The Marathon games are a long-running series of first-person shooters developed by Bungie for the Mac, which plays a large part in its obscurity. However, after the Marathon games and their source code were released as freeware by Bungie, a sourceport called Aleph One came to be which made it possible for Marathon to be played on Windows, Linux, and newer Macs.
Despite that, Aleph One is an old piece of junk chained by lack of interest and legacy support (each new version still comes with PowerPC support), lacking functionality such as 60fps support, expanded keybinding, a FoV slider (the FoV can still be adjusted with a script however), a general mouse sensitivity slider rather than two for vertical and horizontal, and so on. It aims to stay accurate to the original and mostly succeeds, but it's your only option for playing Marathon save for emulating a Mac or buying an older one yourself.
Marathon 1 has you play as a security officer aboard the titular Marathon colony ship, but a boarding party aliens attack just as you're about to enter the ship. With no idea what's going on, and your fellow crewmates (BoBs, Born-on-Board) running around helplessly, you're ordered around by general operations AI Leela in order to establish a foothold against the alien invasion. But things are not as simple as they seem, as you're about to enter a world of madness, dreams, ancient civilizations, alternate realities, and lots of murder.
Marathon was unique at the time for being a first-person shooter which didn't relegate its entire story to the manual. Rather, the story is told through the many terminals in the levels, detailing your mission objectives for each level while also doubling as exit points, so it's usually in your best interest to read that shit if you don't want to get confused, as not each level revolves around inserting cards, flipping switches, breaking wires, and killing everything before you can proceed. It's also a window of opportunity to give the player an idea of what's happening on a grander scale by interwining story and mission critical information. The terminal messages themselves are rarely ever too long, and they barely break the pacing considering Marathon was a more slower-paced series compared to its contemporaries.
On top of that, the story itself is just interesting, to the point where hidden text terminals as secrets are a reward in themselves, by expanding the setting with relevant lore and interesting backstories, from historic occurences leading to the creation of the Marathon, to the inner more secluded workings of artificial intelligences.
The story starts off rather simple, as you're following Leela's orders and teleporting from level to level while trying to understand what the hell is going on, eventually learning that the attacking bipedal aliens are part of a race of slavers called the Pfhor, who also use client races (slaves) in their conquest, of which the helpless humans on the Marathon will forcefully become part of. However, things take an interesting turn once the rampant (we don't call 'em crazy here) AI in charge of door control, Durandal, decides to show some interest in you by kidnapping you for shits 'n giggles while having you sift through his entertaining mad ramblings, before you eventually become instrumental in achieving his greater schemes. Durandal pretty much carries the entire game, if not the series, and any 'top 10 AIs in fiction' list not including him is a fucking atrocity. You never really have another option but to do as you're told which Durandal gleefully takes advantage of, yet he still does manage to grow on you, god complex and dropping you into dangerous situations without further explanation et al. Another Marathon AI by the name of Tycho appears for like two terminals in this game, but he only serves a bigger purpose in the following Marathon games, which makes his presence here seem rather underwhelming. Leela herself is pretty much straightforward and not as interesting, save for her more corrupted states of mind.
The xenos you have to purge also come in many different sizes and forms. There's your standard Pfhor fighter, a bipedal three-eyed bug wielding purple/cyan garbs and a shock staff who slowly walks up to you and tries to whack you, and their brothers in orange/blue who fire some projectiles at you. The heavier Pfhor Trooper can take and dish out more damage, wielding a weapon strangely identical to your AR, firing grenade projectiles from long range and a hitscan machinegun from close range. There's the armored Hunters which shoot a constant stream of energy projectiles, Enforcers with their dickass long range hitscan weapons, some annoying large wasps, and human simulacrums which resemble human Marathon technicians, but will blow themselves up if they get close to you, and can only be told apart from other BoBs by some of the gibberish they spout (frog blast the vent core!). You are never punished for killing your fellow BoB however, and have all the incentive to do so when their AI routines decide it's a good idea to block your way. The disregard for the BoBs is pretty much a running gag in the series, what with first-time players easily confusing BoBs with lethal simulacra, BoBs being a source of pistol ammo in the second game, and the Vidmaster Challenge having you pledge to not leave a single BoB alive. The S'pht are those flying caped things which dissipate when killed, capable of interfacing with our technology somehow, but they also play a large part in the story. The Drinniol is a walking ammo sink which doesn't appear all that often, and the Lookers are bugs which are functionally the same as simulacra. Last but not least there are the Pfhor Juggernauts, massive flying orbs of death which fire homing missiles and only appear in the final levels of the Marathon games. On another note, monster infighting is also present in Marathon, which can save you a lot of ammo.
Now, you have seven weapons, one of which an AR with 52 bullets which takes seven seconds to fully expend, and an underslung grenade launcher which can load seven grenades and functions as the alt-fire for the AR. Marathon was also one of the first (probably THE first) FPS to feature alternate firing modes for weapons, though that mostly comes in the shape of dual-wielding pistols, the GL function for the AR and charging shots with the fusion pistol. Marathon is game which was tested around multiplayer foremost, and it shows in many ways, one of which being the weapon balance, although it'd only be properly finetuned starting from Marathon 2.
The starting pistol isn't all that powerful, but manages to be still useful against weaker enemies thanks to its perfect accuracy, especially when dual-wielded. The AR is your main workhorse weapon, with the primary fire being an inaccurate hitscan spread only useful at short-range and the alt-fire being a long-range grenade launcher, both of which you'll be using in conjunction fairly often. The primary fire exists to stunlock enemies like Troopers in order to prevent them from shooting you at all, while grenades are there for crowd control, damage, and making the AR useful at longer ranges, although the damage radius for grenades isn't that large compared to most games. Some weapons like the AR can't be used in vacuum levels, so there's weapons like the Fusion Pistol which is decent at stunlocking things, though it's just another pistol with a larger magazine until Marathon 2. It can charge bolts for higher damage at the expense of more ammo, but doing so is usually not worth it because of how inefficient it is (however, if there's only one charge left in your fusion pistol magazine, you can still charge a shot despite charged shots taking up around three charges, saving you some ammo in the process). Later on you get a flamethrower which is great at setting a lot of things on fire even if you do not get a lot of ammo for it, and finally a rocket launcher which is great at taking out large clusters of enemies. There's also an alien weapon dropped by Enforcers without blowing them up which functions as a long-range hitscan weapon capable of wrecking everything, however you cannot pick up any magazines for it and have to look for a new one once you waste all ammo for the alien weapon.
Of course you have your fists, which are useful if you don't have a lot of ammo. Unique to Marathon is the running punch, where your fists will deal the most damage if you are running forwards while punching. If you are punching things while standing still, just walking up to an enemy while holding W or running backwards, it will take forever to kill something, so you want to make some space and gain some momentum, which is more entertaining than playing footsie in other shooters once you figure it out.
