/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8576280]

Honest thoughts on Marathon, Mac's answer to Doom?

[Anonymous No.8576291]

We only like id and build engine games here, fag.

[Anonymous No.8576296]

I've always wanted to play it. The Pfhor make really funny sounds.

[Anonymous No.8576302]

I played the first game and Infinity for 15 minutes and I couldn't understand what makes them special. They seemed like average FPS. Maybe I should give them another go?

[Anonymous No.8576337]

>>8576280
My first "real" vidya and still holds up today thanks to its proper aiming system, its physics, and its lore/aesthetic. Despite all three sharing extremely similar gameplay, how they each carve their respective niches from dark desolate maze shooter to open planet-coasting exploration to surreal psychological mindfuck makes replaying each successively rewarding. I'll grant that Doom 2 has the superior bestiary but on the whole I still prefer the Marathon trilogy.

[Anonymous No.8576341]

>>8576337
How do Marathon bros feel about Halo?

[Anonymous No.8576346]

>>8576280
Feels better to play than Doom.

[Anonymous No.8576349]

>>8576280
It sucked. People only liked it because it was on Mac. Same as Halo, shitty game, only liked because it was on XBox.

Pic related is a much cooler doom clone

[Anonymous No.8576350]

>>8576291
Go be your wife's dildo bitch somewhere else john.

[Anonymous No.8576352]

>>8576341
I hate it on both a personal level due to childhood-me despising Bungie for selling out to Micro$oft, and a practical level due to the constant copy-paste garbage level design. I can admit today that it was still a very innovative game with strong setting/lore typical of Bungie, but holy fuck I cannot enjoy it, Silent Cartographer and maybe a couple parts of a couple other levels aside.
>Alien dropship incoming!
>Chief, another dropship!
>Watch out, we got another dropship!

[Anonymous No.8576359]

>>8576280
Loved Doom. Loved Marathon. Loved all its fan scenarios ... except Eternal, that was a oversold chore. Though I kind of wonder what my response would've been if I had discovered Marathon today. I can't be bothered to read all the dialogue in games today (or maybe it's the line of dialogue, click, line, click, line, click, ...) and part of its greatness is the storytelling. Not that the gameplay is lacking.

>>8576302
Infinity is a bit of a slow, underwhelming start. Even after playing the first two, it took a while for me to get into Infinity. Drab grey everywhere, cramped corridors.
A little superficial, but I'd recommend Durandal as a good intro. Bright colors, open spaces, and some light jumping and water to get a taste.

[Anonymous No.8576382]

>>8576341
Weirdly I've never played it despite being a Marathon fan. I was a bit butthurt when MS bought Bungie and made Halo an xbox exclusive. But eventually it was ported to the Mac. I did pick up a copy. But was never really compelled to sit down and play. I also feel a little bit of hipster don't want to play because its so popular. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Anonymous No.8576509]

>>8576296
That does look like a funny sound, but I wouldn't put that in my urethra if I were you.

[Anonymous No.8577359]

>>8576350
It's true we hate it, Half Life, CS, Quake 2, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark.
Cope.

[Anonymous No.8577616]

>>8576280
2 is the best one and Bungie forgot how to design FPS games after that.

[Anonymous No.8577620]

>>8577616
Oh, and 2/Infinity are probably some of the most atmospheric, best looking sector-based FPS games.

[Anonymous No.8577843]

>>8576280
wasn't that great when i played it.
got tired of it be the second game,and i love old shooters like DOOM and duke.

[Anonymous No.8578394]

It has one of the worst assault rifles in gaming.

It kind-of works better as an Aliens-themed quasi-horror about slogging through gloomy spaceship corridors counting out how many pistol rounds you can afford than a run'n'gun game.

That being said, its shotgun is probably the most fun in any FPS, even better than Doom 2's super shotgun.

Controversial take: Marathon 1 has aged better graphically than the others. 2 and Infinity had too many attempts at making organic-looking stuff with not enough polygons that don't work as well.

[Anonymous No.8578402]

>>8576280
Can I play this on Windows now?

[Anonymous No.8578445]

>>8578394
>It has one of the worst assault rifles in gaming.
It's great because unlike Doom, stun has a 100% chance on applicable enemies, so you can stun a field of Pfhor as long as you're up close. Add the grenade for long distance attacks and corralling, and you've got a wonderful gun.
>It kind-of works better as an Aliens-themed quasi-horror about slogging through gloomy spaceship corridors counting out how many pistol rounds you can afford than a run'n'gun game.
Agreed
>That being said, its shotgun is probably the most fun in any FPS, even better than Doom 2's super shotgun.
Sort-of agreed but I can see both perspectives, especially since a single blast of the shotgun isn't enough to take out Major Troopers. Marathon is pretty stingy with the shotgun ammo, but when ammo isn't an issue, yeah it's top-tier.
>Controversial take: Marathon 1 has aged better graphically than the others. 2 and Infinity had too many attempts at making organic-looking stuff with not enough polygons that don't work as well.
I can agree with this to an extent as well. Definitely 2 had the most garish texture choices and the relative simplicity of the original gives a very cohesive vibe, though I think Infinity has some of the most aesthetic moments in all of FPS gaming. The first level alone is a masterpiece of atmosphere and sector shading.

