Comment by magicalhippo
9 months ago
Monolith[1] made some of my favorite games growing up.
It started with Shogo, but also No One Lives Forever, Tron 2.0 and F.E.A.R. left deep impressions.
What stood out was the combination of their well-done 3D engine with world building and art direction.
It wasn't the same from game to game, each game had their very distinct feel, and always interesting.
And I think few shooters have as good enemy AI as the goal-oriented[1] ones in F.E.A.R. (sadly not used in the sequels)
Good times, good times...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_Productions
[2]: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/building-the-ai-of-f-e-...
Tron 2.0 was great, and another game that has been lost to time. I got the Steam version working with a hack many years ago, but I doubt it would still work. That's another one that could use the same treatment as this version of NOLF!
Indeed! It has great world-building, with lots of fun details. The disc throwing was also a bit different from a straight up shooter.
I played it again some years ago but it was flaky, so yeah some TLC would be great.
Condemned was pretty atmospheric too. Good to see they are still making games.
This comment didn't age well. WB has closed down Monolith :(
Eh, LithTech was fairly impressive for the time, but I wouldn't necessarily call it good. It is incredibly fragile. I've been working on creating a library of games that works on modern platforms. LithTech games have taken at least 3-4 times longer because of frequent crashing.
Fair point, perhaps some rose-tinted glasses there. I do recall the graphics being very good at the time.