Now the level design, it's fairly shitty as a whole, ranging from crap to ok. Given that Bungie spent more time testing the multiplayer rather than the singleplayer campaign and that most of the level designers involved were largely amateurs, this result shouldn't come as a surprise. What are supposed to be the insides of a colony ship feel like abstract mazes of gray, lava and moving platforms. The lack of any environmental detail or varying background textures are what contributes to this feeling the most, as Doom and even fucking Wolfenstein 3D more accurately resembled real places. It does a rather bad job at hiding the hallway -> larger room structure that applies for a lot of levels. Some spaces just feel unnecessarily large while some are unecessarily tight, with no real balance. A lot of space feels simply wasted. Instead of keyhunts, you have switchhunts. Keyhunts weren't even all that bad in Doom or other contemporary shooters, you just had to find a red key for the red door and so on, which was fairly straightforward. Marathon often likes to present you with a switch which opens some door somewhere, after which you have to run around the whole level figuring out what it did. And then there's the fucking puzzles, ranging from 'find out what door in the level this switch opened' to more obtrusive Duke3D-style 'figure out the right code by inputting all possible button combinations until you get it right', with some levels featuring even fucking jumping puzzles. Keep in mind that you can't jump in Marathon, but instead automatically walk up elevations as long as they're not too high. Yet there's an entire fucking puzzle dedicated to getting multiple platforms at just the right height so they can form a staircase and let you proceed. The game does take a while to get going, what with the first few levels having you only plink away at Fighters with your rinkydink pistol which gets old really fast, only really starting to get interesting once you get the AR. On the plus side, Marathon 1 does nail its atmosphere well thanks to its soundtrack and dark alien-infested hallways. Marathon also features 5D space, making it possible for spaces to overlap eachother, though this does have the effect of making automaps harder to read.
Marathon is also known for its variable physics, which are used prominently in the (spoilers) lower-gravity alien levels, although it only really influences the arcs of your grenades while making the controls feel rather unresponsive. This is especially noticeable when climbing stairs, which can sometimes leave you hanging in the air because of the rather poor air control. Marathon does actually have some interesting movement quirks in relation to its physics, such as being able to use the recoil of your AR to jump across longer distances, using your flamethrower as a de facto jetpack, and being able to rocketjump with your grenades or rocket launcher (Marathon is probably the first FPS to feature rocketjumping, here known as grenadehopping, as some secrets could not be accessed without grenadehopping), however those techniques have a larger place in multiplayer than singleplayer because there's little reason to do so in singleplayer unless you're speedrunning, in singleplayer the variable physics are more of a hindrance.
Also something unique to Marathon is that it features savepoints and fixed health recharge stations rather than manual medkit placement or quicksaving (quicksaving can be enabled with a mod, but Marathon is obviously not intended to be played that way). This means that if you feel like you're getting too close to death, you can always run back to save and recharge your health. On one hand, this can encourage a lot of backtracking depending on the player, but on the other hand you don't want to get hit at all. Because of this, placing a larger focus on dodging projectiles rather than being a hitscanfest like Blood was the right choice (save for the ridiculous Trooper reaction speed on Total Carnage difficulty and the existence of Enforcers in M1, but more on that later), even if the levels do not always accommodate this. Encounters are much more merciless in terms of amount of projectiles they fire, especially when comparing it to games like Doom or Douk 3D. It's also why I'm thankful of how hitstun works in Marathon, as without it any encounters with Troopers would have you receive guaranteed damage due to their short-range hitscan attacks. I like the way how Marathon handles hitscan (with the exception of Marathon 1), as you're capable of stunlocking most enemies, especially those capable of hitscan attacks, while you can still avoid getting hit by their hitscan if you circlestrafe them from a fair distance, due to their turning speed not being instantaneous. The hitstun mechanic also makes the necessity for having to reload weapons more logical, as otherwise you'd be able to fire endlessly until you run out of ammo, forcing you to plan how you'll avoid the Pfhor attacks during the window when they're not being stunlocked as you're reloading. You can't always have the upper hand, as you're forced to play defensively every now and then, which is a good thing as it makes you pay attention to what's happening if you don't want to get hit. And at the same time, you can't stunlock all the enemies at once. Marathon simply wouldn't work as well without hitstun, some fanscenarios try to do away with it for the sake of difficulty, but the end result in those scenarios feels more like unfair BS.
The presence of savepoints and shield recharges also makes it more exciting if you're deep within unfamiliar territory and are desperately looking for another save terminal or shield recharger. You could always turn back, or you could push on. It's safer to turn back, but backtracking here isn't all that fun (neither is messing up and dying, but hey). The save terminals and shield rechargers could have done with a limited amount of times you can use them, sort of like in Half-Life, so it's not your guaranteed safe space all the time. While the placement of save terminals and rechargers is fair for the most part, they can get really sparse in the alien levels. On top of that, there are certain levels where the save terminal isn't present right around the start of the level, often resulting in you getting booted back to the PREVIOUS level if you die. The last level has no save terminals at all, with the level right before that one being intentionally called Try Again because it's where you'll end up after dying in the final level. And unfortunately the exit terminal is at the other side of the level from the only save terminal. Fuck you too, Bungie. There's no fun in being sent back an entire level upon death.
You do have an oxygen meter which only ever sees any use in vacuum levels where all air has been sucked out, which more or less serves as a timer encouraging you to do things quickly, yet most levels feature infinitely usable oxygen stations which you can use to recharge your oxygen, ruining all sense of urgency. The most prominent level to feature this, G4 Sunbathing, involves running around a giant circular station flipping switches in order to get the malfunctioning doors to open so you can access the antenna station and send a warning to the Earth (thanks for your cooperation, Durandal). One way to create urgency is to have a limited amount of oxygen tanks pick-ups (something done in later games), but it here it just feels like another timer forcing you to constantly return to the only oxygen station in the level. This is made worse when playing on Total Carnage where the oxygen depletion rate is even higher. While all Marathon games past 1 are perfectly playable on Total Carnage (and are more or less intended to be played that way), the gameplay and levels in M1 are a bit too rough to be enjoyed on TC, and is better played on Normal so you can absorb the story and never look back. Namely, you'll have to deal with Troopers firing at you the moment they see you and the Enforcers being massive pricks, both of which are more fairly rebalanced in later games.
The difficulty modes are pretty well handled, I think. It doesn't change the amount of damage you receive when hit, but the frequency of enemy attacks is increased, with most enemies firing two projectiles in succession. There's also ranks within the Pfhor, with minor ranks being essentially weaker versions, though each enemy is a major rank on Total Carnage. TC also increases health of most enemies by 50%, increases the turn radius on enemy guided projectiles, and increases the speed on enemies and their projectiles. To deal with this, you have no limit on the amount of ammo you can carry on TC, so you have more than enough ammo to deal with more than enough enemies.
Overall, Marathon 1 was Bungie's first attempt at a Doom clone, and it shows. While Marathon had a supposedly very strong multiplayer back in the day when people were still playing it thanks to its many modes and gameplay more suited to multiplayer, nowadays there's only about one 1v1 duel happening per day, so I haven't really had the chance to try it out. While it does a poor job of approaching the existing concepts of Doom, the new ideas it brings (different approach to offense and defense, an interesting story that doesn't get in the way of gameplay, alternate firing modes) are what makes it stand out the most (aside from being one of the few Mac exclusives worth a damn). While Marathon 1 in general is the weakest in the series, it does boast the strongest atmosphere and story, depending on who you ask. If you intend to play through all Marathon games anyways, you still shouldn't skip the first. If the technical limitations are a bit too much, you can always try the free remake Marathon: Ressurrection, which is a fan-made remake of Marathon 1 in the Unreal Tournament '99 engine. While some models look amateurish (what the fuck is up with the AR viewmodel), it still carries over the original levels, albeit with some tweaks in terms of weapons and enemy AI which make it rather different from the original.
Moving on to
Marathon 2: Durandal, where the gameplay of the first has finally taken proper shape and the level design finally shows some promise.
Taking place 17 years after the events of the first, you have been abducted by Durandal and were spending those seventeen years in cryostatis. You're immediately teleported onto the planet of Lh'owon, the homeworld of the aforementioned S'pht, now another of many Pfhor garrisons, but thankfully Lh'owon is where only the laziest and most underpeforming Pfhor get sent as punishment. Durandal orders you to explore the ancient S'pht facilities in search of an ancient weapon that might help them ward off the Pfhor, however it is not before long that the largest armada in the Pfhor naval fleet, Battle Group Seven is dispatched to Lh'owon, led by none other than the famous Pfhor Admiral Tfear which even Durandal respects, and Tycho from the previous game now makes his proper entrance as a tortured ANGRY AI.