[Anonymous No.8578682]

>>8578445

Maybe I just don't like accidentally killing BOBs because the AR has more spray than the sawn-off shotgun.

Agree on Infinity's first level. It's really good.

[Anonymous No.8578812]

>>8578402
Yes. Aleph One
You’re welcome

[Anonymous No.8578856]

>>8576352
DUN DUN DUN DUMB
DUN DUN DUN DUUUMB
DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUMB

[Anonymous No.8579334]

>get to last level
>you have the wipe out the last of the pfhor
>this plays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32RFsqgYvpo
such a bad level but worth it

[Anonymous No.8579359]

Hot take: Pathways Into Darkness is a Marathon Prequel.

Marathon 2 has the best story and writing, Marathon 1 has the best levels and design, Marathon Infinity is for completists.

Multiplayer is essential to get the full experience. It's where the real fun was.

[Anonymous No.8579458]

>>8576337
>My first "real" vidya and still holds up today thanks to its proper aiming system

One of the benefits of making Macintosh games is how many features the Mac has 'built in' that DOS doesn't have by default. Like every Macintosh came with a mouse, so the game could have mouse support. Not everyone had a mouse for their DOS PC, so most DOS era games didn't support mice by default, but they were still optional in many cases. Mac has networking features, voice chat, etc that Bungie could take advantage of. Most of those features really became common on the IBM-PC side when Microsoft released Windows 95 to the public, and Windows became the default. But even then, there were still DOS games being released in the early 2000's.

[Anonymous No.8579465]

>>8576280
>not as cerebral and forward thinking in design as System Shock
>shooting and movement not as good as Doom's
>the above games are also on Mac
Meh.

[Anonymous No.8579470]

>>8579465
I REALLY prefer the movement mechanics in Marathon. Hell, Doom barely had any.

[Anonymous No.8579478]

>>8578394
>no full-screen and you have to contend with that turbo-AIDS HUD at all times in the OG version
Yeah, better than Doom, guys. Absolutely.

[Anonymous No.8579723]

>>8577359
Based

[Anonymous No.8579727]

>>8579465
>>not as cerebral and forward thinking in design as System Shock
System Shock still had arcade-style free-crosshair aiming and maps that were basically 80s dungeon crawler levels with slopes. And don't get me wrong, System Shock had some novel innovations like leaning and being able to slide down slopes with acceleration, but it's basically part of an evolutionary branch that yielded no progeny, whereas Marathon plays closer to later games like Unreal than it does its contemporaries.
>>8579470
Agreed, picrel

[Anonymous No.8579830]

Couldn't get into the first one, but 2 is really great. I enjoyed the level design and the clever secrets.

>>8579465
>not as cerebral and forward thinking in design as System Shock
>cerebral
>System Shock
Loving every laugh.

[Anonymous No.8579936]

>>8579478

OG Doom ran at 320x200. The playable screen area of OG Marathon is something like 350x265. You're not getting more pixels in Doom, they're just bigger.

[Anonymous No.8580754]

>>8579478
I had to run Doom like this back in the day, or it would stutter too much.

[Anonymous No.8580859]

>>8576280
>Mac's answer to Doom?
Mac's had Doom already by that time, anon.
It's a FPS game, don't be the retard who saw Doom in 1994 and though "Oh, never seen a game like this before (even though plenty FPS-es existed), everything else that comes out now and is an FPS is a Doom clone!".

[Anonymous No.8580861]

>>8579458
You're came out December 1994. Mice were pretty standard by then on PCs.

[Anonymous No.8580867]

>>8576341
I like both and you can feel the influence of both in either.

>>8578394
>>8579478
Marathon had fullscreen, even in the original, of course.

[Anonymous No.8581157]

>>8580859
Thing was, Wolfenstein and Doom were optimized and easy to pick up and play, without much learning required.

[Anonymous No.8581171]

It’s good. Very atmospheric and spooky even if a lot of the levels look similar at times. There’s a lot of annoying bullshit they’ll pull, like you get dropped into a pit and have zero way to escape without resetting the level. There were also times were triggers hust failed to activate and I’d be deadlocked until I reset. Pretty annoying shit but the game itself isn’t half bad. I’d still rank it below Doom, and maybe even Wolf

[Anonymous No.8581646]

>>8576280
Good story for video games and really nice atmosphere. Gameplay was good too if very unforgiving at times. Multiplayer was where it really shone though, and the level editor was great.

