Anyone See This Review?

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Silent Wobby
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This sort of pissed me off. I'm not going to lie. There are somethings he points out that I can agree with. But I think he gave the game a very harsh and unfair review.

What are your thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qlAzb-PT5Y
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marcus* 8:18 wrote:having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?
http://pfhorums.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=39152

* /!\ "marcus" is not canon in the mararthon canon /!\
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There's not much to object to in the reviewer's observations, really. You can tell he did actually play the game in detail: long enough to speak with authority on Marathon's weapons, levels, story, community, place in FPS history, etc. The only thing he said which I consider flat out wrong was "the plot is fairly minimal."

It's more in his conclusions that I disagree with him. I.e. he's not wrong, but...
  • The assault rifle's spread is terrible.
    True. But without that, the weapon would be overpowered. Other shooters struggled with this problem that an assault rifle is just plain better than a pistol. In Halo, the pistol was surprisingly accurate to compensate. In Deus Ex, assault rifle bullets did surprisingly little damage to compensate. So I always accepted Marathon's assault rifle being surprisingly inaccurate.
  • The main path shouldn't require finding a secret door.
    I wondered what he was talking about until he showed the example, because to my mind the main path can't be secret by defintion. But semantics aside, I considered the example he's talking about to be a puzzle - one that got my heart pounding the first time I encountered it more than a room full of enemies could. If one can accept the story - that the artificial intelligence that operates doors and platforms has gone crazy and reckless - how else would one expect that to be demonstrated in gameplay, than by encountering some dangerous doors and platforms?
  • The level design is labyrinthine, with spots where you get lost in the dark or have to backtrack because you missed a switch.
    Yes, he's right about that... the only response I can muster to that criticism is it's hard to accurately compare a game which you're playing now with one you played decades ago. I mean, I played System Shock 2 for the first time not long ago, and I could level the same complaints about getting lost in the dark, backtracking, etc.
  • The physics don't 'feel right'. Movement is floaty and imprecise.
    On the one hand, air control in Marathon is pretty weird, and 512 frogblasts in a circle has always felt imprecise. On the other hand, Doom didn't have mouselook, and the low gravity that makes it feel floaty is appropriate to the story, doesn't impede movement, and makes the lack of fall damage less noticeable.
  • The sound design is skewed, with weapons that don't sound as beefy as the ricochets of the bullets they fire.
    As with some of his other criticisms, this apparently carries more weight in his verdict of the game than it does for me. And that's ultimately why I can't find fault with the review. Maybe if he gave it an actual grade, like a 3/10, I would call foul. But in the end he doesn't go that far. He says he doesn't recommend playing it, beyond playing it to appreciate the technological and historical firsts.

I also think of Marathon more as part of a series than an individual game (I actually played 1 and 2's campaigns concurrently, finishing 2 first). So I wouldn't talk about Marathon without including Forge and Anvil in the discussion, which this reviewer ignores.
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Marathon 1 actually does have very bad level design and pretty much everything else he says in the review is very fair, not only when considered as a product of the times, but also retroactively. Marathon is really not a very good game, and now, in a post-internet world, you can download every early FPS game remotely worth playing within two hours on to one computer, and play them back to back. Aside from a lot of dark moodiness and a plot that... exists, there isn't much to suggest over Doom, Duke, Quake, Dark Forces, and so forth.

I don't really like this reviewer because he kind of resorts to "dumb and so goddamn crazy." There's a point in the M2 review where he puts on a dur-hur-hur voice and makes fun of people that think the plot is good, and then owns his strawman idiot that he made up. He's not a very good reviewer, but he's definitely not at all wrong.
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I completely agree with Ryoko--Marathon, particularly the first one, is fucking stupid. The level design is god-awful. The animations and artwork is pretty bad. The story, while getting props for actually *existing*, its pretentious and self-important. It wasn't until M2 that a lot of these issues were resolved, so in a lot of ways I think M1 is almost like a prototype to a decent game. But it still suffers from a lot of the issues with the original.

