Latest news with #GearsOfWar:Reloaded
Metro
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor is the best game that's never getting a remake
A reader makes the case for Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor getting a modern remaster, as he laments the fate of it and other aging 'not-quite-classics'. When video games take more and more time and budget to make, remasters and remakes are the closest thing publishers have to easy money. I can't really criticise them for that, as long as the end result is good, but we're at the point where some games have been remastered multiple times. Gears Of War: Reloaded this year is going to be the second one, and it's not the only game in that position. The downside to this is that when a good game doesn't get a remaster it feels very unfair. There's a lot of talk about online games being abandoned by publishers nowadays, and no longer existing, but there's also single-player games that you can't buy anymore. Good luck getting a copy of Forza Horizon 4 or any of the old Spider-Man games now, as anything other than physical versions, because they just don't exist now thanks to licences running out. Thankfully the game I want to talk about today isn't in that position, yet, and you can buy Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor for dirt cheap on Steam and the PlayStation Store. Although the Game of the Year Edition (that year being 2014) is still full price. It's not that you can't get hold of Shadow Of Mordor if you want it, but that it's a great game that nobody talks about anymore and that's held back by being a cross-gen Xbox 360 game. Although I do recommend buying and playing it if you never have, I've got to admit it's showing its age and that in an ideal world it would get a remaster or even a remake. If it wasn't a licensed game I'm sure it would've got a remaster or another sequel by now but I'm not sure Warner Bros. even owns the Lord of the Rings licence anymore. They're still selling the game, but they haven't made a new one in over a decade. The biggest problem is that they shut down developer Monolith Productions, so they can't make a new game or a remaster. Someone else could do it, but at this point that seems like it would be disrespectful, given there was no reason to close them in the first place. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. What's also terrible is that the game's Nemesis system seems to have died with them. This was something I've never seen in any other game, where you could meet random orcs and they'd remember you and they'd become your rivals, creating a whole kind of unique storyline that wasn't scripted but depended on what you did and who you fought. It worked really well and was beefed up in the sequel Shadow Of War, and I believe it was going to be used in the Wonder Woman game they were making when they were shut down. But now it has no future. There'll be no more Nemesis system, no more Shadow Of games, and no more Monolith. Shadow Of War is good, by the way, but while the Nemesis system and combat are a bit better it suffers from a lot of Ubisoft bloat. Also, the story and dialogue is pretty bad. I'm not a Tolkien expert but even I can tell it's just making stuff up for the sake of it and it doesn't really seem authentic, although that doesn't spoil how it plays as a game. I'm sure the developer not existing anymore wouldn't stop Warner Bros. doing a remaster if they thought it'd make money but either there's a legal reason or they just don't think it's worth the effort. Either way, I think it's a real shame and that as time goes by there's going to be a lot of these not-quite-classics that are left behind, never getting updated, never getting sequels, and having all their good ideas left to rot. More Trending Considering the last Lord Of The Rings game got 1/10 it's literally true that you couldn't do worse with a remaster of Shadow Of Mordor. I'd like it to happen, I don't expect, and that's a real shame. By reader Zeiss The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Nintendo has got as arrogant as Sony and it's hurting the Switch 2 - Reader's Feature MORE: The Nintendo Partner Direct left me wondering: where's the ambition? – Reader's Feature MORE: Why is Sony trying to kill the concept of the video game console? - Reader's Feature
Metro
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Games Inbox: When will Halo be released on PS5?
The Tuesday letters page is frustrated with the low-key reveal of Gears Of War: Reloaded, as one reader feels The Last Of Us season 2 has been a disappointment. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ The final straw So we've had Forza Horizon, now we've got Gears Of War… clearly it's only a matter of time until Halo appears on PlayStation 5 as well. It was never really in doubt but now it's pretty much guaranteed. I think it's obvious that the rumoured Halo: Combat Evolved remake is going to be the moment. I don't think there's been a date on it, but it's got to be something like one or two years out. At that point any pretence of the Xbox being a rival to PlayStation will be over. Xbox consoles might continue to exist, as a novelty for hardcore fans, but it's obvious Microsoft already sees them as irrelevant. I haven't owned an Xbox console since the Xbox 360 but I have very fond memories of that and so I do see all of this as a shame. Like another reader said, the plan for Microsoft now seems to just tread water for a few years, until streaming is viable for every game. Even if the quality isn't perfect, I'm sure most people won't care – the general public always prefer convenience over quality. And then that will be the end of physical games and consoles and any idea of owning a game yourself. It's not a future I look forward to. Aims Publishers anonymous So, Microsoft and Sony are in direct competition again, eh? Except this time it's to see who can have the most boring game reveal possible. I get that Microsoft don't really want to go multiformat, but they already are. The decision has been made and they need to own it. What made this worse is that isn't just a PlayStation 5 release, like Forza Horizon 5, this is a brand new remaster of an important game, that's also on Xbox and PC. And yet they still hide it away and refused to make a trailer for it. Are they going to be like this with everything? Is any game that is also on PlayStation 5 going to get the secret marketing treatment and hidden away on some blog somewhere? C'mon, Microsoft. Bite the bullet and admit to yourself and the world that you're now a third party publisher. The Bishop Continued absence So Microsoft announce a new game and it's a remaster of an old Xbox 360 title and it still isn't on Nintendo Switch 2? We all knew Phil Spencer is full of it, but I thought they'd at least do some minor releases, so