Two^Sixteen

Marathon. The end. That is how awesome this game is, and anyone who played it will tell you so.

[Image source from Wikipedia, believed to be usable under fair use]

Of course many of them are lying scum, as the game was only released on Mac during 1994. HOW MANY OF YOU USE A MAC NOW? LET ALONE IN 1994. They might have played Marathon 2 or Marathon: Infinity as these were released for Windows 95.

Those who are able to do some basic math will realize that if I played it at that time I’d have been 5. And that would have made my parents irresponsible. I started playing Marathon when I found a demo of it on some CD. It would have been around 1999, I still had my old beige PowerMac.

Those of you who never had a Mac or cared for PC gaming back then probably don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Bungie (the guys who made Halo, yes they were EVEN MORE awesome even back then) released the resources for the games and the source for Marathon2 which in turn was reworked into the open source engine called AlephOne. If you like first person shooters with lots of story (that isn’t really essential to the game either, many terminals are just for flavor) then I’d advise playing through the trilogy. You can download the engine and the scenario packs here. Grab Marathon first (top left) and the appropriate AlephOne for your platform. Simply copy all the stuff from the Marathon (M1A1) zip into the same folder as AlephOne and run it. Then play for a couple of hours. Done that? Good. Now I can finish this review.

Even though much of the focus was on Doom (released just before in 1993) Marathon received much acclaim, and still has many players. Marathon sets the player as a superhuman cyborg tasked with repelling an alien invasion from a colony ship. Made from a moon. The game features an alien race called the Pfhor who want to rule the galaxy. You are also faced with a crazed AI computer that eventually starts helping you. Whether this is at the end of the first game or in the second game I can’t remember.

Much of the game involves killing Pfhor while you wander on to the next objective. This can be saving humans (called BOBs or Born on Boards, they all look and sound the same), or replacing chips in the computer to just killing all hostiles. You receive new objectives by contacting the AI using terminals scattered around the levels. You also find diary entries and other background through these. There are also save points and switches within the levels. Switches can open doors, turn on lights, lower floors, or start the infamous timed sections.

Marathon was unique at the time for having several multiplayer modes, that those who play first person shooters will recognize.

• Every man for Himself - Deathmatch
• Co-op - Co-operative play with points for killing the most
• Tag - last killed is ‘it’ and has to tag someone else.
• King of the Hill - area capture
• Kill the Man With the Ball - keep hold of the skull as long as possible. Whilst you hold the skull you can’t attack or run.

Marathon also provided tools for level creation, which people still use. The game is 13 years old and it still gets new content created for it. Loyal fanbase or what? The tools are called Forge and Anvil. Anvil is for writing physics for creatures and the environment and Forge is for creating the actual level, placing switches, walls, spawn points, etc.
Marathon gave birth to most of the features we see in first person shooters today. Several multiplayer modes, special deathmatch levels (rather than just using single player levels), wide array of enemies and weapons, a storyline, objectives to complete to finish a level (most games of the time had you fight your way to a door, then another door and further doors, games like Doom and Castle Wolfenstein).

So it is the DADDY OF ALL FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS. Although if it gave birth it was probably the Mummy. Er.. Here are some screenshots to distract you from my rambling:

Screenshots

Above: A Pfhor

Below: Me after being killed by some Orange Pfhor

Below: When the going gets tough, real men use fists

Pros

• It’s Marathon

Cons

• NOTHING.
• Well… maybe those really annoying parts where you have to be spot on with your timing and really fast. But those just make it challenging.
• The ‘just one more try’ feeling.

So there. You’ve now been exposed to Marathon. “Where can I find out more stuff about this really cool game, Jason?” I hear some of you ask as you finish reading. Well:

http://source.bungie.org/ <- The main site for AlephOne. Hosts AlephOne builds, some map packs, links to community sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Trilogy <- Good old wikipedia. Useful if you want a quick overview of the Marathon story, background, conspiracies, etc. Contains spoilers.

If you want to know more I daresay you can use Google, right?

Have fun.

Jason

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Review friday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.