[Anonymous No.8583714]

>>8581171
>There’s a lot of annoying bullshit they’ll pull, like you get dropped into a pit and have zero way to escape without resetting the level.
This happens in Doom also

[Anonymous No.8583727]

>"You're about to see what no human has ever seen"
>Get warped to the alien ship with trippy textures
>Music suddenly becomes subdued and ambient

kino

[Anonymous No.8583839]

>>8580861
>You're came out December 1994. Mice were pretty standard by then on PCs.

Yeah, a lot of people had them. But they were not really the standard, unless you used Windows 1-3, or something. A lot of DOS developers would make the keyboard the only standard, with mouse as an optional thing. It really wasn't until Windows 95 when the mouse became standard on the PC.

[Anonymous No.8583905]

>>8581157
Most FPS games at the time were, they weren't that complex, outside of RPG FPSes.
Point and shoot, yellow key open yellow door, box with big red cross restore health, etc.

[Anonymous No.8583932]

>>8583839
Mice were supported in a lot of DOS programs way before Windows was even popular or Win 3.X came out and were often sold with computers, even cheaper ones. MS-DOS came with mouse.sys standard for mouse support and mice you bought also came with a floppy with drivers for DOS.

By the time Doom came out, mice were de-facto on PC, Doom and Wolf3D even have mouse support.
Even laptops of the time already had integrated mice, that's how expected it was.

Sure Macintosh and Amiga, Atari, etc had a much better adoption, but that was in the 80's, not the 90's.

[Anonymous No.8584206]

>>8579334
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ-xLd8mVIE

[Anonymous No.8584260]

>>8583727
that's the best part of that game. shame 2 had no music.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Uq805jeaU
fuck these levels on total carnage though

[Anonymous No.8584497]

Played the open source port
It's bad
Slow, maze-like, uninteresting visuals.
Plays like those old dungeon crawlers but with none of the depth

[Anonymous No.8584542]

>>8584497
The first game really suffers from being set on spaceships and nothing else. The sequels have much more variation in maps.

[Anonymous No.8584561]

>>8584497
its predecessor was an actual dungeon crawler

2 is the peak

[Anonymous No.8586329]

>>8576280
Series was a staple of my teenage years, but I never quite got around to finishing Infinity. Tried again last year, and kept dying trying to minimize Bob deaths on Confound Delivery. It's bad enough to have to work for Tycho; I don't want to be a murderer on top of it.

Wish I'd had the chance to play the series "unspoiled", but I was a teenager with poor impulse control, so I'd read most of the Story page before even getting the full games.

[Anonymous No.8586348]

>>8576302
You "should" spend your time how you like. Curious what you found lacking compared to other games of the time, though; especially the original in 1994.

[Anonymous No.8586381]

>>8576337
>proper aiming system
You shoot in roughly the direction you're looking. What would be an example of an improper one?

>its physics
Always thought that was kind of a weakness. Why do you seem to fall so slow, and bounce when you land? Why can't you land on a moving elevator? Why does turning while falling change the direction of your momentum? Why does climbing a step give you upward momentum you can use to get higher than otherwise? It's fun to launch enemies in the air with explosions, but overall the physics aren't great for immersion.

>its lore
Too bad so much of it is vague, contradictory and/or absurd.

[Anonymous No.8586429]

>>8576341
I don't know whether I'm a bro, but I always loved it. Actually learned about it and Marathon at the same time, back when people thought it was in the same universe. Was mad when Bungie "sold out", back before I understood the concept of bankruptcy, but enjoyed the game too much to stay mad. Loved all the simple gameplay/interface innovations compared to other shooters I'd played. It's kind of sad how angry it still makes people, but people here don't tend to be the best adjusted.

[Anonymous No.8586439]

>>8576349
Contrarianism is a hell of a drug.

[Anonymous No.8586442]

>>8576352
You're mad about enemies attacking in an action game? That the game warned you about them so you could look for the dropship and move toward it? What?

[Anonymous No.8586456]

>>8576359
Is "oversold" another way of saying "overhyped", or something else? And have you really played every scenario? I feel like there must have been some pretty bad ones, especially in the early days.

[Anonymous No.8586460]

>>8576509

[Anonymous No.8586469]

>>8578394
That *is* a pretty controversial take. Can't imagine you'll find many people to back you up on it.

>counting out how many pistol rounds you can afford
I feel like this only really works in games where you can avoid combat. In Marathon scarce ammo just means you need to use your fists and/or provoke infighting more.