That being said, Marathon has two things working in its favor: the nostalgia factor, and the gateway-drug factor. Actually, these are sort of the same thing, but whatever. For a lot of us Mac users, Marathon was our only option to FPS prior to the Doom port, and it was probably the only 'quality' game available at all. Therefore, it was our introduction to gaming in a lot of ways. And while I mock the story for being self-aggrandizing, it was still at least thoughtful, and made my 10 year old self feel like I was not only smart, but part of an interesting world. Of course in retrospect I would realize how stupid this was, but hey whatever, these games entertained me for years!

And I guess I'm just very much in a retrospective nostalgia the last few years, but they continue to entertain me now--perhaps cause I can now afford cool toys and structured time off, my favorite childhood games like Marathon and Super Metroid still do it for me (except Super Metroid stands the test of time and is still fucking awesome, Marathon is not)
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RyokoTK wrote:Marathon 1 actually does have very bad level design... Marathon is really not a very good game
Okay, then, why did you ever come here? Why did you even spend years making a Marathon mod?
doctorbenjiphd wrote:I completely agree with Ryoko--Marathon, particularly the first one, is fucking stupid. The level design is god-awful. The animations and artwork is pretty bad. The story, while getting props for actually *existing*, its pretentious and self-important.
Same question. Why are you even here? It can't be just nostalgia because there's probably dozens of other nostalgic games you've played that aren't "fucking stupid" and "god-awful".

I'm not being antagonistic here. It's just that it doesn't make sense for someone to have such strong, negative feelings about a game while at the same time participating in a nearly dead community devoted to that very game.
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city of godddddd wrote:LORD, make me 4get, but not yet.
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patrick wrote:
city of godddddd wrote:LORD, make me 4get, but not yet.
dude, seriously
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philtron wrote:
RyokoTK wrote:Marathon 1 actually does have very bad level design... Marathon is really not a very good game
Okay, then, why did you ever come here? Why did you even spend years making a Marathon mod?
It's entirely possible to like a thing and know it's not very good. I grew up playing Marathon because I had a Mac as a kid, so I enjoyed it then, and I enjoy it now too but that's already because I'm very well acclimated to it and used to its oddities.
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RyokoTK wrote:exists, there isn't much to suggest over Doom, Duke, Quake, Dark Forces, and so forth.
I thought Duke 3D was a 'piece of crap'
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Duke's definitely not great, I probably got a bit carried away. On the other hand, it's Duke. Hail to the king, baby.
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kralex wrote:
RyokoTK wrote:exists, there isn't much to suggest over Doom, Duke, Quake, Dark Forces, and so forth.
I thought Duke 3D was a 'piece of crap'
They pretty much all were. Although that didn't stop them from being fun.

I really think everyone is exaggerating the disparity in quality between Marathon and other comparable games of the time. Games were still going through a lot of growing pains back then and it showed in all of them.

If you took all the levels in the Doom series and compared them to all the levels in the Marathon series then I think the gap in general quality wouldn't be that great. At least Marathon's levels got better over time, while Doom's seemed to devolve. I'm specifically thinking of E4M1: The Hell Beneath and the map in Doom 2 called "The Suburbs". Man, those were really terrible levels from pretty much any angle you consider. "The Suburbs" was so terrible that it's the only map in Doom 2 that I actually remember.

And maybe this is blasphemy, but I'd say that Marathon's weapon design is much better than Doom's.

Duke Nukem 3D, also had some really bad level design. Like, here's a rectangular room with bad guys in it. Here's a couple more. Done. I think what really drew people into Duke were the things like security cameras, shrink rays, freeze rays, jetpacks, and scripted "destructible" environments, all those little side mechanics that gave the game character.

And the first Quake was just all over the place because nobody at id could agree on what game they were making. There's some really terrible, not fun levels in Quake.

