HICHEM Posted January 20, 2019 Posted January 20, 2019 It seems openly bizarre that a first-person shooter from Bungie, they of the Halo series, should be considered even vaguely obscure, but that’s where we are. The Marathon games were hugely influential, but never enjoyed anything like the zeitgeist moment that Doom, Quake or Duke Nukem 3D did. Part of that is for another absurd-in-hindsight reason – it was initially released for Apple Mac rather than PC, and ended up overshadowed by all the flashy fare on what was then an infinitely more po[CENSORED]r platform. But Marathon was groundbreaking, taking the Wolfenstein 3D and Doom formula and pinning a proper story to it for the first time, as well as giving us vertical axis aim, dual-wielded weapons and massive progress in multiplayer, physics and optional objectives. No, it doesn’t still sing in the way Doom does, but you can draw a direct line from almost everything it does to what Halo does, and various open source remakes keep it in good, satisfying shape to this day. Notes: You should probably steer clear of the original Marathon release in favour of open source, streamlined and prettified version Aleph One – with which you can use all three original Marathon games for free. Where can I buy it: Download for free from Bungie themselves. Though again, you probably want to stick the files into Aleph One (see above). What else should I be playing if I like this: Halo, if you want to experience a similar story and some of the mechanics in far flashier fashion. Or perhaps Blood if you want an evolved version of the Doom concept but without all that lore crap in there.
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