Marathon, Hexen

I liked Marathon's level design and gameplay. Didn't really get much into the story though.

Lawstiker said:

The name for the Marathon Source Port would be "Aleph One", not "AlphaOne", and it works on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Still sucks though! Seriously though, I have tried playing Marathon on the Mac (I had the shareware version on my SE40), I have used Aleph One and I even bought the XBLA port but I just can't stand the controls and there's just too much reading which spoils the flow of the game. God knows, I've really tried to like this game as the universe and story intrigue me but the game just lets itself down with shoddy (and never updated!) controls and verbose text. The floating 'jump/fall' thing is particularly jarring... Lawstiker was right in that Bungie went the story way rather than gameplay. To me that's not so much a philosophical choice but a design mistake. A game should always have good gameplay - the other fluff (ie/ story) is just a bonus...

A slight aside but this thread has me thinking: It bothers me that people (read: developers) constantly equate games to films or books. They are not the same. Stop trying to make them the same! Films and books are media to be enjoyed in a passive way the other is an interactive experience. When developers get over themselves and stop taking on Hollywood et al then there may be a cohesive fusion of narrative and gameplay. Until then I feel that there will just be a clumsy juxtaposition between the two. Of course, there are exceptions (for me I love the logs in Doom 3 and Metroid Prime they are succinct but still give enough exposition to breath life into their worlds) but too often there's just too much sententious crud or, even worse, force-fed, boring and overbearing cut scenes - Final Fantasy anyone! :P

Sorry for the verbose opining - too much coffee! ;)

Marathon's just one of those games that most Doomers will not like. As I said before, the story aspect is both its weakness and strength. It play's upon the story far to heavily, and it loses quite a few fans for that.

If you take the time to look at the Marathon community (of the past at least), you can tell it was popular at one time, and it did sell well enough...but more people buy a game to play it, not read it.

I don't think that it was so much a mistake, but an attempt at something new (for that time at least). Look at other fps games of the time, they truly were doom clones, following the run around, kill things, and solve puzzles. Marathon did the same thing, but added an interesting story into it, something Doom did not.

But I do agree with Per-scan on this, if your game has quite a bit of narration and story element, don't force the player to watch/read it. Make it optional. Compare Marathon and Doom for an example. You can clearly tell Doom had more fans, more modders, larger community, and is far more iconic. That right there show's the gamers in general prefer a game focused on gameplay. If you have a game with a large story and details, make it an option for the player to find (as Per-Scan said "Doom 3 and Metroid Prime"), that way you don't force the people that are playing just for gameplay to go through that trouble, and the people that play for the story can have the fun of hunting down those facts and details.

Per-Scan said:

Sorry for the verbose opining - too much coffee! ;)

No problem at all, quite enjoy reading peoples valid point as to why they dislike games.

I love Marathon, but I do admit it's for the story more than anything else. :P

Infinity gets bonus points for being totally surreal, though. Plus there's some really mega-cool TCs for it.

Xaser said:

Infinity gets bonus points for being totally surreal, though. Plus there's some really mega-cool TCs for it.

I agree with that 100%, though I will admit it took a few play-throughs to get it completely. And some of the TC's I had more fun with than the main games.

Lawstiker said:

Marathon's just one of those games that most Doomers will not like. As I said before, the story aspect is both its weakness and strength. It play's upon the story far to heavily, and it loses quite a few fans for that.

If you take the time to look at the Marathon community (of the past at least), you can tell it was popular at one time, and it did sell well enough...but more people buy a game to play it, not read it.

I don't think that it was so much a mistake, but an attempt at something new (for that time at least). Look at other fps games of the time, they truly were doom clones, following the run around, kill things, and solve puzzles. Marathon did the same thing, but added an interesting story into it, something Doom did not.

But I do agree with Per-scan on this, if your game has quite a bit of narration and story element, don't force the player to watch/read it. Make it optional. Compare Marathon and Doom for an example. You can clearly tell Doom had more fans, more modders, larger community, and is far more iconic. That right there show's the gamers in general prefer a game focused on gameplay. If you have a game with a large story and details, make it an option for the player to find (as Per-Scan said "Doom 3 and Metroid Prime"), that way you don't force the people that are playing just for gameplay to go through that trouble, and the people that play for the story can have the fun of hunting down those facts and details.

