- A wave of nostalgia hits, triggered by the sound effects.
- There is also an atmospheric sound effect that makes me think I am constantly earning achievements, or friends are constantly logging in.
- There is no score. Not at this point in the game, anyways.
- I think water must have been a big selling point at the time, as there’s quite a bit of it around. It seems a touch arbitrary now, like watching an 80s film where every character has a yo-yo.
- Maze maze maze. You forget how mazey early FPSes were. A reminder of how innovative Halo was. It didn’t even have a map! You couldn’t play this game without a map. You’d have to be a professional cartographer.
- Nonetheless, the maziness makes the game much more about exploring space. I mean, almost every game is about exploring space, but the way Durandal does it, it’s much less linear than Halo. You often see somewhere you want to get, but you can’t get there from your position, so you have to poke around.
- I love love love the terminal paradigm. Like halo, you are working for an AI, but in the Marathon series you get all your orders from text on computer terminals. They’re not just for that though; you find other ones that give you back story, which also like Halo involves various warring races of aliens and a mysterious ancient race of beings.
- Back in the day I would play this on my Mac, and then Doom on Dave or Matt’s computers. The Marathon games are much more literate than the Doom games.
- The pacing is different from Doom, too. Many more changeups. Suddenly you are surrounded by aliens and humans (“bobs”) are warped in to help you, and there is mayhem. Then, just as suddenly, you are alone and must spend 10 minutes figuring out how to escape the maze.
- First twinge of motion sickness. Why? This happens sometimes when I’m playing first-person games, and I usually blame a bad frame rate. But this one, I have heard, is a smooth 60 fps.
- I cannot visually tell the difference between different frame rates.
- Other games that have given me motion sickness: Half Life 2, Call of Juarez, Chronicles of Riddick, Oblivion (sometimes). I did not get it from the 360 Arcade port of Doom. Or ever from Halo.
- I never got motion sickness from playing these games on Mac/PC and apparently the original ran at 30 fps and I’m sure my LC475 failed to achieve that. So perhaps my theory is wrong.
- love the grenade launcher on the bullet-hose assault rifle.
- The wikipedia pages on Marathon) and on Marathon Durandal have some interesting points.
- I don’t have specific memories of the first few levels, but once I drop down the long tunnel into lava world, they come rushing back. Like hot lava.
- Durandal has got to be one of the great AI characters.
- I love the phrase “orbital bombardment”.
- Can’t wait to play this again. And try survival mode. And maybe multiplayer. And oh shit it has co-op over Live.
- I wonder who will play this with me?
Great, isn’t it? 🙂
What’s your gamertag?
hey, sorry for missing the comment… Gamertag is “Rock Opera Jr”. What’s yours?