[Anonymous No.8586497]

>>8586381
>You shoot in roughly the direction you're looking.
No, it's precise (with the pistol/fusion pistol/rocket launcher) and based on aim. You look up 10 degrees, your bullet hits upwards accordingly. Two enemies close together from a horizontal perspective but one is 200 feet behind the other, you can hit the further one behind as long as your aiming is accurate. There's no autoaim bullshit like in Doom where you want to shoot a rocket at a caco but a pinky in front causes it to be redirected.
>Always thought that was kind of a weakness. Why do you seem to fall so slow, and bounce when you land? Why can't you land on a moving elevator? Why does turning while falling change the direction of your momentum? Why does climbing a step give you upward momentum you can use to get higher than otherwise? It's fun to launch enemies in the air with explosions, but overall the physics aren't great for immersion.
>t. was traumatized in a bouncy house as a child
The floatiness is fun and extremely maneuverable if you learn how to use it. Launching off of stairs is basically the logical next step from strafe running.
>Too bad so much of it is vague, contradictory and/or absurd.
Other than some of the Thoth terminals (which are clearly intended to be poetic anyways) it's not really that vague. Which contradictions are you referring to? Multiple timelines in Infinity obviously does not count as a contradiction. The humor in the story (e.g. anything pertaining to Durandal swinging his ego around) is the good kind of absurd, but in general I'd say the motives are clearer and the morals less forced than, say, the System Shock games.
>>8586442
I'm mad about levels where I have to drive to a checkpoint, wait for multiple scripted waves of enemies to spawn in, drive to another checkpoint, wait for more waves, repeat etc.

[Anonymous No.8586506]

>>8578402
Pretty sure Basilisk II could run it 20 years ago. The inaccurate "M1A1" port was made around the same time; and Aleph One added (imperfect) support for the original game's files 8 years ago.

[Anonymous No.8586515]

>>8578445
>a single blast of the shotgun isn't enough to take out Major Troopers
Two are, though, and two shotguns gives you a pretty fast firing rate.

[Anonymous No.8586537]

>>8576280
If you compare Marathon to Doom - just DOS Doom, not even any ports or patches - theyre not even close to comparable. The level design, art style, weapons, gameplay, everything in Doom is leagues ahead of Marathon's amateur hour shit.

[Anonymous No.8586541]

>>8586537
lmao, Doomguy can't even aim his gun vertically

[Anonymous No.8586562]

Did anyone point out yet that this game had mouselook, floors above floors, and rocket jumping before Quake did? It also had 22khz sound effects which was very uncommon at the time, and although the base graphics are 256 colors the game supports 24-bit shadows which look better than any non 3D-accelerated game of the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV1krmCzK6o&t=445s

[Anonymous No.8586574]

>>8576280
I tried playing it today for the first time and the audio ignores the Maca volume, you have to got command p to pause the game despite there being plenty of available keys, and you have to got command q to quit to the menu to change any settings (and lose progress because it has save points).
It's also fairly clunky movement wise.
That said I haven't played enough to say it's bad. But it's, so far, not nearly as polished.

[Anonymous No.8586613]

>>8579334
I think I used a save-anywhere "cheat" the first time I played it, so it wasn't as bad. But the lava walk after multiple rooms of combat with no save point was pretty frustrating more recently. And the long-distance switch shot was a pain, especially with imperfect weapon accuracy and no crosshair.

[Anonymous No.8586649]

>>8579359
>Hot take: Pathways Into Darkness is a Marathon Prequel.
Meaning Marathon existed first? That *is* a hot take.

>Multiplayer is essential to get the full experience. It's where the real fun was.
Have to rub it in?

[Anonymous No.8586662]

>>8579458
Wasn't voice chat broken in the original game? I doubt many people played online anyway; with their mostly dialup Internet access.

[Anonymous No.8586680]

>>8579458
>there were still DOS games being released in the early 2000's.
https://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/dos/offset,175/so,1d/list-games/
Not a lot of major releases. I sure don't remember any on store shelves, or talked about on gaming websites.

[Anonymous No.8586684]

>>8579727
>Marathon plays closer to later games like Unreal than it does its contemporaries
Because it has mouselook and grenade/rocket jumping, or are there more similarities?

[Anonymous No.8586686]

>>8580867
>Marathon had fullscreen, even in the original, of course.
With no HUD and restricted peripheral vision.

[Anonymous No.8586689]

>>8584497
>It's bad
oh okay, guess I was wrong when I thought I liked it

[Anonymous No.8586696]

>>8586684
>Because it has mouselook and grenade/rocket jumping
Pretty much that, although Marathon's enemy pathfinding was also superior which potentially makes encounters much more aggressive (anyone that has played Pfhoraphobia knows how endless the streams of enemies seem as they flood in across half the map)

[Anonymous No.8586703]

>>8586686
Full screen in the original game was basically an experimental feature, it was unstable and would make the game crash often
The hud is SOVL though idk why you would play without it.