Conclusion: I don't think Marathon is that much worse than the rest of the bunch.
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philtron wrote:Same question. Why are you even here? It can't be just nostalgia because there's probably dozens of other nostalgic games you've played that aren't "fucking stupid" and "god-awful".

I'm not being antagonistic here. It's just that it doesn't make sense for someone to have such strong, negative feelings about a game while at the same time participating in a nearly dead community devoted to that very game.
Well, you may not have read the rest of my message, but to sum it up, two things: 1) the nostalgia factor. It's only in retrospect that I really see how terribad the level design, music, and animation is in M1. I'm not saying Doom had significantly better level design than M1, but at least Doom didn't constantly resort to those horrible narrow maze vent things. 2) I'm really only talking about M1. M2 was soooo much better in every imaginable way. M2 was a great game. M1, as I said, is "fucking stupid."

If this forum was devoted entirely to M1, I wouldn't be here.
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kralex wrote:I really think everyone is exaggerating the disparity in quality between Marathon and other comparable games of the time. Games were still going through a lot of growing pains back then and it showed in all of them.

If you took all the levels in the Doom series and compared them to all the levels in the Marathon series then I think the gap in general quality wouldn't be that great. At least Marathon's levels got better over time, while Doom's seemed to devolve. I'm specifically thinking of E4M1: The Hell Beneath and the map in Doom 2 called "The Suburbs". Man, those were really terrible levels from pretty much any angle you consider. "The Suburbs" was so terrible that it's the only map in Doom 2 that I actually remember.
Uh, E4M1 is great. It's compact, it's tough as nails, and it flows smoothly enough. It's a great way to kick off a very hard Doom episode. The Suburbs is an abysmal map, sure, but I can just as easily cherry-pick lousy maps from Infinity (or Duke, or Quake, or whatever) and say whatever I like. Doom 2's levels are overall good, as is Thy Flesh Consumed, and although Durandal's levels are also good overall, Marathon's levels are more labyrinthine and unclear in their flow and pacing. Also, a lot of the time, it doesn't feel like the combat or gameplay mechanics were seriously considered while the maps were being made -- they just made the levels, and then populated them however they wanted to. Again, Durandal is the stronger game and less guilty of this, but even Infinity has shit like enemy Vacbobs shooting at you from corridors too narrow to dodge in, any kind of combat in liquids, or generally poor enemy placement that doesn't accentuate their strengths or characteristics well. That could be in part due to Doom (or more Doom 2, really) having a more diverse and challenging bestiary, though.

One might think that M1 and Infinity are designed to be less focused on combat than its contemporaries, and more on exploration, and that being lost and wandering in the dark is sort of the intent. Dark Souls does this too. The difference is that Dark Souls level design still has a good way of leading you where you need to go, and having an overall understandable way of how one area connects to another, and how individual rooms might have some kind of landmark that makes them stand out. I don't want to compare Marathon to a game that came out 20 years later really, but when that sort of aimless design is done poorly, it really stands out.

