved its notoriety by being particularly inventive and creative, especially with its weapons. You have dynamite sticks, pitchforks, voodoo dolls, and a spray can with a lighter you use as a flamethrower.

Following Doom’s structure of shooting the heck out of enemies in a maze-like level while looking for the exit, Blood mixes western, sci-fi, and demon esthe💃tics to achieve an identity of its own. It is, for the most part, a really tough game that inspired many other games and affected many other forms of media.

5 The Oper🦹ative: No One Lives Forever

No One Lives Forever Cate in a meeting with three men
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The Operative: No One Lives Forever
FPS
Stealth
Systems
Released
November 9, 2000
ESRB
M // Blood, Violence
Developer(s)
Monolith P꧅roductions
Publisher(s)
Sierra Entertainment, Fox Int𒐪eractive, MacPlay
Engine
LithTech

WHERE TO PLAY

PHYSICAL

Platform(s)
PC, PS2

Think of a ꩵserious take on Austin Powers, the 1960s-set parody of secret spy, James Bond, and you’ll get No One Lives Forever (the name was actually taken from a Bond novel, Nobody Lives Forever). This is another FPS, this time with stealth elements and a very 1960s atmosphere. You play as covert operative Cate Archer, one of the coolest and most underrated female protagonists in gaming.

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These games have excellent female protagonists.

1

Both NOLF, and its sequel, took Blood’s level design style and expanded it to be more open-ended. This gave you the freedom to solve them in a variety of ways, something that you could see years later in critically acclaimed games like Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, for example. NOLF is definitely 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a cult classic, but for thos🐽e wh🐼o played it💖, it is regarded as highly as FPS icons such 🅠as Goldeneye and Half-Life.

4 F.E.A.R.

Soldiers being shot in F.E.A.R.
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F.E.A.R.: First Encounter Assault Recon
Released
October 17, 2005

WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL

A name like First Encounter Assault Recon sounds more like your typical military FPS Counter-Strike knock-off, but F.E.A.R. couldn’t be further away from that. It is a military FPS, but this time, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:it’s mixed with Japanese psychologiꦐcal horror, with the elite military group having to investigate supernatural ph🍰enomena. The game is as immersive as you could get at the time, with Monol👍ith’s goal being to make you feel like the hero in an action movie.

To achieve this, they combined bullet-time, destructible environments, and a highly detailed particle system. Nevertheless, F.E.A.R.’s most impressive feature was, without a doubt, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the AI it used for its enemies. This never-se🦩en-before technology gave NPCs a particularly intelligent behavior when reacting to the player’s actions by working as a team with suppressive fire, flanking, an🧜d retreating maneuvers.

3 ಞ Condemned: Criminal Origins

The Oro Dark Primary boss fight from Condemned: Criminal Origins.
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Your Rating

Condemned: Criminal Origins
Survival Horror
Action
Systems
10.0/10
Released
November 22, 2005
ESRB
M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, ♋Strong Lang🍸uage
Developer(s)
🏅 Monolith Productions
Publisher(s)
Sega
Engine
Lithtech Jupiter EX
Steam Deck Compatibility
Playable

WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL
PHYSICAL

Platform(s)
PC, Xbox 360

Another dive into psychologiꦉcal horror by Monolith, now inspired by films and TV shows such as The Silence of the Lambs, Saw, and The X-Files. This time, though, not an FPS. Condemned has survival horror and action elements, with its gameplay split into melee combat and investigation. You play as an FBI agent investigating crime scenes, and while you start with a weapon, you will mostly rely on melee throughout the game. It was a 🀅launch title for the Xbox 360 in 2005.

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168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 10💖 Horror Games Tu𝔉rning 20 In 2025

20 years is a long time, but these incredibl🍌e games still hoꦛld up incredibly well!

Nineteen years earlier, it played similarly to 2024’s Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, where y🍷ou have to improvise and use whatever tools you have available as melee weapons, like pipes, wooden planks with nails, and more. The combat is grit♈ty, brutal, and really aggressive, enemy AI is unpredictable, just like in F.E.A.R., and it has an unparalleled atmosphere.

2 ♚ Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor

Talion facing off against an orc in Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
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Your Rating

168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Middle-earth: Sha🐻dow of✅ Mordor
Action
Adventure
Systems
Top Critic Avg: 85/100 Critics Rec: 90%
Released
September 30, 2014
ESRB
M for Mature: B🥂lood and Gore, Intense Violence 🎶
Developer(s)
Monolith
Engine
lithtech
Franchise
The Lord of🏅 the Rings

WHERE TO PLAY

DIGITAL
PHYSICAL

Platform(s)
PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Linux, macOS

This is the big one. Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor (and its sequel) are, by far, Monolith’s most ambitious and highly regarded games. Shadow Of Mordor, released in 2014, had a bunch of things going for it, and it followed a lot of the industry’s trends at the time. For example, its combat is pretty similar to something you’d find in an Arkham game. What really set the bar apart from other games was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:its highly revolutio♛nary N♕emesis system.

When you encounter Uruks, these games' bosses, all have their own name, voice, quirks, skills, and personality. They also have the ability to remember all previous encounters they’ve had with you. So, for example, if you escape from them in one battle, you’ll probably find them in a later one, and they will mock you for running away like a coward. The game can even trick you into thinking you've taken care of an orc, when in reality, it's the opposite: if you kill an Uruk, say, with fire, you might later find out that they survived, but are now afraid of fire. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:That's the genius of t💎he Nemesis system.

1 🧸 Middle-Earth: 🅷Shadow Of War

Middle-earth Shadow of War - Talion fights Helm Hammerhand in Fire and Fury Quest
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Your Rating

168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Middle-Earth: Shadow of War
Action RPG
Systems
Top Critic Avg: 82/100 Critics Rec: 76%
Released
October 10, 2017
ESRB
M for𝄹 Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence 💟
Developer(s)
Monolith
Engine
lithtech
Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer 🔯

WHERE TO PLAY

SUBSCRIPTION
DIGITAL
PHYSICAL

Franchise
🥂 The Lord of the Rings
Platform(s)
PS4, Xbox One, PC

As any good sequel should do, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:builds up on everything 🅷Monolith did previously with Shadow Of Mordor. On top of the previously mentioned version of the Nemesis system, you can n🃏ow build and recruit your own team of orcs and have to deal with a whole new set of challenges coming you𒐪r way, thanks to the new mechanics.

If you are wondering why no other games have attempted anything like this again, it’s because Warner Bros. Games sadly locked the Nemesis system behind a patent until 2036, which will still be valid despite the studio’s shutdown. Regardless, the Nemesis system turned the Middle-earth games into dynamic, ever-changing, and player-driven games, in which the storytelling is never the same for two diᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚfferent people. What could have been two more games in the huge pile of unremarkable Lord of the Rings licensed tie-ins, like the Gollum game, ended up being the high note of Monolith Productions’ roster, and as we now sadly know, their swansong.

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ಌ Shadow Of War: Best Skills And Abilities, Ranked

Shadow of War has abilities critical to making the most overpowered character. Here's which ones help you out the most in that ques⛦t.