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Bungie's Marathon Officially Coming to iPad
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None of the above (whether one agrees or not) really refutes the initial point, which is more about the content. Doom's premise is, to be charitable, threadbare, the thinnest possible excuse for putting the player in an environment they say is a base on Mars and fighting against demons from hell. There really isn't any more to it than that, and the mixture of environment designs is schizophrenic to say the least, a trend that would continue in iD's next hit, Quake.
Marathon creates a detailed and believable world, with art direction working harmoniously with the text of the story told through the game's AI terminals. Effort was put into making the maps functional and believable in many cases, and Marathon's world is not, generally speaking, strewn with burning, explosive barrels for no reason other than that they blow up real good.
Level designs a convoluted jumble? One might well say that they took advantage of the pseudo 3D of the time to make legitimate labyrinths that required a deliberate effort to explore, something that rarely is the case in today's high definition shooters, and something I miss.
Murky textures? I don't think we're talking about the same game. Textures onboard the colony ship Marathon are shiny and high-tech; it's actually Doom that's muddy a lot of the time, with everything moving towards a muddy red-brown as the game progresses and the player ventures further and further into Hell. Often, Doom levels appeared to be entirely abstract, and the idea of being on an extraplanetary base or on the surface of another world was more a mild suggestion.
No disagreement that Marathon 2 is in many ways a superior game, but I felt at the time and feel now that in many ways that are important, Marathon was a competent and fully-realized story-based shooter in ways that Doom in all its incarnations, new and old, never really was. In many ways Marathon is better than its stepchild, Halo.
I ignored the "Marathon Demo" on my Iomega Zip disk for the longest time, thinking it was a sports game. When I finally fired it up, I got hooked pretty fast. At some point Marathon 2 was bundled with ∞, so I bought that and played the heck out of both. Anyone remember the Marathon Evil skin?
hmm...
*eyes the PM7500 that hasn't been fired up in months*
hmm...
*eyes the PM7500 that hasn't been fired up in months*
Gosh, comparing Marathon to Doom and finding it wanting? The only part I'd agree with in that is about the graphical textures - their sets were just a bit more confused, but still the quality of the graphics was better than in even Marathon 2 in many ways.
Movement in Marathon I still believe is the best and most realistic-feeling of any FPS ever. One really felt like the character was running with the incorporation of head-bob into the motion, and it was far less motion-sickness headache inducing than any other FPS's.
Level design was what it could be at the time. They made multiple levels in 2.5D space work remarkably well compared to the competition of the time. Sometimes mazelike design was a bit surprising for depicting the inside of a spaceship inside a moon, but they made for pretty awesome gameplay nonetheless. And the storytelling style that went with it all, I doubt will ever be surpassed.
News that they're still working on this for iPad is something to look forward to if I ever work out any other reason to get one.
Must admit I downloaded the marathon demo thinking it was a sports game. I was confused by a gun floating in the middle of the screen
Ah yes. Maybe they could finally hit version 1 of Bolo - it never went past 0.99.7 if I recall.... While we're at it, revive the project to do iOS Armor Alley!
I've actually been playing Marathon 2 on my Mac Pro recently. There's some way to run it on intel.. I don't remember how I set it up, but it works great, haha.
No, I don't learn television languages...there isn't any point. Anyhow, I doubt it would be terribly hard for anyone to figure out Nav'i. There were only 500 words or so coined for the language, to say nothing of the fact that artificial languages--produced by a PhD or not--are always infinitely simpler than the real deal.
Then they have no excuse to deal with the Bungie / Microsoft buyout IP issues. Oni on iOS would kick butt!
Excuse?
I'm not sure what you mean by excuse. Take Two owned 19.9% of Bungie, and when Microsoft purchased the company, Take Two received the rights to the Oni and Myth franchises in return for their shares.
Now that Bungie has been spun off, that doesn't change the fact that Bungie doesn't own Oni. Take Two does. If Bungie wants the Oni rights, they'll have to buy them back, and they're probably worth more to Bungie than to anyone else. So the question becomes, does Bungie want to spend on that, or do they just want to forge ahead and do new things? Given that they're about to leave Halo behind in the care of MS and 343 Industries, I think they're better off pursuing new projects unless Take Two is offering up Oni for a song, but I think that's unlikely, even if Oni hasn't done anything for them lately-- it's hard to justify letting go of even an unproductive property if it doesn't bring value.
I'm not sure what you mean by excuse. Take Two owned 19.9% of Bungie, and when Microsoft purchased the company, Take Two received the rights to the Oni and Myth franchises in return for their shares.
Now that Bungie has been spun off, that doesn't change the fact that Bungie doesn't own Oni. Take Two does. If Bungie wants the Oni rights, they'll have to buy them back, and they're probably worth more to Bungie than to anyone else. So the question becomes, does Bungie want to spend on that, or do they just want to forge ahead and do new things? Given that they're about to leave Halo behind in the care of MS and 343 Industries, I think they're better off pursuing new projects unless Take Two is offering up Oni for a song, but I think that's unlikely, even if Oni hasn't done anything for them lately-- it's hard to justify letting go of even an unproductive property if it doesn't bring value.
You know...I was just observing how many people preferred M2: Durandal over the original. Maybe it is just me, but I didn't really like M2's setting and lack of background music.
M2's UI was much better as it didn't leave over 1/2 of the screen to the HUD, but Marathon was also designed to run on equipment as old as a 68020.
The storyline is unforgettable, the music was amazing for the time, BoBs screaming and running around, Juggernauts (need I say more?), Durandal's demeanor, and the challenging puzzles to get in and out of areas are all what makes this game a classic.
Smells like napalm, tastes like chicken!
M2's UI was much better as it didn't leave over 1/2 of the screen to the HUD, but Marathon was also designed to run on equipment as old as a 68020.
The storyline is unforgettable, the music was amazing for the time, BoBs screaming and running around, Juggernauts (need I say more?), Durandal's demeanor, and the challenging puzzles to get in and out of areas are all what makes this game a classic.
Smells like napalm, tastes like chicken!
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