A bunch of things happened in the first game which led you to having Durandal capture a Pfhor corvette, incite a riot amongst the S'pht and have them follow Durandal's stead in order to exact revenge against the Pfhor, and Durandal coming into the possession of several Pfhor cryopods for captured BoBs to be converted into cyborgs, to whom Durandal offered them the opportunity to work for him or spend the remainder of their lives in shoddy Pfhor cryopods, after which most reluctantly accepted to do what the rampant AI tells them to. You'll notice the consequences of this at the start of the game, when you're teleported on the surface of Lh'owon together with several BoBs now armed with pistols. That's right, now BoBs are no longer entirely useless, they're slightly less useless now because they'll still die to everything, but at least they drop some pistol ammo and your second pistol too.
Lh'owon is also an entirely different place from the Marathon too, the sky is a bright yellow at 'day' and purple at 'night' (the Lh'owon concepts of day and night), most of the buildings resemble ancient alien ruins with more variety in terms of textures rather than M1's endless use of GRAY. Also new (to first-person shooters as a whole) is the presence of liquids and being able to dive underwater, which is something you'll be doing often while exploring the ruins of Lh'owon. Unfortunately, swimming sucks. It's a neat concept in terms of exploration, but the game is simply not made for underwater combat, as none of your guns can shoot underwater and you only have your fists to kill things underwater. At least no enemy can shoot while underwater either. Underwater diving is something Duke Nukem 3D did better by simply letting you shoot underwater with tighter controls, in Marathon 2 the controls for swimming feels rather unresponsive, and getting back to the surface is an even more needlessly difficult affair, due to the water levels slowly rising up and down, meaning you need to build up momentum to get out of the water at the right time. The game does offer a lot of control over the properties of water, such as what kind of liquid is used, its flow and direction, the amount of liquid in a space, and so on. This is used to a great effect in a level where after breaking a security system the whole area starts flooding with lava, as you run for your life to get up the stairs. Unfortunately there's not a lot of levels which make creative use of liquids like that.
Marathon 2 has also brought with itself a graphical upgrade over the original's hand-drawn graphics (they're still hand-drawn however), as enemy and weapon sprites look a lot less amateurish in M2. On an additional note, Marathon 2 was ported to XBLA, and all of the sprites were redone in HD. These new sprites were backported to the Aleph One releases and are included in the default Marathon 2 and Infinity packages, and can be turned off in the Plugins tab of the Environment options menu if you wish to see the original sprites. Opinions may differ on the new sprites, some think they look too plastic-y, it's something you have to decide for yourself. The sounds have also been largely redone, with most new sounds sounding a lot more high-quality, although the Pfhor now sound more like insects as they no longer have the angry roaring like they did in the first game. Something you might also notice is the new soundtrack, or the lack thereof, aside from the rockin' menu theme. For some reason Bungie decided to focus on atmospheric sound effects rather than having music play in the background, a change in direction which does not really pay off until Marathon Infinity. The music played a large part in establishing M1's atmosphere, so this change is a bit of a shame as in Marathon 2 you'll be hearing silence most of the time, which is quite boring.
The weapon arsenal has also received a boot up its ass and has become something respectable. The fusion pistol now deals extra damage to mechanical enemies like Cyborgs and Hunters, however they will short-circuit and explode on death when killed this way. The Enforcer now fires a constant barrage of larger projectiles similarly to Hunters and has done away with his hitscan POS, the alien weapon now also acts like a long-range flamethrower with an alt-fire which fires in a three way spread for more damage close-up. However, Enforcers don't drop their guns when they die to fire (e.g. their own alien weapons), so if you want to conserve ammo you probably want to switch to something else. The flamethrower on the other hand now deals extra damage against organic enemies, while dealing barely any to mechanical enemies. The pistols now have an additional bullet in their magazine over their original seven, you can now use both fists, and a new shotgun weapon has been added. The shotgun absolutely WRECKS shit, it feels so good to use especially since you can dual-wield them, and you reload your shotguns by flipcocking them Terminator 2-style. However, it chews through ammo really fast and ammo for it is not that frequent, giving it the role of emergency breakout weapon when everything in the room has to die really hard, as some levels like If I Had A Rocket Launcher, I'd Make Someone Pay will let you do. The Troopers have a considerably less anal reaction time and hitscan range now (on TC), and the new Cyborg enemy serves as a bulletsponge which is usually mixed together with other enemies like Fighters and Troopers, who fire bouncing grenades which can travel in a straight line forever until they hit a wall, but some Mother-of-all-Cyborgs can fire homing bouncing grenades too. Strangely enough Troopers on TC require two rockets to the face to die properly, but you won't be using the rocket launcher that much either.
While I usually hate color coding as an excuse for having you use all the weapons you have at your disposal for forced reasons like DmC did (RED weapons are useful against BLUE enemies and BLUE weapons are useful against RED enemies), I think it works as long as the weapons aren't just carbon copies of one another and the game doesn't go overboard with a zillion elemental weaknesses and resistances like Persona 2 did. In Marathon 2, you probably want to use your fusion pistol against mechanical enemies is because it not only kills them faster, but having them short-circuit and explode will also deal damage to nearby enemies, which can create amusing chain reactions when facing groups of Hunters with a fusion pistol. That said, an AR is still just as efficient at taking out Hunters and Cyborgs, but only using an AR would be a drain for its ammo.
The level design in Marathon 2 has also greatly improved, by focusing on larger and more open levels which surprise surprise, mesh better together with dodging a zillion bullets. There's alot more thought put in the nature and variety of enemy encounters, which also plays into another new element, which is how enemies and items teleport into levels rather than being present in levels beforehand. They don't always teleport in, but later levels do make liberal use of the existence of teleportation technology. Plot-wise it also explains why the Pfhor are present in underground caverns and why there is ammo for your human-S'pht weapons on a foreign planet, but it also allows the level designers to take the player by surprise and prevent enemies from prematurely wandering off elsewhere. Strangely enough, you can hear the stuttering of the Pfhor near their teleportation points even when they're physically not there. That does prevent you from getting ambushed, however. The teleportation of items also enhances that feeling of exploration on top of feeling more natural, while also naturally drawing your attention to the items. Though the benefits of liquids in M2 is questionable, they do make some levels stand out from the others. Like how in one level the water level is slowly but constantly rising, how you have to raise the water levels to get to certain points in order to proceed in another, and so on. There's less switchhunting here too, and that's great. Marathon has always been somewhat slower-paced, but in 2 it nails just the right amount of action and exploration. You get the AR on your first level too, so that's a bonus. Also new are the presence of energy tank pick-ups which recharge your entire shield, whose inclusion is also one that allows the level designer to craft levels which rely less on backtracking to recharge stations, as 2 sure feels like it has less backtracking going on.
The story in 2: Durandal feels a lot more smaller in scale, whereas the first set up a massive universe filled with mysteries to be solved. 2 focuses primarily on the legends of the S'pht and the last days of the S'pht on Lh'owon before their surrender and capture by the Pfhor, as you're equipped with a S'pht/Pfhor translator capable of reading S'pht/Pfhor terminals so you can read the rich lore and backstory of the S'pht. Even if you're not interested in some ancient alien lore, Durandal sure as hell is, and he's the one calling the shots. Even if you don't want to, you can just mash the down arrow key a bunch of times and be done with it so you can move on to the next slaughter, just don't be surprised when you're suddenly teleported to the next level. The span of 17 years have also given Durandal the time to grow more (meta-)stable as opposed to the rampant idealistic construct he was in the first. You're still helping him become a god, however. He isn't as quotable as he was in the first (Marathon 2 is a smaller game anyways), but Marathon 2 still has its moments. You might even feel some reluctance in following his orders, in the way you least expect it. Marathon 2 also features pictures for terminals aside from map designations, like you're really reading a light novel. The chapter intro screens also have some beautiful scenery porn by Craig Mullins, who later went on to create art for Halo too. It's a bit confusing how the depiction of your suit seems to constantly vary between chapter screens, though.
