#MONOLITH PRODUCTIONS

[cd-006]

love it when he sings ingame

[bad-artist-kira]

Left my sketchbook at home and decided to cook whatever this is

[joanalia71]

[azorious-saber-cat]

BLOOD: Fresh Supply

Monolith Productions (1997)

Remaster by Nightdive Studios (2019)

[retrocgads]

UK 1998

[mileena--kahnumm]

This is where I post from.

[doom-nerdo-666]

"BuildLauncher is a frontend for Build Engine games inspired by nstlaurent's DoomLauncher

It can download all major ports for Build Engine games, as well as mods, custom campaigns, and maps and launch them with the port of your choice.

Another goal of this project is to create a unification standard for Build Engine mods, campaigns, and map, so they can be launched with supported ports without any additional tweaking by users."

[ldso-tron]

Do you have any questions for the Lead Programmer of TRON 2.0?

Hey everyone! If you have any questions for the Lead Programmer of the game TRON 2.0 at Monolith Productions, Kevin Lambert, reblog with your question and/or leave a reply here. I'll be doing an interview with Kevin soon, and I'll try to include as many fan questions as I can, in addition to my own. 🙂

[radix-outpost]

Caleb and Gideon, or perhaps the Irresistible Force what keeps trying to meet the Immovable Object.

[mvfm-25]

" The game is never far from a laugh, and amazingly the humour is almost flawless! "

PC Zone Magazine n122 - December, 2002.

[daihime-sama]

Live now!

Tonight Hime-Sama returns to his favorite FPS of all time: Blood! This time he checks out the popular fan-made expansion "Death Wish"!

-RRA Social Media Team

[bad-artist-kira]

Nargle

[joanalia71]

[fridge-reviews]

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Developer: Monolith Productions Publisher: Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment Rrp: £15.99 (Humblebundle and Steam) Released: 30th September 2014 Available on: Humblebundle and Steam Played Using: Xbox One Control Pad Approximate game length: 16 Hours

I doubt there is a single game genre that the Lord of the Rings franchise hasn't been 'officially' pushed into (fan games don't count). However there was a time when open world wasn't one of them. That seems really strange now given that it seems like such an obvious choice, but things are always obvious after the fact. I do have to admit though, the open world genre really does suit it.

The game is set in Tolkien's Middle-Earth between the events of The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. You play as Talion, a man who has been cursed to be 'banished from death', meaning that until the curse is lifted he cannot die, not truly. This might seem like a benefit (and mechanically speaking it is) but thematically it's a fate worse than death for Talion who was forced to watch his family be slaughtered by invading Uruks and is unable to join them in the afterlife. A part of this curse also links Talion to the soul of a long dead elf and this is when I start to question how this is a curse rather than a boon, because this elven wraith grants you a lot of abilities that are most certainly positive.

Scattered around the world are Forge Towers, these are towers that you have to scale and activate to reveal the missions and collectibles that are within a region on your map. Essentially these are the equivalent of radio towers in the Far Cry games (or most other Ubisoft games). As was mentioned before, Talion is 'banished from death' which means that when he dies he gets respawned at a Forge Tower (I believe its the nearest but I'm not entirely sure).

Handily the icons on the map tell you which missions advance the story and which are side quests, meaning you can avoid the main mission and go explore the world.

In typical RPG fashion killing enemies and completing missions gains experience which will eventually lead to gaining ability points. As you would expect with ability points, you spend them to unlock new powers.

Finding collectibles, completing side missions and challenges earns a resource called mirian along with awarding you with experience points. Mirian is used to to purchase upgrades such as increased health etc.

You can use your wraith powers to stun enemies, interrogate them for intel and later on dominate their minds so that they fight for you.

Information gained through interrogations will reveal the name, location and power rating of the selected Uruk Captain within Saurons army. Further information can be attained by interrogating 'worms' which are specific Uruk's that will reveal a Captains strengths and weaknesses. This power rating is an indication of how powerful that Captain is and the more powerful a Captain is when defeated the greater the reward is for doing so. A Captain that survives a fight (or even an interaction) with you will increase in power, they also will make a point of mentioning how you died or ran away last time.

Combat in this game is pretty similar to that of Assassin's Creed or the Batman: Arkham games (Arkham Asylum, Arkham City and Arkham Knight). It's all a matter of keeping an eye on the button prompt that appears above an Uruks head so that you can counter them or dodge away. The best part of combat though for me was performing the combat executions, which you can only do when you breach a specific hit streak amount. They're just so visceral and very impressive looking.

Of course, you don't always have to kill these Uruks in huge group melees, you can be subtle about it and sneak in bushes taking them down one by one. Or snipe them from a distance with your bow. Or you could combine all three, which is likely how things will go because it's rare to find an Uruk all alone.

Uruks that kill you can challenge existing Captains within Sauron's army (or fill a gap left behind by a Captain you've killed), if they win the challenge the become promoted to Captain. You can even assist in their ascent if you wish by going to 'challenge' events and killing their opponents. Now you may be wondering why you would want to assist in their ascent, the answer is actually simple and relates to a previous paragraph, the more powerful a Captain is when they are killed the better the reward is.

I've mentioned that killing Captains gives you a reward a few times now but not actually said what the reward is, well now is the time. The reward for killing an Uruk Captain is a rune, either for your sword, bow or dagger. At the start of the game you can only equip one rune on a weapon at a time but if you spend mirian to upgrade the weapon it will be able to hold up to five runes. These runes have all sorts of benefits and there are a great many to find, some will heal you upon each successful kill, others increase the damage you cause etc.

I found the default field of view to be too close to the character, this meant that sadly I did have to mod this game slightly to increase it. Normally I would be against such an action, however, it seems that this is a peculiar quirk of the PC release for this game, the console versions apparently had a wider field of view on release. Because of this I've determined my slight modification to the game as a fix rather than an alteration.

In all honesty its the nemesis system that raises this game from being a fairly standard open world game into something more special. A great example of this is while I played I was killed by some random Uruk, that Uruk was then given a name, a title and became a Captain. I was so incensed by him killing me that I specifically hunted him down. Sadly I failed to kill him in three separate occasions so I saw what was once a random Uruk eventually reach the highest echelon he could. With each fight he would taunt me and I was so immensely satisfied when I finally killed him that I actually cheered. It was a totally unique and organic experience which caused me to completely ignore the main plot until I had finally killed him.

This game is definitely worth its current asking price and you don't even need to be all that familiar with the Lord of the Rings franchise to enjoy it. I highly recommend this game. Now I just have to see if the DLC's are worth their salt.

If this appeals to you perhaps try;

Middle-Earth: Shadow of War Assassin's Creed 2 Batman: Arkham Asylum

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If you’d like to support me I have a Ko-fi, the reviews will continue to be posted donation or not.

[retrocgads]

UK 1998