VoodooLabs

I’ve known about the Marathon games for quite a while, but I never got around to playing them. A few weeks ago a friend reminded me and I started reading the terminal transcripts. But before I get into that I should describe what Marathon is.

Marathon isn’t just a hexalogy (6) of games (soon to be heptalogy (7)), it’s a universe that has spawned novels, fan-fiction and soon to be a movie. Technically I shouldn’t be calling them the ‘Marathon Games’ but I have a certain softness for the older games that went under the name Marathon.

What am I talking about? You may know the latest 2 (soon to be 3) games; they are Halo, Halo 2 and Halo 3. The Halo series doesn’t share the same timeline, but I would say they are definitely in the same universe.

The series started out with Pathways into Darkness. I haven’t played it, but apparently it’s quite good.

Then came Marathon, a different style of game but the ‘official’ sequel. Marathon 2: Durandal came next followed by Marathon Infinity followed by Halo etc.

The Marathon games use a slightly better doom style engine, they aren’t awesome to look at, but they aren’t bad. What interests me the most about these games and bungie in general is the depth they put into them. The games pull quite a few great concepts from science fiction - cyborgs, space travel, artificial intelligence among others. They also have a large literary component (except Halo), a large background and bungie also include tie-ins and puzzles for fans to work out.

Anyway, Marathon starts out with you, a cyborg, in a ship just about to dock with ‘Marathon’ a very large ship in the Tau Ceti system. Earlier an alien ship had attacked Marathon and many aliens have come aboard.

In actual fact there is a bit of contention whether you are a cyborg, but I’ll just gloss over that.

The ship was run by 3 AI programs that may have been damaged by the attack.

Throughout the game there are plot twists, interesting details and information to discover through the use of computer terminals that can be read and used to interact with the AI’s. These have been converted and are available on the web to read and were my first introduction into the Marathon side (I knew about the Halo side for quite a while).

So I spent many hours reading the story. I then decided to play the game. Lucky for me all three games have recently been released for free with executables for all the major OS’s.

I’ve played through the first game and I’m getting through the second. What’s great about the 3rd game is it has multiple consequences and time gets a bit messed up, so I’m looking forward to it.

Marathon is a game that everyone can now play, so have a look at something that is on a different level to doom. Oh and the levels are actually quite hard and require thought. I haven’t gone to a walkthrough yet!

Get Marathon.