[Anonymous No.8586759]

>>8586684
>>8586696
Did any other fps games at the time have levels included specifically designed for multiplayer? Also all the unique types of multiplayer, king of the hill, kill the man with the ball etc. made it feel more like a proto arena shooter.

[Anonymous No.8586776]

>>8586759
Rise of the Triad had similar and came out around the same time.

[Anonymous No.8587021]

>>8586776
They came out the exact same day.

[Anonymous No.8587071]

>>8587021
The stars were aligned.

[Anonymous No.8587084]

The story of Marathon 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward (the revelation that you are a Master Chief style cyborg isn't exactly subtle)
Marathon Infinity on the other hand is retardedly convoluted, this vid does a decent job of explaining it but it's impossible to understand what's going on during an initial playthrough https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB1Y-CKKxfI

[Anonymous No.8587108]

It's overlooked, but Marathon was the first shooter to have multiplayer modes other than Deathmatch and Cooperative, having modes such as Capture the Flag and Kill the Man With the Ball

[Anonymous No.8587330]

>>8578445
tempus irae is the only scenario that uses the shotgun well unfortunately

[Anonymous No.8588019]

>it's a have Sheepshaver but barely remember how to use it episode
Jesus fuck sideloading data into a computer emulator blows.

[Anonymous No.8588047]

>>8576337
>My first "real" vidya
poor anon

[Anonymous No.8588072]

>>8586776
>Rise of the Triad had similar and came out around the same time.

Rise of the Triad started out as a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, but when Tom Hall jumped on the project, it became Rise of the Triad. But, Rise of the Triad was built using a modified Wolf 3D engine, and has so many limitations in comparison to games like Doom and Marathon. Most notable, 90 degree walls, no variation in floor height, the game used sprites to create platforms. I think even Tom Hall said that he somewhat regretted using the Wolf 3D engine, and should have went with something newer.

[Anonymous No.8588078]

>>8576341
>How do Marathon bros feel about Halo?
It's crazy to think that Steve Jobs was the first to announce halo publicly. The game was slated to be released in 2000 for the Mac, and it was meant to be a showcase of OpenGL for the Mac.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxdgo1rFcxU

[Anonymous No.8588094]

>get Marathon to work in Sheepshaver
>Mac emulators currently lack a way to play back redbook audio tracks from images, and mouse control is fucked
Hardware chads... I

[Anonymous No.8588158]

>>8583932
>By the time Doom came out, mice were de-facto on PC, Doom and Wolf3D even have mouse support.

They had mouse support, sure. But it wasn't a default control option for either game as mouse support wasn't enabled by default for either of those games. It was a secondary option. Yeah, a lot of people had mice for their MS-DOS PC's, but it wasn't a guaranteed think. Quake came out in 1996, ran on DOS and even that didn't have mouse support by default. Sure there were point and click MS-DOS games that did require a mouse. But most DOS era games were primarily designed around the keyboard with the mouse being a secondary option. Mouse support didn't truly become a defacto feature on IBM-compatible PC's until Windows 95 made it mandatory. Even that collection of advertisements shows Windows 2.0 in some screen shots, or some descriptions say "support OS2 and Windows) or show some sort of point and click interface on the screen. Then, there are some that show that they do not come with a mouse, and it was an optional thing that you would buy separately. the thing about Apple computers is that they all came with a mouse by default, so every mac game developer could support mouse as a default option. games like Sim City started on the Mac, because of the point and click interface.

[Anonymous No.8588209]

>Basilisk fucks up mouselook too
jfc does anyone fucking care? What shitty priorities after a decade+ of development
>hey nbd just shits the bed on Mac's ultimate wonder child cope game
Pathetic.

[Anonymous No.8588282]

>>8588158
>mouse support wasn't enabled by default for either of those games
Wasn't that the case for the Marathon games too though? Though of course they had better mouse control, since you could look up and down. I remember turning it on after being recommended to play with it by a friend. Or maybe I remember wrong and I'd just turned it off myself when I got the game since I wasn't used to it.

Up until then I'd been playing with secondary trigger remapped to ctrl so I could keep middle and ring fingers on the z/x sidestep keys at the same time as I had the index and pinkie on space and ctrl for the trigger buttons, like a retard. I'd gotten really good at it though and could sidestep and turn at the same time with just a keyboard, which gave me an edge in enclosed arenas like the Thunderdome level against my friends. Until they started using the mouse that is.