And, in fairness, Durandal is definitely more tightly designed. It still has some problems with lack of clarity, but on average it's fine.
And maybe this is blasphemy, but I'd say that Marathon's weapon design is much better than Doom's.
Marathon's weapon design consists of using the Assault Rifle all the time, or maybe the Fusion Pistol. The weapon balance is abysmal. The strong weapons (flamethrower, rockets, shotguns) are heavily backloaded and you get very little ammo for them, whereas you get the AR right at the start of all three games and it's strong, versatile, and can stun-lock every single enemy in the trilogy except the Juggernaut. When Doom 2 came along, it added the Super Shotgun and added a lot of strong mid-tier enemies and a lot of situations that call for different weapon choices. Sure, the SSG is strong and versatile like the assault rifle, but there are different situations where the chaingun, plasma rifle, or rockets would be more appropriate, and you get plenty of ammo and opportunities to use all of them (you get the rockets in MAP01, SSG in MAP02, chaingun in MAP03, and plasma in MAP05).
Duke Nukem 3D, also had some really bad level design. Like, here's a rectangular room with bad guys in it. Here's a couple more. Done. I think what really drew people into Duke were the things like security cameras, shrink rays, freeze rays, jetpacks, and scripted "destructible" environments, all those little side mechanics that gave the game character.
You can't brush off all the cool shit that made Duke neat and unique in an endless sea of bland Doom clones like that, dude, c'mon. Duke's level design was poor and unimaginative mostly, but it supported the mechanics really well, and that's what made Duke work. It was a spectacle, much like Duke himself.
And the first Quake was just all over the place because nobody at id could agree on what game they were making. There's some really terrible, not fun levels in Quake.
Quake's strength is 100% in the mechanics, which were far and away superior to pretty much all of the shooters that preceded it. The level design is kind of twisty, but not overly large at least, and it just has an amazingly smooth rhythm to the gameplay that no game before it really had. And it also had amazing sound design. Much like Duke, most of the level design is definitely bland and unremarkable, which is a strike against it, but when it comes to level design I'd rather have bland than bad. Bland level design still lets good mechanics shine through (Bioshock 2 is a great modern example of this), but bad level design is usually actively detrimental.
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RyokoTK wrote:you get the AR right at the start of all three games and it's strong, versatile, and can stun-lock every single enemy in the trilogy except the Juggernaut.
And except the Hulk.

I wonder how many people confuse M1A1 for Marathon in their memories. M1A1 was awful, but working on Marathon compatibility and playing through the real thing brought back the fun I remember from playing the demo all that time ago. I'm sure some of it is nostalgia, but while it was all we had, M1A1 did a true disservice to anyone trying to get into the trilogy.
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RyokoTK wrote:You can't brush off all the cool shit that made Duke neat and unique in an endless sea of bland Doom clones like that, dude, c'mon.
Oh, I'm not brushing it off at all. Perhaps my use of the term "little" made it seem that I was disparaging the mechanics, but by no means. All those things add up to give the game great character and breathe life into the play. With all the extras and easter eggs like strippers, functional pool tables, and references to other games, you can tell that the developers were just having a blast while making it.
RyokoTK wrote:Marathon's weapon design...
I completely agree with you about the assault rifle in Marathon. It usually negates any tension in combat because of all the reasons you mention.

As for the other Marathon weapons, I think they're better at occupying unique combat niches than Doom's weapons. You have long range, hitscan, precision damage with dual pistols (almost like a sniping weapon), you can spam an area with projectile spread and have extra damage against electrical units with the fusion pistol (at least in M2, while in M1 it really just functions to fill a space with lots of projectiles and even then is pretty useless), you have high damage at close range with the flamethrower although electrical units like hunters and spht are immune (in M2 at least, M1 hunters might be vulnerable to flamethrower), no comment about the rocket launcher, and I can't stress enough the greatness of the mechanic of Enforcers dropping their guns to be picked up (for a variety of reasons) and they're overpowered in M1 but balanced by the fact that they disappear when they run out of ammo so you can't actually rely on them as a primary strat.

Doom weapons always struck me as having the same utility no matter what situation you're in (and I'd never consider the SSG as "versatile"). Their utility is pretty much only determined by their DPS and not their behavior or attributes (I guess the chaingun is more of a sniping weapon than the plasma, so there's that). It usually doesn't matter what enemies you're fighting, or whether you're close range or long range, really it just comes down to DPS. I can think of a few situations where this isn't the case, like if you're in a small area with pinky demons then a plasma or chaingun is way more useful than a shotgun, but for the most part I never felt like it mattered what weapons you used in Doom; I only ever used the shotgun/SSG when I needed to conserve ammo.
RyokoTK wrote:Uh, E4M1 is great. It's compact, it's tough as nails, and it flows smoothly enough. It's a great way to kick off a very hard Doom episode.
Oh ho ho, I beg to differ.

I think in large part this is because we (me vs. Ryoko, not some general "we") seem to play games for different reason and we expect different experiences from play.