Marathon 2 is an improvement over the original in nearly every way, however it's a shame it doesn't have a soundtrack. Although Marathon was originally intended to be divided in two parts, the first game feels like a prologue while the second game feels like one of many adventures, most of which have been unchronicled. The epilogue basically skips over a lot of stuff that has happened until the downfall of the Pfhor Empire, which Bungie probably didn't feel like delving into because they wanted to work on Myth, or they just left things intentionally open for the fans. Many fanscenarios sure have offered their own take on what happens after the events on 2, but one more Marathon game was released that had a larger impact on the direction many fanscenarios took with the story, namely
Marathon Infinity.
Marathon Infinity wasn't actually developed by Bungie, but rather by a Bungie offshoot called Double Aught led by Marathon story writer and level designer Greg Kirkpatrick, together with some other guys like Chris Geisel and Randy Reddig (Ydnar). Infinity was originally intended to be a what-if expansion scenario named 'Blood Tides of Lh'owon', but managed to become a fleshed out sequel, even if it's hard to call it a sequel considering its dubious place in the Marathon timeline(s). Yes, they went there. Yet they didn't fall (completely depending on who you might ask) on their faces when it came to handling time travel. Infinity is a bit different as it expects the player to place the pieces together, as some events can come off as completely random even if there is a reason for them to happen in the story. I'm pretty much spoiling the game at this point just by talking about it, but let me say that it is still worth playing, despite having some of the worst (and THE worst) but also some of the best (and THE best) levels in the entire series. If you want your Infinity experience untainted, it's best to just scroll down to the next paragraph with bolded text.
As Infinity is more or less an expansion, it doesn't offer many new gameplay features aside from the KKV-7 SMG, the only weapon capable of firing underwater, though you'll barely have the chance of doing so in the singleplayer campaign considering you'll constantly find yourself stripped of your weapons for plot reasons. I don't mind pistol starts (here called Vidmaster runs or Rebellion levels), but it does make the existence of some secrets questionable. However, sometimes the weapons and ammo you find in secret areas can carry over to pistol start levels, most notably during failure branch levels, though it still feels a little inconsistent. Being able to keep items you found through secrets between pistol starts sure is a nice solution to the presence of secrets clashing with pistol starts in the first place, but it's executed too inconsistently in Infinity, on top of not being able to know whether the next level is a pistol start in the first place. However, what is different in Infinity is the nature of the levels. Whereas previously you'd always be pitted against the Pfhor, now your objective can sometimes consist of having to eradicate all BoBs, who are not too friendly. The BoBs have received another upgrade to become Vacuum BoBs (or just VacBoBs), which are BoBs wearing vacuum suits and equipped with (outdated) fusion pistols. There's still your regular M2 pistol BoBs who can plink you from long range with their hitscan pistols, but at least they die fast too. These VacBoBs are more fun to fight due to firing projectiles and being weak to electrical damage. Their lines are great too.
But wait, you might ask, why are you fighting your fellow BoB in the first place? That is a long story, so let's start at the beginning. You start off in some derelict space station, punctuated by the ominous screeching of metal. The first terminal you see contains a last desperate message from Durandal, telling you that he should've sent you on an expedition to Lh'owon, that the Pfhor nuking of Lh'owon has unleashed something
terrible beyond any of Durandal's expectations, and that you should escape, which is very much unlike him. The first level echoes this sentiment too, by having you run through almost claustrophobic hallways in search of an escape point. You find the exit terminal, which contains some vague ramblings of an unknown entity, and before you know it you find yourself in the next level, assisting Tycho in executing his coup d'etat of a Pfhor ship by getting rid of the Captain's loyal Enforcers, but you are assisted by the other Pfhor ranks who believe they are just following orders from higher up. Tycho is still angry, still treats you like a bag of shit, and he's still after Durandal. Just where am I? Nonetheless, you find yourself following more of Tycho's orders, before you somehow enter a dream level. Dreams seem to play a large part of Infinity's story, as you explore the sub-consciousness of your own player character through his dreams. And before you know it, you find yourself under Durandal's control again, reenacting some of the referred to events in Marathon 2, such as taking control of an aforementioned dam. But wait, wasn't I just under the control of Tycho? What happened to that?
To some, Infinity's restraint in explaining the weirder shit might make the game seem like an entire string of non-sensical random events, and shit might not make any sense unless you consult a Wiki page on the story or the Marathon story archive where people spent over ten years analyzing and taking apart Marathon's story and all of its hidden messages (
no, really). So yeah, it wouldn't be farfetched to say that Infinity is borderline experimental when it comes to storytelling. I personally like these kind of stories as long as there's enough room and hints to form your own conclusions (like in EYE: Divine Cybermancy), unlike some games where any explanation you can think of ends up contradicting SOMETHING in the story because the writers simply didn't write the story with a definitive explanation for things happening in mind (like in Inside). I can't say it's the most brilliant story ever devised (for videogames), but sure as hell one of the most engaging ones, as you're pretty much encouraged to pay attention to details if you want to make sense out of anything to begin with. Another thing of note Infinity offers is a deeper insight in Pfhor communication by letting you read their terminals, most of which is obscured by bureaucratic jargon and details, which requires some brainpower to decipher. They can be fairly entertaining once you get the hang of them.
The level design here is more of a mixed bag, as it has some really good and some really shitty levels, which is one result of letting the story writer design levels. This lack in consistency ultimately leaves me to prefer M2 when it comes to level design, because while the dream levels are nice aesthetically, they're not all that fun to play through. One will have you running from invisible and invincible S'pht'Kr in a dark labyrinth while another will have you run along an incredibly narrow path across lava as S'pht Compilers are constantly trying to knock you off. Kind of annoying. The first level of the aptly-named Rage chapter brings you to Acme Station, a vacuum level consisting of largely narrow corridors with next to no room to dodge. The enemies largely consist of fighters and bulletsponge Cyborgs, so if you didn't visit the secret Aie Mak Sicur failure branch to stock up on some weapons, you'll be left severely underpowered as Acme Station happens to be a Rebellion level too. To make matters worse, the level has no oxygen recharge stations, with only a few oxygen tank pick-ups being teleported in at places you are unlikely to encounter through the main path. The only save terminal in the level is hidden behind several enemies, and even then it's a miracle if you can get to complete the objectives in time. There is no shield rechargers either. No shield rechargers, no oxygen rechargers, enemies fucking everywhere and no room to dodge them effectively, it's a fucking vacuum level, it's a fucking Rebellion level, the oxygen depletes twice as fast on TC, and the exit point has you run to the starting terminal too. Acme Station can eat a giant pile of shit. According to the designer's notes this level was entirely made in 8 hours, and I can see how that turned out. But I refuse to believe Acme Station was ever playtested properly on TC, let alone playtested at all. And to make matters even worse, the next level, Post Naval Trauma, is a vacuum level too with no immediate oxygen pick-ups or rechargers, so if you escaped Acme Station while low on oxygen, tough shit! Vacuum levels are a fucking mistake, or at the very least they are rarely ever well executed.