[Anonymous No.8588292]

>>8586689
Yes

[Anonymous No.8588318]

>>8576341

Halo was still ported to Mac OSX in 2003.

[Anonymous No.8588326]

>>8588318
I wonder if it's as bad as the PC port.

[Anonymous No.8588360]

>>8588326
>Gearbox
Probably worse as period Mac hardware was both weaker and more expensive, and it already ran like shit on decent PC hardware.

[Anonymous No.8588408]

>>8586497
>drive to a checkpoint, wait for multiple scripted waves of enemies to spawn in, drive to another checkpoint, wait for more waves, repeat etc.
Except Halo 1 has enemies already waiting for you, fucktard.

[Anonymous No.8588420]

>>8587084
>Examined Life of Gaming
Wish that fag made more videos, but I can't blame him getting out as it only gets more saturated and gay. The gun stuff seems to be working for him.

[Anonymous No.8589440]

>>8586497
>it's precise
Not sure about the rocket launcher, but you can see the pistols' spread just firing at a wall. Don't see what Doom could have done differently without vertical look.

>bouncy house
If you were traumatized in one, I guess the physics would seem to go well with "gloomy quasi-horror".

>Launching off of stairs
Weird how no other game took such a logical step.

>vague
Why are Durandal's imaginary smile, and boarding the Marathon, "familiar"? Are we the same guy as in Pathways? Who's Gheritt White? Who snuck ten cyborgs onto the Marathon, and why? Who are "rolandbeowulfachil!esgilgamesh" and "thedarkoLe"? How does Durandal escape Tycho's containment unit? Why do we teleport between timelines in Infinity? Why does the game expect us to just naturally start following orders from the bad guys and killing the good guys? What are the "dream" levels? What does it mean to "be destiny"? Even Greg can't remember what it was all about.

>contradictory
Durandal flies away and abandons you, and 17 years later sends S'pht down to a planet to search for weapons to fight the Pfhor. Nope, he actually took you with him, and he's sending *you* to search for planet-warping technology to escape the closure. The Jjaro disappeared millions of years ago, but visited Earth in 1997. Durandal kills Tycho and anticipates the trih xeem; the good guys escape and live happily ever after. Nope, he was blindsided by it, Tycho is alive and the original timeline is doomed.

(character limit)

[Anonymous No.8589443]

>>8586497 >>8589440
>absurd
Gritty hard sci-fi/cosmic horror thriller is in the same universe as a dungeon crawler with magic crystals, potions and a bag of holding. The PC lived seven years on Tau Ceti without finding out that he's a super-strong cyborg with alien machinery in (for?) his brain. Tau Ceti is 92 light-years from Earth. The universe is collapsing in just 15 billion years. An interstellar empire arms its front-line troops with blunt staves. Technology to store and retrieve beings' "complete biochemoelectrical patterns" is commonplace, yet never used. Durandal never considers building robots or ships. The PC is the only human can use weapons beyond the basic pistol. Blake's militia is flawlessly inflitrated by red-eyed creatures who only speak in nonsense phrases. No one in Infinity notices when their pet/slave is replaced by another timeline's version, with a different inventory. Then there are the fans who treat the Nar Chronicles and Pfhor Mating Ritual as canon "lore".

>checkpoints
Are you the same anon who hates Half-Life for having non-combat sequences?

[Anonymous No.8589462]

The view bob is too intense.

[Anonymous No.8589463]

>>8589462
You can turn it off. I can't play the games with the bobbing on.

[Anonymous No.8589507]

>>8586759
King of the Hill and KGB weren't added til Marathon 2, in 1995. Not sure whether that makes a difference.

[Anonymous No.8589523]

>>8587084
>this vid does a decent job of explaining
Explaining the story, or explaining someone's theory/headcanon about it?

[Anonymous No.8589526]

>>8588019
Normally I'd suggest QEMU, since people say it's more accurate; but they also say it's even more complicated to set up.

[Anonymous No.8589534]

>>8588047
What was yours?

[Anonymous No.8589549]

>>8586649
No, dipshit, it takes place before Marathon.

There's aliens in that pyramid.

[Anonymous No.8589584]

>>8576280
Literally only know about it because it was the only FPS on the Apple Pippin

[Anonymous No.8589606]

>>8588078
>The game was slated to be released in 2000 for the Mac
And PC. Was never meant to be exclusive; Bungie was a cross-platform studio from Myth onward.

[Anonymous No.8589615]

>>8588094
None of the Marathons played redbook audio in-game. Never knew mouse control was broken, though. I continue to regret giving away my iBook.

[Anonymous No.8589618]

>>8589549
Are the Jjaro the reason humanity learned space travel by the time Marathon takes place?

[Anonymous No.8589631]

>>8588360
How does period hardware performance and price affect the quality of software?