E4M1 exemplifies what I consider to be artificial difficulty. The difficulty isn't from a situation that's natural to the game, but which is artificially constructed by withholding things from the player. It's like if you disabled the player's ability to move forward for one level; only being able to turn and strafe would make it more difficult, but not through legitimate means.

E4M1 is just tiny. There's almost no room for maneuverability which is a core element of Doom gameplay. And moving around quickly can be punished by falling into poison pits. The level also throws lots enemies and high level enemies at you, but gives you very little ammo and guns to work with. And there's very little health and armor. The level isn't really designed to be played like a typical Doom level which normally encourage quick run and gun strategies. I think that's just an obnoxious way to design a level to create a fake a sense of challenge. And to cap it all off, I don't think it fits being the first level of the episode at all. The levels immediately after E4M1 are a lot easier so the difficulty curve takes a nose dive, which to me makes it feel out of place as first. But of course E4M1 has to be the first level because that's the only way to have complete control over how much ammo and weapons the player has, which in turn is necessary to artificially ratchet up the difficulty.
RyokoTK wrote:Infinity has shit like enemy Vacbobs shooting at you from corridors too narrow to dodge in, any kind of combat in liquids, or generally poor enemy placement that doesn't accentuate their strengths or characteristics well.
Yeah, BoBs were never meant to be enemies and fighting them is always more frustrating than challenging. If we're talking about "Naw Man He's Close" (which I'll admit isn't a very good level) I will say that the Vacbobs in narrow hallways is probably meant to encourage you to use your minimap to predict where they'll be and then pop around a corner and get the drop on them before they activate. Which is an interesting way of creating a new use for the minimap, I suppose.

However, the enemy placement sometimes is strange, perhaps especially in Infinity. I'm still not sure why Aye Mak Sicur only has Hunters in it.
RyokoTK wrote:One might think that M1 and Infinity are designed to be less focused on combat than its contemporaries, and more on exploration... Dark Souls...
I haven't played Dark Souls, although I've heard nothing but ravenous ecstasy over it, so I don't know exactly how it does it's architecture and level design, but I guess the minimap is supposed to be the '90s substitute for landmarks and well communicative level design.

You mention aimless level design that has you wandering around lost and labyrinthine levels that are unclear in their flow and pacing. Again, I'm reminded of how I felt this was a feature of all those games back then. I had that same exact experience with Doom, Quake, Unreal, so I never payed much mind to it in Marathon, I just processed it as a trend of the times. For example, switch hunting in Marathon is almost exactly the same as keycard hunting in Doom.

But, I've been thinking about why some people feel Marathon's level design was more confusing and aimless than it's contemporaries, and I have a rough theory. It revolves around most other games having a dedicated save feature while Marathon has save terminals.

I don't know why Bungie thought it was better to have save terminals than a save function, but it's kind of stupid. And it also forces the player to constantly backtrack to save their progress. Same with rechargers. Meanwhile, because Doom can be saved whenever, the player doesn't have to backtrack as much or at all. Health is placed progressively, with the assumption that the player is almost always moving forward and encouraging the player to move forward to get more health. However, Marathon's gameplay inherently because regressive(?) because the longer you play the further and more often you have to backtrack through the maze; you're repeatedly winding through the same hallways, elevators, and doors which I think draws the player's attention more and more to their design, and makes the level feel more frustrating than it is.