Thankfully the game picks up after that with some mediocre to ok levels, but also some genuinely good levels like Hang Brain, One thousand slimy things, Naw Man He's Close, and best of them all: the final level Aye Mak Sicur. Backstory time: Aye Mak Sicur originally started out as a netgame map called Pfhactory by Ydnar before he joined Double Aught as level designer, gradually expanding and polishing it to the point where it almost hit the absolute maximum of allowed polygons in the Marathon engine (1023/1024), a fact even secretly referenced within the terminals of AMS themselves. Sections of AMS would be reused as failure branch levels, secret levels which contain boatloads of ammo, and considering how excellent AMS is, I can't blame them for doing so. Note, Aye Mak Sicur is not to be confused with Aie Mak Sicur, another secret failure branch level. Aye Mak Sicur is excellent in terms of how it absolutely instills a feeling of confusion and dread in the player, with its many twisting dark passages, well-designed architecture, Hunters lurking about, and the familiar creaking metal ambience. Initially, it's a pain to navigate with each section being unique, but after some point you learn to recognize landmarks as you're trying to figure out what to do next. In a way it's a perfect representation of Infinity, it seems like a sprawling mess at first, and it's still a sprawling mess even when you do understand it, but one you learn to appreciate.
Infinity feels more like an experiment on Greg Kirkpatrick's part (some of the author notes suggest most people working on Infinity didn't really understand what Greg was going for either), with some bad ideas but also some gems hidden in it. It might be polarizing, but nonetheless worth checking out to see for yourself. It sure as hell inspired other fanscenarios like Rubicon and Eternal to incorporate storytelling elements used in Infinity, with varying degrees of success.
One of those fanscenarios is
Marathon: Rubicon X, sometimes referred to as the unofficial fourth part in the series. Rubicon sure does a lot of new things, with new weapons, new enemies, new textures, and actual story branches. It is the one fanscenario that matches the original Marathon style of writing the closest, though. Anyways, Rubicon is meant to be the chapter where you topple the Pfhor Empire, but there's some other things happening behind the scenes too. Rubicon starts off with a brief dream level recapping previous events, being followed up with another level that serves next to no purpose plot-wise and mostly consists of you running away from the Pfhor. While there was some purpose to the dream levels in Infinity, I have no idea what their purpose is in Rubicon, other than to tell a little side-story which bears some thematical resemblance to the actual story, but that really isn't worth the effort and time of having to suffer through dream levels again. The dream levels in Rubicon usually consist of navigating through labyrinthine spaces in vacuum levels, but at least they have plenty of oxygen rechargers. At least there's one cool dream level amongst them which involves escaping from a mental ward(?) while drugged up and beating up scientists, which was pretty damn surreal.
Your weapon arsenal has received some changes: your pistols have been buffed in terms of mag size and RoF. The fusion pistol is now a fusion rifle which features a rapid-fire stream of electric bolts which stun everything as the primary fire with a long-range more powerful energy shot as the alt-fire, both of which can be fired at the same time. A bit OP if you ask me, considering the original fusion pistol was perfect already. The rocket launcher now holds three instead of two rockets per canister, and the alien weapon now rather resembles a mortar, but aside from that not much has been changed. However, there is a new weapon called the Maser which is a literal point 'n shoot death-ray with pinpoint accuracy and crazy damage output. That might seem overkill for Marathon, but the nature of Rubicon's encounters call for it to be used extensively.
The first REAL level, Honk If You're An Underpaid Cyborg, has you traverse the bowels of a crashed UESC ship called the Chimera, while being assaulted by Pfhor from all sides. The new textures and graphical details already make Rubicon look like a graphical upgrade from the original trilogy. The Chimera texture set is damn great, too bad it is barely used in the scenario aside from the first few levels. The Chimera levels involve a lot of exploration and getting lost in dark hallways. I liked their non-linear sprawling nature, when I had an idea of where to go next. The Chimera levels are not the best at conveying directions. Meanwhile we get to extract the primal chip of the Chimera's resident almost-rampant AI for whatever reason Durandal needs it, and Tycho makes his reappearance too. Exciting. The last Chimera level, Hairy Legs, has you prevent an energy reactor from going nuclear and blowing everything up by engaging the failsafes before time runs out. It's a neat level, but oddly it's where the story branches depending on whether you saved the reactor in time, into the Salinger plank if you succeed and the Pfhor plank if you fail. Though I can't say the reason for the story branching THERE makes a lot of sense. If you're too slow, the Pfhor will capture an UESC general who's the mind behind the human offensive against the Pfhor which Durandal has you try and rescue, while succeeding will cause Durandal to just so notice a research station owned by the Dangi Corporation hanging around a red star and have you explore it for some reason, but the aforementioned general will die, but at the end human victory over the Pfhor is guaranteed without his involvement, while you and Durandal need to personally finish the Pfhor off at the end of the Pfhor plank. It doesn't make too much sense.
I'm not too keen of being only able to visit other branches through failure, at one point in the Pfhor plank you are given a small but generous window of time to save the general which places you in the Salinger plank if you succeed, but lets you continue down the Pfhor plank if you fail. Nobody wants to play bad intentionally just to see all the content the game has to offer. It makes sense that the Pfhor plank leads to the bad ending while the Salinger one leads to the good ending, but traversal between planks could have been more smoothly executed.
The good ol' Pfhor Fighters, Troopers, and Hunters are still there, but some enemies from Marathon 1 have made a comeback such as the Looker, Wasp and Drinniol. The Drinniol is now an ammosink impervious to hitstun who constantly throws grenades, but at least he's somewhat interesting to fight. For some reason, the Enforcers and their new weapons almost resemble the M1 Enforcers in terms of bullshit, as in they're not fun to fight at all. Their bolts are ridiculously fasts and they're homing bolts on top of everything, making them incredibly impossible to dodge. And to top it all off, Enforcers can perform a short-range lightning hitscan attack in similar vein to Troopers except these attacks deal a ridiculous amount of damage. How the mod author considered that fun is beyond me. There's a new Pfhor enemy called the Thinker, a Pfhor with an oversized head sitting in a floating chair, who like the Drinniol are invincible to hitstun, but unlike the Drinniol they fire hitscan weapons at short-range in similar fashion to Troopers, and end up being a larger pain to fight than they should be. Thankfully they do not appear all that often. BoBs have been upgraded to wield assault rifles, but they're still fucking useless at staying alive. Unfortunately there's a new BoB called the Maser BoB too, and these guys are much better at staying alive. Namely, you only need to appear in their field of view for half a second before they have already shaved off half of your health bar with their fucking Masers. While they do die fast, their presence make levels rely more on memorization and backtracking to rechargers than they should. Infinity found a decent answer to having BoB massacre levels be somewhat challenging with VacBoBs, but Maser BoBs can fuck right off.
The Pfhor plank centers around you and Durandal's escapades on the Pfhor home planet, Pfhor Prime, starting off with trying to save the general before negotiating with Tycho to take control of Pfhor Prime's security networks for Tycho's freedom, until Tycho just fucks off and becomes irrelevant towards the end once you escape from his clutches as Durandal deems taking out the Pfhor High Council more important. The Pfhor plank has some good levels, but most of them are mediocre to shit with the shitty ones being extraordinarily shitty due to the presence of these new Enforcers. This hurts more than... uh... is an exercise of patience or masochism personified, depending on how you look at the level. The levels in Rubicon are technically competent for the most part, it's just the choices in terms of directions which make me sincerely doubt whether the levels were made with fun in mind or whether they were tested on Total Carnage to begin with. Here's a level which takes place entirely underwater as you shoot Troopers with your nerfed AR as you traverse large open spaces and straightforward vents. Here's a level with ridiculously convoluted sprawling corridors fucking everywhere. Here's a Rebellion level with Enforcers fucking everywhere! Here's a level with narrow platforms all over a sludge pit you have to swim through if you get knocked off, while figuring out where the hell you have to go in the first place! Here's a bunch of large open spaces with MaserBoBs everywhere! Here's a keyhunt level where one keycard is somehow hidden
in a fucking sludge pit where nobody who isn't at their wits end would ever look. And then there's the ending.
