Marathon

[MechDeus]

With the XBLA port coming I figured it was time to finally make this thread.

Pathways Into Darkness

I started playing through this series a few weeks ago because I'd never actually gotten all the way through it. This time I decided to start with the prequel of Pathways Into Darkness - or at least as much of it as I could. Since it was built for old-school Macs and I wasn't in the mood to try and track down an OS emulator and see if I could make it work I just tried out the Doom 3 mod.

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Pathways Redux is a recreation of approximately the first hour of PID, which is supposedly about 20 hours long. It at least gives a good feel for the style and gameplay (or so I've read), but even without first-hand experience of the original I can say it's pretty damn cool. I would adore a full version or even being able to play the original but too bad for me, apparently.

You can talk with the dead in a simplistic but threaded manner, which gives a good amount of insight and backstory in the characters and events. It's a very dark game and the constant pressure of things like invincible enemies gives it a very tense feeling. In the full game there's numerous crystals which have different effects, but obviously I didn't get to try any of them out. Anyone's that interested in the series should definitely check this out.

Marathon Trilogy

The Marathon Trilogy and its PC enhanced port with new textures of Aleph One is an interesting piece of old-school gameplay to me. On one hand they did so many really cool things that were ahead of its time but on the other some things felt odd and unfinished.

The guns are well done if standard, but the things which really struck me about them was that many of them are dual function (i.e. the assault rifle has a grenade launcher built in) and they had clips and needed to be reloaded. While really cool for the time, in practice the latter just annoys me because there's no way to manually reload. Still a good idea in any case, I'm impressed they put that in there.

I like that they have automated defense systems that work with the player, little robotic flying drones that will attack the aliens on sight. The enemies themselves were surprising to me because they look like terrible children's drawings in screenshots, but somehow in motion during the game it all works pretty well.Click for full size

My big issue with them, however, is that they don't make any noise. The enemies all have different sounds and cries but they almost never use them, which makes for a lot of the fights feeling really empty. At one point I was fighting an enemy and suddenly couldn't back up any further, and turned around to find eight other enemies had poured into the hall behind me and were squirming around to try and hit me... and no one made a single peep. It's weird and unsettling, and not in that good atmospheric way but more in a "there's a problem with the sound design" kind of way. It's a shame, because if they had the distinctive sounds and usage of such like Doom did it would immediately make the presentation twice as good.

They also have other interesting additions like civilians that can be murdered by the roving aliens, an on-going story that's actually giving a reason for you to go to various locations instead of just being a series of levels, sensical design for the health charging, and a motion tracker. There's some tweaking I'd like done to the feel of the game (the control sometimes makes me feel like I'm on ice, especially with the stairs) but overall I'm impressed with the game considering its age. I wish Bungie would do the makeover procedure to both PID and all of Marathon (actually, I'd like them to do it with something more akin to the Halo 3 engine), but at least we're getting something.

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So yeah, cool shit. I like making threads years behind the times.

[Yoshi]

I never thought I'd see the day when a Mac game had its own TNL thread. And I really never thought I'd see the day when said game had its own thread because it was coming to a Microsoft platform. There are no sacred cows in gaming anymore.

[soundwave]

Marathon rocked. It had some amazing level design, Dual wielding, a good story and hard ass enemis (Juggernaut). Multiplayer was fuckin hot too. Just like Halo matches with rocket launchers, Marathon had SPNKR matches. I would install the game on the Macs in our computer lab in college and have LAN play while trying to pretend to be studying. The PCs were all locked down but not the good 'ol macs. Played some Doom2 and Hexen as well. good times.

[MechDeus]

I never thought I'd see the day when a Mac game had its own TNL thread.

Only because it's on PC.

[Spanky McGee]

I wish Bungie would do the makeover procedure to both PID and all of Marathon (actually, I'd like them to do it with something more akin to the Halo 3 engine), but at least we're getting something.

I'm all about Marathon on Live. I don't see why they would put out the second game first, other than the fact it being a better game. Shouldn't be too hard to port over the other two games. There isn't that much change between them all as far as I can remember.

This isn't the first time Marathon is on a console though. Aleph One was ported over to the Dreamcast. It ran pretty well actually. I made a thread for it back in the day. Can't find it though.

[Anal Kaboom]

I'm holding out for a Chex Quest XBLA port.

[Tain]

Pathways Redux is a recreation of approximately the first hour of PID, which is supposedly about 20 hours long. It at least gives a good feel for the style and gameplay (or so I've read), but even without first-hand experience of the original I can say it's pretty damn cool. I would adore a full version or even being able to play the original but too bad for me, apparently.

You can talk with the dead in a simplistic but threaded manner, which gives a good amount of insight and backstory in the characters and events. It's a very dark game and the constant pressure of things like invincible enemies gives it a very tense feeling. In the full game there's numerous crystals which have different effects, but obviously I didn't get to try any of them out. Anyone's that interested in the series should definitely check this out.

I played some of the original PID (got preconfigured emulator package if you want it), and it did seem pretty interesting for the challenge above all else, but this mod sounds really freaking cool. And I think I still have Doom 3 installed on my desktop. I'll have to try this.

As for the Marathon trilogy, I got a few levels into the original before quitting. It's a good Doom clone from the age of Doom clones, but I don't know if I'll ever play through the whole thing.

[MechDeus]

I played some of the original PID (got preconfigured emulator package if you want it)

Shit fuck yes. PM plz.

[Frogacuda]

I, too, would be interested in this. I've always been too lazy to set up a mac emu.

For the aforementioned reason, and because I didn't know about Aleph One, I never tried Marathon. Thanks for the link Mech.

They should name this game "Four Foot View Distance: Adventures in Can't See Shit."

[g0zen]

I played Marathon back in the day (box looked so cool I had to have it) and I liked it enough. It wasn't on par with DOOM for me, but I liked the story told through the computer terminals and the light platforming / puzzle solving element.

It'll be nice to play an enhanced Durandal, with LIVE multiplayer, but be sure to play the first week, because I have a feeling after that the number of people playing will drop like a rock (a la DOOM)