Warner Brothers shuts down iconic studio Monolith Productions

Iconic American video game development studio Monolith Productions is shutting down after thirty-one years in the business, producing classic video games including SHOGO: Mobile Armor Division, No One Lives Forever, F.E.A.R. and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Parent company Warner Brothers made the decision to shutter the company due to financial uncertainty and a series of recent misfires from other studios.

Monolith was founded in October 1994 with a view to making first-person and third-person action games using a propriety 3D engine, LithTech (which, remarkably, powered all of their games from first to last, with heavy development and iteration). The engine had been developed for use by Microsoft as a possible inhouse 3D engine, but Microsoft eventually rejected it.

Monolith made a splash with their first game, Blood (1997), a very solid first-person shooter. They followed that up with a direct sequel, but also a different game called Shogo: Mobile Armor Division (both 1998). This game featured the player as the pilot of a large-sized mech, with different-scaled levels depending on if you were piloting the mech or engaging in direct combat inside buildings as the pilot. It was basically Titanfall long before Titanfall was actually a thing.

Monolith launched their third major game series with The Operative: No One Lives Forever (2000), a first-person shooter with a female protagonist, a spy setting and a colourful, comedic tone, all of which were very unusual for a time. The game warranted a sequel, No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s War (2002), but repeated attempts to launch a third game were thwarted, although a spin-off, Contract J.A.C.K., was released in 2003.

Monolith also developed tie-in works for other IP, including Aliens versus Predator 2 (2001), Tron 2.0 (2003) and The Matrix Online (2005), a co-production with Sony.

In 2004 the company was acquired by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment (later Warner Brothers Games), giving them access to the various Warner Brothers-owned IP. Despite this, their first two games out of the game under the new owners were actually new IP: F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins (both 2005), both quite successful and resulting in sequels, with Condemned 2 launching in 2008 and F.E.A.R. 2 in 2009 (other developers worked on expansions and F.E.A.R. 3, released in 2011). F.E.A.R. was particularly feted for its graphical developments, physics, real-world locations and its mix of first-person action and South Korean-influenced horror.

After these, the company switched to working on WB IP, first on the downloadable-only multiplayer games Gotham City and Guardians of Middle-earth (both 2012), and then the Lord of the Rings licence. This resulted in the incredibly well-received and well-reviewed Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014), which was famed for its Nemesis System, where enemies would remember you for defeating them and develop grudges, becoming more powerful and returning for revenge. Warner Brothers were so impressed by this system they copyrighted it, but only used it again in the sequel, Middle-earth: Shadow of War (2017).

With the second game concluding the story, Warner Brothers decided to move the developers onto working on a Wonder Woman game, which was announced in 2021. Bloomberg had recently reported that the Wonder Woman game's development had been held up by unspecified development issues, spooking Warner Brothers who had been battered by a series of indifferent or poorly-performing video games based on their DC IP, with both Gotham Knights (2022) and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024) underperforming.

Monolith being shuttered is a massive shame. An inventive, interesting developer, their hit ratio was frankly ridiculous, with the Blood, No One Lives Forever, F.E.A.R. and Middle-earth: Shadow franchises all being extremely well-regarded. But under Warner Brothers' recent management, its questionable if they could have reached those creative heights again.

F.E.A.R.

A man named Paxton Fettel has seized control of Armacham Technology Corporation headquarters, using a platoon of telepathically-controlled soldiers. A government agency dedicated to battling paranormal threats named F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault Recon) sends in its new 'point man' with a squad to stop Fettel. Instead, it's only the beginning of a night of murders, conspiracies, intrigue, mayhem and repeated, disturbing encounters with the image of a young girl in a red coat...


F.E.A.R. was released in 2005, during a mini-craze at the time for Japanese and Korean horror movies (and their American remakes), and the game shamelessly invokes some of the same imagery and ideas throughout its length. Effectively, F.E.A.R. is a first-person shooter with strong horror overtones. It doesn't entirely work successfully, although it has a fair old bash at the idea.

The thing about effective horror is that it preys on the fears of the audience, and to do that usually features a helpless or trapped protagonist. For example, the protagonist is usually an innocent, sometimes a child, rather than a fully-trained killing machine armed with railguns and automatic shotguns. Giving your main character an arsenal substantial enough to wipe out a small city and the ability to go into bullet time at will does tend to engender a feeling of invulnerability in the player, especially since the hallucinations and horrific imagery you encounters tend to be incorporeal, and after the first few 'shocking' horror sequences you suddenly realise that the game is never going to inflict serious damage on you during these sequences, and then they tend to become a little bit boring.

That's not to say that F.E.A.R. is unsatisfying or not worth playing. Combat is satisfyingly chunky and robust, the level design is interesting and clever in places (with some hub-like levels breaking up the linearity of the corridor shooter sections, although the latter does make up the majority of the games) and the weapons do their job well (oddly weak missiles excepted). Enemy AI is fairly robust, leading to some interesting and balletic shoot-outs, especially when combined with bullet-time. There's even a melee combat mode which is surprisingly effective, although you can go the whole game without ever using it. There's a distinct lack of variety in the enemies though. I counted about five types maximum, including the large mech-like boss things, and over the course of an eight-hour game, that does become a little repetitive and dull.

The plot is pretty good, and unfolds via telephone answer machine messages and laptops you find scattered throughout the game, as well as a couple of sequences where you meet NPCs. If the in-game 'psychologically disturbing' sequences lose their appeal early on and become predictable, the horror aspects of the actual story and the situation (which, as one character helpfully points out, is "Totally fucked up,") are altogether more satisfying.

The best thing about F.E.A.R. is the ending. Because the bulk of the game is a little bit on the predictable side (especially compared to some other shooters reviewed here, such as Far Cry or Half-Life 2), the ending when it comes is even more effective because everything goes haywire and most of the rules you've been playing the game under go out the window. Whilst some aspects of the end sequence are extremely annoying (hint: keep a shotgun fully-loaded for the end of the game), the sheer insanity of events is quite enjoyable, building to a series of final moments which are highly memorable (including something that, rather annoyingly, Call of Duty 4 got a lot of kudos for doing first, although F.E.A.R. did it three years earlier and in a much more impressive manner). And I defy anyone not to jump out of their chair in the game's final moments. It takes a while to get there, but F.E.A.R. does, at least, deliver a solid horror ending.

One criticism that has to be voiced is that between its office, building site and tenement environments, the slow-motion action and psychological horror aspects, the game does seem to be treading the same ground as Max Payne and Max Payne 2, and to be honest those two games were much better and more original (not to mention more darkly humorous) than F.E.A.R., which does make F.E.A.R. look a little weaker in comparison.

F.E.A.R. (***½) is a solid corridor shooter which invokes the horror genre to interesting effect, but arguably the bulk of the game doesn't live up to either the premise or the superb ending. It is decent enough and, thanks to its age, can probably be picked up quite cheaply these days. The game has two expansions, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate, although these were 'de-canonised' by the original developers, who more recently delivered an official sequel named F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin. F.E.A.R. is available now on the PC (UK, USA), X-Box 360 (UK, USA) and PlayStation 3 (UK, USA).