So after you take up the fight to the Pfhor High Council in the Pfhor Citadel by constantly taking potshots at green and blue High Pfhor things who constantly shoot homing projectiles at you, the UESC swoops in and humans kick ass without the help of the great general. Just like that. If there's one cliche I really hate, it's the 'shut off the hivemind and all of them will stop functioning' cliche so nobody has to ever worry about remnant groups and those second-in-charge, or that there's more to winning involved than taking out the leader. Else ISIS would have dissolved ten times over. The victory doesn't take in account how a race of complete
noobs at space warfare were able to topple an entire Empire with multiple galaxies, slave races, and experience under their belt, let alone the logistics involved or the numbers required to take on an Empire as large as the Pfhor Empire. An automatic victory is assumed
waaaaaay too easily as long as the High Pfhor are out of the picture. We know Durandal did help the UESC out by showing them some new technology, but he was only tipping the scales from behind the curtains, he didn't actively direct any military operations or anything, and it's going to take more than some new missiles to win interplanetary wars. But anyways, the Pfhor then release a deadly virus targeted at human beings which wipes out a large percentage of humanity, causing the UESC to retreat to a select few bases where the Dangi Corporation assumes direct control of humanity using a vaccine as leverage.
L O L W A T
Unless you had any beforehand knowledge about the Salinger plank, this ending will come out of the total blue. Like, what virus? What corporation? Was everything you just did for naught? Where do you and Durandal factor in in the ending? Does Tycho have something to do with it? What is even the fucking point of this ending other than taking a big fucking shit on players who were too slow? How does the Chimera plank relate to this ending? Jesus fucking christ.
So in the case that you did save the reactor, the general dies somewhere off-screen and Durandal has you investigate some random science station called the Salinger owned by a certain Dangi Corporation which he just happened to notice. Unlike Pfhor Prime's alien environments and the Chimera's dark interiors, the Salinger levels are largely circular with long white hallways punctuated by a reddish-orange skybox from the red sun the station is orbiting around. It looks nice, but (un)pfhortunately it's boarded by the Pfhor, so you'll have to clean house. Durandal will eventually send you into the restricted areas of the Salinger, but the resident Dangi AI, Lysander, isn't too happy about you snooping around Dangi secrets, and ends up ordering the Dangi BoBs to keep you out. Lysander doesn't really do much aside from making empty threats and sounding evil, and feels more like a waste of space who had to occupy the role of antagonist AI because Tycho isn't anywhere to be seen in the Salinger plank. Speaking of AIs, here in Rubicon Durandal LOVES to NOT explain things, which is incredibly contrary to his character in the original games where he could go on several tirades about his megalomaniacal goals and plans. Nothing sucks more than being dropped in a large non-linear level as Durandal tells you he doesn't have to explain shit because he already knows you will complete his objectives. Yeah, fuck you too.
Whereas the Pfhor plank had nuEnforcers and Thinkers, the Salinger planks makes up for it with Maser BoBs. The mere presence of these guys is completely
antithetical to the gameplay Marathon was built around. Rather than dodging a zillion projectiles, you now have to play pop-a-mole because those fuckers will reduce your health to nothing if you don't. While they do die fast, they still make up for their annoyance in numbers. They're still less of a bitch to deal with than the Enforcers. The levels are thankfully somewhat built around having BoBs as the primary enemies, and thankfully you can use a Maser against them too. Rechargers and save terminals do tend to be plentiful, so there's that at least. There's some good variety inbetween the Salinger levels (save for a quick detour to a Rebellion level where you're captured by a Pfhor ship and have to escape the fucking Enforcers) as out of all Rubicon's poorly realized ideas, the Salinger planks has the better ones.
As the plot moves on, we find out that the Dangi Corporation has been developing a virus called the Achilles, on top of a plan to assume control of humanity with the help of the Pfhor. Dangi exchanges military secrets with the Pfhor, while the Pfhor provides human captives to Dangi for them to test Achilles on. Why would Dangi be so ridiculously evil and betray humanity? No one knows, because lol evil corporations. Then Durandal has you clear out the security guards so he can kidnap the Achilles scientists and steal the Achilles research data, for whatever reason. It's never explained why Durandal needs it, let alone if he ever does something with it. You destroy Lysander, prevent the Pfhor from getting their appendages on the Achilles virus, escape Salinger station, and boom, the end. In the epilogue we learn that the UESC completely wrecks the Pfhor, something you had to personally assassinate the entire High Pfhor Council for in the other plank. Again, the UESC strength is overestimated way too much. The Pfhor Empire dissolves, the humans return victoriously to Earth while leaving a power vacuum behind, and you and Durandal mysteriously fuck off into the sunset. That's it, really.
But WAIT, there's the hidden third (or fourth if you count the Chimera plank) Tycho plank where you get to choose to follow Tycho's orders. Setting aside the fact that there's little logical motivation to follow the murderous angry AI who had a large contempt for humanity, who now claims he wants to completely eradicate the Achilles virus rather than preserve it like Durandal did. Durandal keeping the Achilles scientists for no reason just feels like a cheap excuse for Tycho to seem somewhat justified in his actions. Unfortunately the Tycho plank is by and large mediocre, as it reuses a lot of levels from other planks, and has only one or two actually good levels while the other levels are just boring or flat out bad. One level involves you taking down Durandal, but it feels incredibly underwhelming, as Durandal doesn't even seem to care. Even though it's about stopping Achilles, many of the levels feel like they have little to do with stopping Achilles at all. The whole plank is a mess, really. Your goals in the Salinger plank which take you several levels (getting the virus, destroying Lysander) are condensed in simply two levels here. Without beforehand knowledge of other planks, the Tycho plank doesn't make any sense at all (what virus? what Lysander?), there's a random side-plot about another Tycho clone, and the ending is blatantly unsatisfying, treating you like a dick for betraying Durandal while mentioning he's still alive (because he's UNBREAKABLE). What a load of shit.
So yeah, Rubicon X. Interesting ideas with largely terrible execution, some cool levels here and there, but by and large a pain in the butt, on Total Carnage at least. While I'd love to say it has a strong narrative, that would only be the case in comparison to other fanscenarios. Compared to the original trilogy, or on it's own, it's a bloody mess. I hear that Rubicon X is an update of the original Rubicon, only to get George Lucas'd in the process. It does have some nice hooks, but they go nowhere. The terminals themselves have some competent writing, but that's about it. Play it, if you must.
Some people take Marathon and go wild, like a team of people called Nardo did with
Marathon: Tempus Irae. The gist of it? You have been teleported back to the Renaissance Age near Earth, and your job is to find a bunch of tomes in Renaissance Italy, amidst Renaissance-styled architecture and levels. Unfortunately in the process of teleportation an entire Pfhor ship has been teleported along with you, and they've begun to terrorize Renaissance Italy too (they weren't interested in any other part of Earth, apparently). For some reason all Earth levels you visit are completely devoid of humans or any kind of civilians, making them feel rather empty if it weren't for the Pfhor to kill. The gameplay has remained unchanged from the original games, as the weapons and enemies still remain the same, so there's little to talk about there. On Earth, objects like crucifixes or some other artpieces function as save terminals (because of technology), whereas health on Earth is entirely regained through shield canisters, so there's little need for backtracking to rechargers.