[Anonymous No.8589642]

>>8589549
Are there, or are there just the Earth-born spawn of an alien sleeping further down?

[Anonymous No.8589673]

>>8589618
Makes them kind of pathetic if it took alien influence just to reach the point of bolting a ramjet onto a moon 400 years later.

[Anonymous No.8589697]

Was Infinity meant to run concurrently to M2? Is it an Evangelion/EoE kind of thing?

>>8589673
iirc some of the tech built into the security officer isn't even fully understood. guess that explains his space-time warping abilities.

[Anonymous No.8589756]

>>8587084
That guy's analysis of Infinity is garbage and throws away a lot of the writing arbitrarily to fit an idea that makes no sense

[Anonymous No.8589757]

>>8589618
>>8589642

That's the thing. We don't REALLY know, but it would absolutely fit, and Marathon is always said to be a prequel to Halo by Halo chads.

[Anonymous No.8589760]

>>8588408
Imagine defending a game you've never played, and that game being Halo of all fucking games, lmao

[Anonymous No.8589762]

>>8589757
>>8589642
>>8589618
>>8589549
>>8586649

100% Pathways is in the Marathon Universe: https://marathongame.fandom.com/wiki/Jjaro

[Anonymous No.8589769]

>>8589697
>guess that explains his space-time warping abilities.
He doesn't have space-time warping abilities. Infinity is just multiple perspectives of various timelines.

[Anonymous No.8589816]

>>8589757
Except that they don't fit together at all.

[Anonymous No.8589824]

>>8589769
Some of which coincidentally feature cyborgs with identical amounts of ammo and health as previously shown ones?

[Anonymous No.8589828]

>>8589824
Are you suggesting that the player having a default pistol and ammo start means anything story-wise?

[Anonymous No.8589842]

>>8589828
I'm suggesting that weapons and ammo carrying over between levels suggests that those levels portray consecutive experiences of a single character.

[Anonymous No.8589845]

>>8576341
youll eventually learn that pcfags hate halo because it was meant to be on pc til microsoft got bungie to make it xbox only at the time.

if halo originally released on pc theyd all praise its glory. but no they were bitter children back then, and now theyre bitter 40 year olds with childish minds

[Anonymous No.8589884]

>>8589842
I was going to say that the player always resets their inventory after failed Aye Mak Sicur-derived levels, but apparently I'm wrong and the player carries the same items from Rise Robot Rise through Thing What Kicks. I'm not sure how much the presence of dream levels influences that though. Meaning, some levels like the Electric Sheeps, Where Are Monsters in Dreams, Eat the Path, etc seem to almost certainly be sequences that don't reflect a literal physical reality (though may be a kind of symbolic representation of reality), yet the player manages to carry their inventory through those as well. But overall I'm still more inclined to believe that carrying weapons over is more a matter of game design/balance, than it is unequivocal proof of space-time warping abilities which are never directly explained or referenced.

[Anonymous No.8589898]

>>8589631
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj0IJc_DyW8
You tell me, bro. This is your pic with the best GPU it supported. This is the best you can get on the PPC hardware the game was meant for without emulation/virtualization on later x86 Macs (and I can't vouch for how well that works, sure it's fantastic, though)

Does that look like optimal performance to you? Does that look like it's running an Xbox game particularly well considering the hardware?

[Anonymous No.8589916]

>>8579727
You're fucking delusional. Marathon was basically a slower Wolfenstein with hacky mouselook and text dump terminals. System Shock is so wildly advanced beyond it it's fucking silly. Pretentious Macintosh faggot.
>no progeny
What are the Thief series, Deus Ex series, System Shock 2, Prey, Dishonored series, VTMB, and several recent indie games dabbling in the imsim genre then?

I am so sick of Macfags churching up this game way beyond its credit. It was a sort of neat Mac game with a few, probably inevitable, innovations it scooted to the finish line with first.

[Anonymous No.8589925]

>>8589526
There's no autistic wall I won't climb regarding emulation, but is QEMU confirmed to be any good at running later 68k or PPC Mac games?

[Anonymous No.8590005]

>>8589916
>You're fucking delusional. Marathon was basically a slower Wolfenstein with hacky mouselook and text dump terminals. System Shock is so wildly advanced beyond it it's fucking silly. Pretentious Macintosh faggot.
You didn't refute any of the actual points I brought up. You've obviously never played Marathon if you think it plays like Wolfenstein.
>Thief series
Something pretty unrelated to System Shock 1
>Deus Ex series
First-person Crusaderlikes
>System Shock 2
Thief in space
>Prey
A cancelled 90s fps
>Dishonored series
A pastiche
>VTMB
Deus Ex with a central hub

[Anonymous No.8590025]

>>8576280
>Mac's answer to Doom?

