Jul 26th '18, 00:54
Of the scenarios listed above, I went with Rubicon because of the atmosphere and especially the writing. Infinity is a very close second, and actually, as a game, M2 or Infinity might be the strongest. But there are numerous passages in Rubicon that I wish I’d written myself.
My own thoughts (not bothering with ratings because I don’t like assigning an objective score to an inherently subjective value):
M1:
Obviously dated by today’s standards; still a fresh and inventive game by 1994’s. Shout-out for having a story as deep as most books’ in a time when it was uncommon for any video game to have a story that deep, much less a FPS. Easily the trilogy entry I’ve played the least though.
M2:
Of the trilogy, I think this is the game I enjoy playing the most. It’s fun to just wander around and immerse yourself in the atmosphere, and it definitely deepens the intriguing story of the original game. It also probably contains my favourite single level of any game ever in “Kill Your Television”. M∞ manages to one-up it for story, architecture, and overall atmosphere, though.
M∞:
I still don’t fully understand the whole story, and kind of doubt anyone but Greg K. does, but what I do understand is amazing. From an architectural standpoint, this, as far as I’m concerned, set the benchmark for what a 2.5D game can look like. Other scenarios – Phoenix, Tempus, Rubicon – have since bettered it overall, but there are a couple of levels that I’m not sure will ever be topped. “Aye Mak Sicur” is probably the strongest level in the trilogy (as compared to “KYT” being my favourite). It’s a small marvel that Randy managed to create a level that massive where you can still get from any one point to any other within a minute or two at most, and it would be #2 on my all-time examples of flow in video game level design (#1 is, of course, Super Metroid, which has the same level of quality but on a game-wide scale).
Evil:
Phenomenal atmosphere and often impressive map design (though it varies widely by level); where it suffers is the writing, which is pretty pedestrian, and the lack of consistency between levels. To be fair, this is a problem for any scenario where a lot of people worked on maps. It still set the standard for what a TC could accomplish; some later works may have bettered on it, but it’s worth playing just for the historical importance. The best parts of this scenario are about as good as Marathon can get. Cool new weapons as well; I pilfered the Pfhor staff for my own scenario because it’s just so much fun.
Eternal:
Phenomenal story, amazing atmosphere, great gameplay premise, occasionally flawed execution (although I like to think we’re fixing a lot of those flaws with 1.2). Some of the terminals could stand to be trimmed in length by about 25% or more, too. I may see if I can make them more concise over the next few weeks before school starts up again.
Apart from that, the final chapter is massively flawed. The map designs are gorgeous, but the swarms of enemies, man. As I said in the Eternal thread, you could cut them by half and there would still be too many.
Rubicon:
Although there are a few absolutely terrible levels, this is still probably my favourite Marathon game ever released. My biggest complaints: a few of the enemies are just way overpowered (Enforcers, Juggernauts, and MaserBobs, I’m looking at you) and a couple of the levels just aren’t fun to play (“There’s No Place Like Up” is a fantastic idea for a puzzle level, but the execution is awful; if you cut the enemies by 75%, there would still probably be too many, and there should probably just be pattern buffers before every major jump so you can easily kill yourself and start again if you mess up). However, these complaints are more than made up for by… basically everything else. I noticed a few typos in the terminals, but overall, the writing is better than most professional film/TV/game scripts these days, addressing universal human themes in an intelligent, perceptive way. I’m particularly in awe of how they managed to continue Infinity’s dream story seamlessly and somehow improve upon it in the process, but overall, the whole thing is fantastic. And, as I said, the atmosphere is superb. It might not be the best scenario if you evaluate each individual aspect of it, but it is definitely the strongest total package for me.
Phoenix:
A fantastic scenario overall that suffers mildly from being too difficult in a way I simply don’t find fun. I played this roughly at the same time I went through all of M2 on Major Damage. The only level I remember having much difficulty with on M2 was “Begging for Mercy”. I couldn’t even hack this on Normal at the time. I probably could do it now if I kept at it, but there was too much trial-and-error gameplay for me: enter a room, die, die again, die some more, memorise the monster patterns, die, figure out a combat strategy that works, go back, save, and proceed again, hoping I have enough shields left over to make it through the rest of the level. (Mapmakers should be very cautious with levels that only provide finite shields: it’s easy for players to screw themselves over into unwinnable save files.) This got old quickly enough that I eventually just cut the knot and moved it down to Easy. I think I’ve only ever done that before with Red (I might’ve even turned Red down to Kindergarten; I really sucked at Marathon when I played Red). I don’t mind difficult gameplay, but what I disliked was the insanely fast firing speed of monsters. On Normal and above, they’ll strip your shields before you even have time to notice they’re there. (Alien projectiles deal the same amount of damage on all difficulty settings from Normal to Total Carnage; there are differences in how fast they travel, how fast monsters will fire them, and various other values, however.) Hence, cutting the difficult to Easy made it mostly manageable.