they can pretend they made an effort, but nada. Maybe they're saving it up for a big Switch 2 exclusive Banjo-Threeie annoucement, but does anyone really think that's going to happen? I think the more obvious guess is that what's currently happening will continue to happen, i.e. absolutely nothing. Oh well, I'm sure Nintendo will be able to live without them. Cranston Email your comments to: gamecentral@ Marketing headache I am never going to believe a Half-Life 3 game is really happening until I'm actually playing it with my own hands. I'd like to believe the latest reports, but I have a very hard time imagining how Valve is going to promote this. Is it going to be on consoles, where most people don't even know what Half-Life is? Even on PC it feels like it should have had an official remake of the first two. And yet a major plot change happened in the VR game, which almost nobody has played? The thing is a mess. I know Steam is a thing of its own, and PC gamers will probably just buy it for the memes, but in my opinion they waited too long, for no obvious reason, and the amount of people that remember anything about the plot of the originals got to be tiny by now. Focus Big incident Is anyone else not really enjoying the second season of The Last Of Us? It's very well made and all that but for me it's not hitting like the game did. The 'big incident' near the beginning of the story didn't seem nearly as shocking as in the game and the last couple of episodes have been kind of dull. I'm not interested in any of these faction squabbles, and I don't really remember if they were in the game or not. Either it's a new bit and it's boring or it was in the game but not interesting enough for me to remember. I thought the first season improved some things in the game, but then the original wasn't nearly as well made as the second. The second season isn't a disgrace or anything, far from it, but it does seems inferior and kind of pointless at the moment. St1nger Do it again I really don't understand what's going to happen when all big name games cost £80 or more. I guess there's two main options? Either people pay it, at least for the big games like Call Of Duty and EA Sports FC (which is all publishers care about it), or it's a complete failure and… what happens then? It's hard to imagine publishers admitting a mistake and putting the prices back and even if they did, they'd probably take something away and claim they had to in order to make the price cut possible. The best bit of news in a while is how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is doing, with a weird, successful double-A game on a reasonable budget. But the big companies like Activision, EA, and Ubisoft don't want to make that sort of game. They don't want to make a fair profit on a medium budget game, because no matter how well it does it won't be as much as Call Of Duty. All these companies want is the biggest possible payout, they're not set up to make a small profit on a low-priced game, it's all or nothing. Maybe they all have to go before any sanity can return. EA and Ubisoft are already looking vulnerable so it might be closer than you'd think. I'm not saying that's what I want to happen, but I don't see how anything else positive can change otherwise. If we can have a few more indie hits like Clair Obscur, that proves that wasn't a fluke, I think that would be a much healthier future for gaming. Lennox Lost Souls Do you think that there's any chance of a new Dark Souls? I know Elden Ring is pretty much the same thing, but I much prefer the smaller game worlds of Dark Souls to an open world, and I'd like it if they could make both at the same time. I'd also be interested to know if they'd ever make a Metroidvania. Their games are kind of in that area, but I think it'd be cool if they tried to go full-on, with more puzzles. People always say they'd be perfect for Castlevania, but there's no reason they can't just make an unofficial one. Dako GC: It's very, very unlikely that From will work on a new one, since they own the Elden Ring licence but not Dark Souls. Bandai Namco could make one, with a different developer, but there's been no hint they will. Not only on Xbox Gears Of War is officially a mainstay on PlayStation. I'll say it to get it out of the way. We have gotten Gears Of War on PlayStation 5 before GTA 6. Since the first ever instalment in 2006, it was an exclusive to Xbox 360 and so was the second and third titles. To say that the franchise has drifted away from carrying that reverence to becoming another multiplatform release, in the same vein as Forza, is quite the understatement. Xbox never lived up to the exclusivity that PlayStation offered and, this week, announcing a flagship franchise releasing on the rival's system is proof of that. I'll just say what we're all thinking: the Xbox One was the catalyst for this downfall. It never matched the PlayStation 4. The titles were disappointing (looking at you Halo 5) and Quantum Break was forgettable and bland. Avowed is a poor man's Skyrim and Hellblade 2 has disappointed, excellent graphics though. So, the Xbox Series X is also a catastrophic letdown. By 2027, when the next console is set to release, exactly why would anyone even fork out $80 to play and slog their way through a mediocre title, that will evidently release on PlayStation 5? Because the sales charts are failing and the only viable reason to even continue entertaining Xbox's generically middling continuation of abstract failure is their Game Pass subscription service? I will still play Fable, because I'm keeping my hopes mildly high for the revival, but is it fair for me to assume even that could fail miserably? Shahzaib Sadiq Inbox also-rans That whole story with Genki is so odd. I've bought their stuff before, they're a known brand, why did they throw it all away by taunting Nintendo like this? What did they think was going to happen? What did they think they were going to gain? Other than, you know, a lawsuit. Korbie I would've bet that Borderlands 4 was going to be a flop, given how late it is and the terrible movie, but looking at how many likes the trailer and everything is getting it looks like it'll be another hit. Hollywood synergy in action! Gadfly More Trending Email your comments to: gamecentral@ The small print New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers' letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content. You can also submit your own 500 to 600-word Reader's Feature at any time via email or our Submit Stuff page, which if used will be shown in the next available weekend slot. You can also leave your comments below and don't forget to follow us on Twitter. MORE: Games Inbox: Why has GTA 6 been delayed? MORE: Games Inbox: Will all video games be £80 from now on? MORE: Games Inbox: Is EA in danger of going under?