Basically you're working for the S'pht who have traveled back in time to gain ten tomes of knowledge you need to find, because of some shit their leader has gotten himself into. On Earth you'll mostly find journals of Leonardo da Vinci (because why not) who has come into contact with the S'pht leader, and some other philosophical essays concerning the widespread usage of locks in Renaissance Italy. Sometimes you'll be teleported back to the S'pht/Pfhor ship to delay the Pfhor from fucking things up, which offers a nice change of pace. The Italian levels at first aim to look somewhat realistic, though that approach quickly goes out of the window the further in you get. It doesn't really have to be all realistic, but otherwise it does make some buildings look rather abstract and out of place. As if this is really supposed to be a Cathedral. As for the levels themselves, they're alright. They're rarely offensively bad, but rarely really good either. It does suffer the problem of there being too many Earth levels, after some point the novelty wears off and the story doesn't carry the scenario in any way considering how stretched out it is. Strangely, most of the Pfhor ship levels are better than the Earth levels, in fact they're some of the best levels in the scenario. Whereas the environments on Earth feel like they're composed of squares and rectangles, the Pfhor ship levels have more organic shapes and end up being more interesting because of it. At least the Tempus Irae levels feel like they have been properly tested, rarely did I find myself thinking 'this is some fucking bullshit'.
Overall, Tempus Irae is fairly decent as far as fanscenarios go. It has an interesting concept which overstays its welcome, it doesn't do much with its story, and the levels and their combat are ok for the most part, but rarely ever really engaging. It wouldn't really hurt to try it out. Moving on...
Now,
Marathon Phoenix is by far my most favourite fanscenario, and Marathon scenario in general. I wholeheartedly prefer it over even the original trilogy. Why? Simply put, it's the closest a scenario has ever gotten to realizing the potential of the Marathon gameplay, combat-wise at least. Phoenix accomplishes this in several ways. First, dramatically increase the number of monsters you fight at once and accomodate the levels around this new direction. Second, redesign and rebalance the weapon arsenal to accomodate fighting many more enemies at once. This also results in a steeper increase of challenge regardless of the difficulty you're playing on, but a much fairer one compared to scenarios like Rubicon which rely on bullshit harder-for-the-sake-of-being-harder methods to make the game more difficult.
There's not much in the way of new original enemies in Phoenix, but the existing enemies have been somewhat redesigned and reintroduced in the shape of the Renegade faction. In essence, the Renegades are reskinned Pfhor and other Marathon creatures capable of fighting, with an additional tinge of gray. The Renegades are tougher to fight, and not just because they have slightly more health. For example, major rank Renegade Fighters and Hunters will now try harder to get up and close to you while taking shots at you, Renegade Fighters are no longer solely cannon fodder considering their projectile speed has also been increased, and there's the new Renegade Defenders, which are essentially reskinned S'pht'Kr. However, they come in two types, one which shoots slow green disks, and one which shoot fast red disks. They are used together to a good extent, as the green ones are more numerous and will slowly fill the field with bullets and limit your space to dodge in, while the red ones are about fast reaction dodging. For plot reasons you'll still fight the regular Pfhor (as intended breather sections considering the Pfhor are easier to fight than the Renegades), and some levels even feature fighting between Pfhor and the Renegades with you as the third intervening party. Sometimes you'll also face certain boss enemies which are again reskins from other pre-existing enemies, but with a fuckload of health, unfortunately their attack patterns remain the same from the enemy they're reskinned from. Like Cyberdemons, you shoot at them until they die, but they are at least more of an issue to deal with when more enemies are involved in the equation. Juggernauts are also used more frequently, even in the first level. However, they are much more vulnerable to energy damage this time around and will die more easily, which is especially apparent in the first level where you'll be fighting off two Juggernauts with your new Fusion Cannon, which is quite an intro considering Juggernauts were only ever used in the final levels of Marathon 1 and 2, just to show that this scenario means business.
The weapon arsenal has also undergone some massive changes. Each weapon (save for the fists) has a new visual skin all of which don't look too shabby. The fists, AR, fusion pistol/cannon and rocket launcher work mostly the same way they did in the original trilogy, however the RL now properly kills Troopers with one rocket, and the knockback and projectile speed on the Fusion Cannon have been somewhat increased, especially charged shots do some proper knockback. Your pistols have now been replaced with IMPs, which are like rapid-firing SMGs in both hands. These guys are much more useful than the old Marathon pistols on virtue of being to output some serious damage while stunlocking anything they hit. They reload quickly and ammo is abundant, meaning you can stunlock nearly everything without pause. Normally this would have been quite OP as you barely have to worry about reloads breaking your stunlock when dual-wielding, but that's made up for a zillion more enemies firing at you at once. The IMP is also the first weapon you get, and it allows Phoenix to get off the ground quicker rather than having to sit through those boring levels like Arrival and Waterloo Waterpark where you just shoot some Fighters with your pistol, which was more than often quite boring.
A new weapon comes in the form of the crossbow, an extremely accurate long-range weapon which suits the more open levels of Phoenix just nicely. The crossbow also allows Phoenix to place (M2) Enforcers in sniper positions as their abilities would naturally suggest, considering you have a weapon that can properly counter them. The only problem with this is the shoddy mouse aiming and sometimes shoddy hit detection. The alt-fire for the crossbow only fires a less accurate spread meant for medium-range encounters, while it could have been better used as a zoom function so you can pick off Enforcers and other enemies more accurately. It's already somewhat possible by pressing one of the function keys (it was F5 I believe), however it feels more like a developer function as it takes a rather long time to zoom in and out.
The flamethrower is now called the N-cannon and resembles the M2 Alien Weapon in terms of function, except it now has proper ammo pick-ups. Another new weapon, the Fusion Mortar, is like a rocket launcher which fires shells that deal energy damage, making it incredibly useful against groups of Hunters, Cyborgs and Defenders. At last there is also a new Energy Katar which runs on fusion batteries, but most notably can render you invincible with its alt-fire as you're able to stab things while invincible to things that aren't fusion bolts (you can still damage players who have picked up an invincibility power-up with your fusion bolts). As the Katar does run on batteries, you'll have to reload it time to time and remain vulnerable, but it more or less serves as a getaway weapon you get very late in the game (save for a secret in one of the first levels).
The role of the weapons has also been changed. For example, the N-Cannon and Fusion Mortar are intended to be the two main 'power weapons' against organic and mechanical enemies respectively, until you get the Rocket Launcher which is efficient at killing
everything. For that reason, you only get the Rocket Launcher officially until the second last level.
Officially. Because having a weapon for only two levels would suck, the author also made sure to reward exploration by solely putting Rocket Launchers for grabs in secret levels (save for a secret in a non-secret level right before the second last level), which also tend to be hidden as secrets in secret levels. As ammo for your rocket launcher is non-existent outside secret levels and the final levels, you want to be careful when you use your rocket launcher. Secrets and secret levels will also let you obtain other weapons like the Fusion Mortar and N-Cannon before you officially obtain them. Secrets are also marked with skulls you can pick up, so you know this time around what's a secret and what isn't, unlike in the original trilogy where you were never sure if you just found a secret. You also get to see how many secrets you found in a level, and how many you found in the entire scenario (140 secrets and skulls to find in total). These secrets range from hidden doors, firing at switches from far away, and exploration. While the author does state he wanted to give each secret a certain tell, I rarely ever noticed them and got more lucky by mashing the Use button instead.
To combat all the enemies you do get a lot of ammo, probably even too much considering you'll never have to worry for ammunition for anything that isn't a power weapon, especially on Total Carnage where you have no ammo cap. One reason for this is that all maps have been tested on Total Carnage with a pistol start/Vidmaster run (without discovering any secrets at all), meaning you won't have to often worry about ammo. From what I saw it's a more optional challenge rather than the way to play (else the secret levels would be pointless considering you play them for the extra ammo and weapons). However ammo management does become more of a thing if you do play with pistol starts in mind.