Overall, my biggest gripes with the combat were the infuriatingly small amount of ammo for the crossbow on any setting below TC (the only real sniper weapon provided to the player), the ridiculous firing speed of the monsters, and the fact that the Defenders fire from the left, meaning that if you’re trying to circle-strafe a room with Troopers and Defenders, you will take fire from one of them. I realise the latter was a consequence of how Bungie designed the Defenders, but you could easily flip them horizontally and say it was a quirk of the A’Khr. Or just use M1 Troopers, which fire from the left. Or still use M2 sprites but flip the A’Khr Troopers. Whatever. There’s probably some advanced combat technique for coping with this problem, but I never figured it out.
Apart that, no major flaws, and I gave it a 5-star review on S7 despite my complaints about the difficulty. The storyline is… fine. It’s not remarkable like Rubicon’s, Eternal’s, or the original trilogy’s, but it’s better than Evil’s (and Red’s and Tempus’), and it does a good job connecting the original trilogy to Rubicon. I wish there were HD artwork, but the scenario makes up for it by having the most consistently gorgeous map design of any major Marathon TC. It’s worth it to play it just to gawk at the scenery (and actually, I think the difficulty irked me more than it otherwise would’ve for precisely that reason – I frequently ran into trouble because I got distracted looking at the pretty map design and wound up getting caught off-guard by a sudden enemy attack. If you’re going to make a scenario that pretty, it would be polite not to have so many stealth enemy attacks that can kill an unsuspecting player in less than a second).
I’ll probably give Normal another try in the next few months, given that I can now beat a rather large portion of M2 on TC. Phoenix is still way harder than M2 or M∞, and I kind of suspect that an awful lot of it can’t vidded, which will probably always irk me (it figures, since I run a YouTube channel for vid films), but the difficulty might not bother me quite as much this time.
Tempus Irae:
The best scenario not listed above. I’m not sure where I’d put it in my third-party scenario ranking – definitely below Rubicon, but not that far; I go back and forth on what order I’d put Tempus, Eternal, and Phoenix in. This scenario definitely suffers from the problem mentioned above where some mapmakers are just much better than others, but the high points are so high that they make even the most infuriating aspects of the scenario bearable. “Downward Spiral” in particular was probably the most gorgeous level anyone had ever made for Marathon at the time and still remains a high point. Great atmosphere throughout. The story is kind of silly, but it’s not offensively bad. The sequel, The Lost Levels, has a few great levels as well, with “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” being the highlight for me. No comprehensible story whatsoever there, though.
Others:
I liked what I played of Spatial Outpouring but haven’t really played enough of it to give a proper review yet.
Same with Kindred Spirits, though I expect my review will be basically what I said about Phoenix with the few bits that don’t apply changed as needed. At least this game (thus far, at least) doesn’t have the ridiculously fast monster fire speeds that some of the Phoenix levels did. The secret on “Rozinante Zero” was cool.
I played Red awhile back and remember thinking it looked cool, but I didn’t find it all that fun to play. I think I might’ve had similar complaints to my complaints about Phoenix, but I don’t remember much about it.
Pfh’Joueur and Gemini Station are my two dark horse scenarios that no one else seems to remember well. Pfh’Joueur just has incredible atmosphere throughout. The mapmaking is excellent, though not Phoenix or Rubicon-level excellent; the levels are all fun to play, and the artwork is gorgeous (it suffers a bit in comparison to modern TCs with HD textures, but for its day it was some of the most beautiful artwork that had ever been seen in a Marathon scenario). The sounds are also some of the best I’ve heard in Marathon, which I think is part of why it has such a great atmosphere.
Gemini Station just has some of the cleverest map design in any Marathon scenario. I still don’t understand how Mike figured out how to pull off some of what he did, but the man has a PhD, so he probably has a lot of specialised knowledge that I don’t. Pretty impressive story too.
I would’ve listed Megiddo Game as another dark horse, but it won the Bungie mapmaking contest, so it really shouldn’t qualify as one. I still don’t hear people discuss it much these days, though. Great, if too short. The writing is the weakest part. The map design and artwork are flawless.
Missed Island - no enemies but some ingenious map design. I should probably play it again.
I’m getting bored trying to think of more scenarios now. I might resume this later and/or add more to some of my reviews if I think of more things. I definitely wrote a lot more for some scenarios than others, but that’s often just a fact that I’ve spent more time thinking about some of these scenarios recently. I don’t know why I don’t have more to say about M2 and M∞ given how much time I’ve spent playing them lately; I guess I just figure everyone has already played them enough that they already know what they think.
Last edited by
The Man on Jul 26th '18, 22:16, edited 2 times in total.
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“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
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