That sure went well lol.

[Anonymous No.8590057]

The original Marathon resembles Quake more than it does Doom, though I consider it better than either (especially Quake with its spongey enemies, mostly terrible map design and lack of automap)
Pathways would be the Wolfenstein equivalent though it doesn’t play like a traditional fps either, it’s slow and survival horrory with emphasis on resource management

[Anonymous No.8590842]

>>8589845
Bungie spent a year remaking the game for Xbox. A PC-first version would have been a wildly different game.

[Anonymous No.8590849]

>>8589884
In contrast to character/perspective switches that are never directly explained or referenced?

[Anonymous No.8590873]

>>8589898
Damn. That's pretty bad. I notice it's running at 1600x1024, though, compared to 640x480 for the Xbox. Any chance it'd run decently at a lower resolution; maybe 684x512 for integer scaling and close to original aspect ratio?

Also, pretty sure you can't virtualize a different CPU architecture, so you'd need emulation; it'd be just as hard as emulating on PC.

[Anonymous No.8590876]

>>8589925
Never tried it myself, but last I heard it was the best for accuracy.

[Anonymous No.8590903]

>>8590873
I'm sure it would. Just as it ran better at lower res on PC. Still underperforming, though. Just saying it started bad on PC, then you have the assclowns at Gearbox taking that shitport designed for x86/D3D, porting it awesomely and efficiently to PPC/Mac/OGL no doubt, to hardware that generally couldn't roll with AMD/Intel pound for pound in most tasks.

and yeah it would be emulation. No direct experience but Apple had a track record of being good at translation/back compat between platforms. PPC ran 68k stuff well. Not sure how PPC-to-Intel went, or if they bothered.

[Anonymous No.8591216]

>>8589884
>finally get the cool oversized flechette gun
>they take it away next level
that pissed me off so much

[Anonymous No.8591219]

>>8576280
The first is Doom's idiot cousin, the second and third ones are better than Doom in every way except net code and modability. The few large mods (Devil in a blue dress, rubicon, excalibure, eternal, tempus irae) are all fucking amazing

[Anonymous No.8591230]

>>8576349
Grew up on dos and windows (my first computer was a Tandy 1000 E) and I only got into Marathon about 2011-12. Marathon holds up, you just hate fun.

[Anonymous No.8591273]

>>8576349
Blake Stone wasn't a Doom clone, it was already in development. I remember reading in PC Gamer one of the apogee guys saying he wanted to kill all the guys at ID because doom hit after they had finished Stone but before the disks were shipped or something. They knew they had been scooped.

[Anonymous No.8591370]

>>8587330
In what way? I feel like you can usually hoard ammo til the last level and then go crazy. It's too bad the higher difficulties have no ammo limit, though, so you're always incentivized to hoard.

[Anonymous No.8591378]

>>8591219
How do you feel about Trojan, Nor'Korh/Evil, Pfh'Joeuer and Red?

[Anonymous No.8591989]

>>8591370
you get it in the first level and you get a shitload of ammo for it through most of the scenario. you get huge waves of strong enemies to compensate.

[Anonymous No.8592001]

>>8589845
>youll eventually learn that pcfags hate halo because it started the whole slow movement, auto aim, regenerating health, 2 weapons limit casualization of the genre
fixed

[Anonymous No.8592019]

>>8592001
Yeah, if we're talking about multiplayer, it's pretty much worse than anything that came before it on PC. The only thing it has over Quake 3 and UT is vehicles.

[Anonymous No.8592319]

>>8591378
Red filtered me hard in in my old age, I've become spoiled by modern shooters and the ability to save scum. The absolute hardest fights in excalibur were only about as hard as the 1st level of Red. Haven't played the others but I've seen videos of Evil, looks intense.

[Anonymous No.8592423]

>>8590849
There is no reason for Durandal of one timeline to explain or reference events of other timelines, but there is every reason for Durandal to tell the player if they possess time-hopping powers. It's not like there is no evidence in favor of a failed timeline story, considering that there are multiple references to a galaxy-destroying alien power summoned by a Pfhor mega-weapon, and considering how that always converges on the player's presence on a Jjaro space station.

[Anonymous No.8592438]

>>8591378
Not him but what I've played of Trojan makes Colony Ship For Sale Cheap feel like an absolute joy. The most obtuse switch/door puzzles of basically any game I've ever played, and then to boot they're extra-stingy with shield stations and pattern buffers.

[Anonymous No.8592985]

>>8589760
Imagine complaining about a game you never played, and that game being halo of all fucking games, lmao

[Anonymous No.8593597]

>>8592985
You literally watch and wait for alien dropships which come down periodically at checkpoints in level 2