You can just not read the text and spam the spacebar you know =p

But I admit, when I tried playing it as a little kid I couldn't get into it too far because it was hard and confusing. My cousin and I liked imitating the aliens' grunts though. It wasn't until about 10 years later when the source port came out that I truly began to appreciate it. That's when I was mature enough to understand the college-level reading and be thrilled by the active story involved.

edit: Hey I'm no longer warming up! (as if anybody gives a flying carp)

edit2: I also really appreciate Bunjie's bizzarre, lovecraftian creatures much more than doom's cybernetic demons. It's like they concentrated as much as possible to come up with the weirdest, most imaginative looking aliens you've ever seen. Like those big white 'hulks' with the wierd looking faces and those floating walruses in pathways into darkness.

Of course back in the day ID made some way cooler aliens in commander keen, until Carmack went on a rampage and ruined the whole team.

Partition36 said:

Marathon and ROTT both invented the vertical rocket jump. They were released on the same day.

[/rott-fan-boy]

You could do that in Heretic too. It was literally released two days after the ROTT shareware version.

PaganRaven said:

You can just not read the text and spam the spacebar you know =p

That is a possible solution for the original trilogy, if you wish to miss out on a few mission objectives, but doing that with Marathon Eternal's going to wear out your spacebar ;)

Lawstiker said:

The name for the Marathon Source Port would be "Aleph One", not "AlphaOne", and it works on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Whoops! Dammit, I was close. >.>

Per-Scan said:

A slight aside but this thread has me thinking: It bothers me that people (read: developers) constantly equate games to films or books. They are not the same. Stop trying to make them the same! Films and books are media to be enjoyed in a passive way the other is an interactive experience. When developers get over themselves and stop taking on Hollywood et al then there may be a cohesive fusion of narrative and gameplay.

See also: The Getaway. How long did we excitedly wait for that pile of shit?

I am and hardcore DooM fan, but I played and enjoyed Marathon a lot.
the only problem is that I used the alephone source port which have a bug.

In a level (i don't remember which one) you have to visit all the level. In the original game it was enough to "see" all the level's sectors, but with the source port you have to "enter" in each sector composing the map. Very boring, and I stopped.

Lorenzo

Lorenzo said:

I am and hardcore DooM fan, I played Marathon.
Very boring, I stopped.

Lorenzo

Fixed. :P

Lorenzo said:

I am and hardcore DooM fan, but I played and enjoyed Marathon a lot.
the only problem is that I used the alephone source port which have a bug.

In a level (i don't remember which one) you have to visit all the level. In the original game it was enough to "see" all the level's sectors, but with the source port you have to "enter" in each sector composing the map. Very boring, and I stopped.

Lorenzo

From what you said its likely the level Pfhor Your Eye's Only, where you needed to explore every polygon before you could leave.

Its not really a bug, its just thats how Aleph One does it. Aleph One is based on the Marathon Durandal Source Code, not the original Marathon so there are differences. When you play Marathon with Aleph One, your really playing a port of Marathon to Aleph One, designed to mimic the first one as best as they could.

If you have the ability to do so, just play the original Marathon over the M1A1 port, as you can avoid issues like, plus M1A1 doesn't completely feel like the original. Its not bad, but its a port.

Yeah, but then you'd have to play the original version of Colony Ship for Sale... :(

Every time I have attempted to play Marathon or any of the related games it has made me want to vomit. This includes the Halo games.

Shaikoten said:

Every time I have attempted to play Marathon or any of the related games it has made me want to vomit. This includes the Halo games.

Funny considering Marathon is Bungie's first made FPS. Even the story in Marathon is the same exact concept of Halo. Although Halo isn't a bad game, it's the people who play it.

Leave it to Shaikoten to ruin a perfectly Halo-free Marathon discussion.