The larger presence of Defenders amongst Hunters and Cyborgs will also have you switching to the Fusion Cannon from the AR more than often, as the variety in enemy composition in levels will have you switching weapons more often than in the original trilogy. Unfortunately this highlights another flaw with Marathon, or at least Aleph One, which is that you can only cycle between weapons using NextWeapon and PrevWeapon keys, rather than having each weapon bound to individual keys. As there is a delay between weapon switching, trying to find the right weapon can be time wasted in the middle of intense battles unless you exactly know how many inputs away your weapon of choice is from the weapon you have currently equipped right now. From what I hear, the reasons for this not being implemented after many years are more technical in nature, which has more to do with how the engine saves replays by recording keystrokes, and adding new ones would apparently necessitate a complete rewrite of the networking and replay saving code, with barely enough people interested to handle that.
The level design in Phoenix is great overall, even better than Marathon 2 and just good in general. I barely have any complaints about any of them, with the exception of Escape Two Thousand which takes the concept of sniping Enforcers on small platforms way too far, a level which even the author does not know why he included it in the scenario in the first place. Each level also stands out architecturally, with each level looking good on top of feeling good to play in it too. The limitations of the engine might make some maps look like Minecraft, but the architecture does often deviate from being too cubic. Phoenix levels in general are more action-oriented, more Doom-like than Marathon-like if you will. There's also barely any swimming involved, which I consider a good thing for the direction Phoenix takes. The levels themselves are strongly varied in terms of encounter design, and most levels have some memorable setpiece moments too to make them stand out better, with a good mix of non-linear and linear setpiece-oriented levels. Each level has something noteworthy going for it, which is good. There is also some proper pacing in the scenario, with some levels acting as a breather for upcoming harder levels, and the final level finishing on a high note.
The plot for the Phoenix on the otherhand is, boring. Not offensive head-scratching material like Rubicon was, but just boring. They're more or less an excuse for the levels to happen rather than the other way around, which isn't a bad thing on its own, but it's detrimental to the story if it has nothing else going for it. The general gist of it that you're part of an UESC space exploration/research division now after the events of 2, and you're sent to some planet called Artemis after a UESC research vessel containing an experimental AI was shot down by the Pfhor and crash-landed on Artemis. As it turns out, it's inhabited by another lost clan of the S'pht nicknamed the Renegades who have developed the technology to reproduce clones of the Pfhor (and later on your human crew), and seek vengeance against the Pfhor for fucking them over on Lh'owon, but also turn against you once you start messing around Artemis. Your orders are to find the AI and destroy it to prevent it from falling in Pfhor or Renegades.
I say it's boring because there's nothing really interesting happening. The AI you're looking for has been working with the Renegades in order to fight off the Pfhor and has taken the name of Karma, but later on abducts you and starts ordering you around while double-crossing the Renegades. He comes over as perpetually annoyed over everything, but doesn't really have anything of interest to say. Neither does anyone in the scenario, really. Most of the terminal text comes down to explaining the current situation and how you're going to deal with it, but with no character at all, unlike the original trilogy. In this case the levels and gameplay more than make up for the lackluster story, but a good story never hurts.
Marathon Phoenix is definitely my all-time favourite scenario, and one of my favourite first-person shooters in general. Gameplay-wise it differs from others shooters, even the original trilogy, by going for a full blown first-person bullet-hell direction in terms of enemy encounters. You'll even find yourself misdirecting enemy projectiles or tap-dodging in the opposite direction of a bullet stream to avoid getting hit by it for as long as possible, while making dangerous crosses over those bullet streams reminiscent of stage 5 in DoDonPachi. But it'd be boring if it was just flat surfaces with enemies periodically spawning around you because Marathon is obviously not built around that, and Phoenix does more than necessary to spice things up. Seriously, after building up some skills in the OT, get Phoenix and play it on Total Carnage. This shit is good.
There's also plenty of other fanscenarios I haven't played. One of them would be Marathon Eternal, a huge 52-level monstrosity of a scenario featuring a new story with branching paths and all that stuff. I never completed it, because while the story did show some promise, many of the maps are amateur stuff. They're architecturally rather simple, some even simpler than M2, and a lot of the maps feel rather bland. From what I other understand Eternal was a massive collaboration project with many aspiring mappers wanting to be part of a mega-scenario, resulting in a jumble of level design direction and quality (whereas one guy did all the thirty-ought levels in Phoenix). Eternal also features weapon scavenging, so you can pick up ALL the alien weapons from the Pfhor, resulting in fuckloads of ammo considering each soft-killed Pfhor now drops something. It was more appropriate in Phoenix where you needed more ammo for more enemies, but in Eternal it feels like overkill.
The story involves some time-travel stuff where you and an AI get sent back to the Marathon 1 ship to do things to make the future more bearable. The writing did show some promise, but from what I've experienced, the terminal texts themselves are (like this post)
way too fucking long. The OT had the terminal text lengths just right in order to avoid interfering with the pacing of the game, whereas Eternal starts with a multi-page plot dump and many terminals have way more text than they really should. It's especially annoying if you want to read what the level objective was again only to have to sift through pages of irrelevant shit again. It's not always an issue, but it could have been toned down. At least it handles story branching more naturally than Rubicon by simply choosing which terminal to exit on, as the base gameplay would suggest.
It's rather odd how the Pfhor you encounter have a mix of Marathon 1 and 2 sprites (because the author liked the M1 sprites for some enemies better apparently), and I find many of the texture sets for the levels, especially the Pfhor levels, to be downright ugly. It does feature Craig Hardgrove's remixes of the Marathon 1 OST, which you should definitely
check out.
But yeah, I never finished Marathon Eternal because many of the maps seem rather mediocre with no noticeable increase in quality, even if the plot does have an interesting premise. And it's pretty fucking long too, so there's that.
Other scenarios I've played includes Kill them All!, a fun little map pack where each map is built around being an action-packed challenge utilizing no more than 100 polygons, all of which are quite nice and challenging. Another scenario which is often called the scariest scenario out there is Marathon Evil, which sets its tone immediately by having you blast dark enemies with glowing eyes in tight corridors with your shotguns. I don't remember why I dropped it, I only remember a terminal of some Pfhor general talking to me in the most saturday morning cartoon-villain way possible (Fool! Meet your destiny! etc.) and walking over some canyon where if you fell you had to walk all the way up again. It didn't really interest me too much.
Another was Marathon RED, which just confused me at every step of the way. Where the fuck am I? What's up with the new BoB sprites? I can talk DIRECTLY to people now? What the fuck is up with the weapons I'm carrying? Why am I carrying a microwave which can launch a fucking mini-nuke? Who are any of these people? What the fuck am I fighting? What is this shit on the walls? I can talk too now? What's up with these weapon designs? How do the Pfhor factor into this shit anymore? Seriously,
what am I shooting at? Before I could ask any more questions, I found myself crushed to death by what appeared to be a giant door, and I quit the game there. I did read a brief plot synopsis of RED, which only seemed like an escalating sequence of more insane and ludicrous events. Some shit involving two omnipotent entities transforming you into one of them and having you kill people.
And that about wraps it up. There's many more scenarios I should check out (there's a surprising amount of Japanese fancontent made for Marathon, unfortunately none of it ever got properly translated), but I want to play some other games. In short, Marathon is definitely worth a try. You might find it to be slow and clunky at first, and maybe you'll grow to like it (or not). It's not the best first-person shooter out there, it's not nowhere as good as Doom or most Build engine games, but manages to stand out on its own.
nailed it
Play it nao, if you haven't
While amazing Fallout Resurrection v1.5 is waiting unfinished and a lot of purchases are just hanging there, bitten, but entirely not yet eaten yet.... . . . . . . . ..
.
