Legendary Studio Monolith Shuttered, Assassin’s Creed Shadows Leaked, And More Of The Week’s Top Stories – Kotaku

This week, Warner Bros. shuttered Monolith, the legendary studio responsible for games ranging from 2000’s The Operative: No One Lives Forever to 2017’s Middle-earth: Shadow of War. The closure means that the studio’s promising Wonder Woman game, first revealed in 2021, has been cancelled as well. In other news, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has leaked a month prior to launch, a gorgeous new 2D, pixel-art game based on Terminator 2 was revealed, and we got a look at what the Pokémon franchise has in store this year. All these stories and more await in the pages ahead. 2 / 12Monolith Productions revealed it was making a Wonder Woman game back in 2021. Now, publisher Warner Bros. Games has announced that the project has been canned, and the studio best known for the Middle-Earth: Shadow of War games is being shut down as well as part of larger cuts. The shakeup comes after 2024’s Suicide Squad bombed and platform fighter MultiVersus failed to make a comeback. – Ethan Gach Read More3 / 12Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 players have been accusing various loading screens and calling cards from the game of being AI-generated since it came out last fall, but it was only ever based on vibes and the occasional very convincing piece of seemingly obvious AI slop. Now Activision has admitted to using AI-generated assets in the hit multiplayer shooter on its Steam page. – Ethan Gach Read More4 / 12It’s that time of year when Pokémon fans get to have an early Christmas. It’s Pokémon Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the launch of the original Pokemon Red and Green in Japan in 1996. Each year, The Pokémon Company puts on a livestream to talk about upcoming games, updates on current ones, and other projects within the franchise. Last year’s was a little lowkey because it was the first year in a while that Game Freak didn’t release a new RPG or DLC, but this year, the studio is releasing Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the second installment in the Legends subseries set in Kalos. That wasn’t the only announcement, although things were still pretty quiet. If you want to watch the full livestream, you can check that out below. If you just want the highlights, read on: – Kenneth Shepard Read More5 / 12It looks like at least a few people have got their hands on physical copies of Assassin’s Creed Shadows ahead of the game’s official March 20 launch. Reportedly, one player streamed themselves playing the next entry in Ubisoft’s long-running franchise online. (No spoilers are included below.) – Zack Zwiezen Read More6 / 12It’s looking like a good Game Pass harvest this year, especially because Microsoft’s backlog of big first-party Xbox games like Doom: The Dark Ages and Fable are coming in 2025. But tons of other cool stuff is headed to the subscription service as well, and a bunch of them were announced during the company’s ID@Xbox showcase on Monday. – Ethan Gach Read More7 / 12Terminator 2D: No Fate, a newly announced game based on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, looks like a rad retro-inspired side scroller. And you luckily won’t have to wait too long to play it. – Zack Zwiezen Read More8 / 12Oh no. A new Sims 4 update went live yesterday, and it seems to have added a very disturbing bug. According to some players online, kids are now walking around with big pregnant bellies in The Sims 4. Yikes. – Zack Zwiezen Read More9 / 12It’s only been a month since Pokémon TCG Pocket’s Diamond and Pearl-inspired Space-Time Smackdown expansion released, and it looks like the mobile card game’s next set of cards is already here. A promo for a set called Triumphant Light, starring the god Pokémon Arceus, leaked earlier this week. Now fans with unfinished collections are already freaking out about all of the new cards they’ll need to collect. – Ethan Gach Read More10 / 12After a year of waiting, we finally got our first look at Pokémon Legends: Z-A during the annual Pokémon Presents showcase. The Switch game seems like a significant departure from the untamed open zones of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which is exciting because we don’t know what to expect. The stream gave us a trailer as well as a general breakdown, and we skimmed through both to see what details we could find. Here’s everything we noticed. – Kenneth Shepard Read More11 / 12Forza Horizon 5, which launched over four years ago on Xbox and PC, is making the leap to PlayStation 5 soon, but because it’s 2025, the game will lock “early access” to Xbox’s open-world driving sim behind a pricey special edition. It’s the next evolution in publishers holding games hostage for extra money. – Zack Zwiezen Read More12 / 12

Source: https://kotaku.com/wonder-woman-game-ac-shadows-terminator-2d-no-fate-1851767051