So, the Doom player gets more of a sense of flow and progress, while the Marathon player gets more of a sense of stagnation and obfuscating level design. And I think a lot of that comes from the health and save systems of each game, as opposed to the actual level design.
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I don't really under stand what this guy's complaining about in level design. First, all the game of the 90s had complex level designs. It's not so bad so long as you have spacial reasoning. Second, I prefer that level design over the modern ones. That's why I still play these older games.
Long story short, I played this game from Bethesda called Dishonored and in my opinion it had poor level design. The levels were bland, cliché, and just plain point A to point B. The story was also terrible but I'm focusing on the levels at the moment. Though the levels had "secretes" they didn't take much to find. There wasn't really much to explore. It felt like a cheap rip-off of BioShock and Assassins Creed (though ironically BioShock and Assassins Creed did actually have interesting levels). To make things worse they're making a sequel to their terrible game. If you're out there and have Aleph One development tools do us a favor; DON'T do what Dishonored did in level design and ignore annoying youtubers. Gaming's better this way!
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So no one responded to my long post. That means I'm the King of Game Design, right?
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philtron wrote:So no one responded to my long post. That means I'm the King of Game Design, right?
Well, probably not but I can't argue the point.

I would like to comment on the use of terminals.

Lack of a convenient save terminal increases the tension. How confident am I that I'll make it through the next room?
When there isn't one at the beginning and you don't know when you'll be able to save, the phrase discretion is the better part of valor takes on real meaning. Once you've found it and established a beachhead, as it were, you can play with a different style, perhaps even recklessly. Though the farther you get from that save terminal, the less reckless you're likely to be.

The same with health terminals.
Entering into combat is an entirely different situation when you can't regenerate your health merely by cowering behind a rock.

Having the terminals requires the player to use a lot more tactical sense. Maybe even think about what you are going to do and how you are going to do
I just play 'em; I don't know how they work.
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HelviusRufus wrote: Lack of a convenient save terminals increases the tension. How confident am I that I'll make it through the next room?.......The same with health terminals.
And that's why I always argue that Pfhoraphobia is the most difficult level in the entire Marathon series.
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True, the lack of quicksave creates more tension, but I wonder what effect the save terminals also have on the flow and the perception of the level design.
HelviusRufus wrote:When there isn't one at the beginning and you don't know when you'll be able to save, the phrase discretion is the better part of valor takes on real meaning... Though the farther you get from that save terminal, the less reckless you're likely to be.
Right, so the less reckless you become the slower you play. You might run back to a save terminal after each battle instead of just going forward. Both of those things might break the sense of flow and might make you feel less free to explore. And, backtracking to try and find some save terminal might draw attention to the maze like nature of the level design; going forward you just go to wherever looks new, but going backwards you have to go through all these similar corridors and try and remember which one leads to where you want to go. Compare this to Doom, et. al., which feels more free (you're not tethered to terminals) which might give more of a sense of flow, and since you're hunting for things like terminals or switches less often your attention isn't drawn to the maze-like level design as much. So, I'm wondering if that's the real reason some people feel that Marathon's level design is worse than Doom's.
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lol.

I can understand complaints about the first Marathon but there's absolutely nothing wrong with the level design in M2 and Infinity. I can think of a couple levels that are really frustrating but every old FPS has those. Other than that, everything else seems whiny to me.
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philtron wrote:so the less reckless you become the slower you play
Sure. The game isn't time constrained, I'm not doing a speed run, I don't have a flight to catch, and in like manner I don't chug my drinks or bolt my dinner.

If I can save anytime or anyplace, when I come to a room I'll save and then just charge in like a bull in a china shop. Why not? If I'm killed, one key stroke and I'm back in business right there to charge in again. Essentially there is no penalty for dying.
philtron wrote:You might run back to a save terminal after each battle instead of just going forward.
Yes I might. It would depend upon my assessment of the situation and my own confidence level. I'm having to constantly make decisions and pay attention to the environment. I see a high ledge thru the doorway, sniper alert. How much fun was the previous battle? If fun, I may go on since I wouldn’t mind fighting it again. There are a lot of considerations.
philtron wrote:backtracking to try and find some save terminal might draw attention to the maze like nature of the level design; going forward you just go to wherever looks new, but going backwards you have to go through all these similar corridors and try and remember which one leads to where you want to go.
Occasionally going back you notice things you didn't see before. Hmmm… I don’t remember that door; wonder what's in there...?
Maze like structure? Walking around in a city is a maze, usually a very regular one but, because of the buildings, visibility is limited. And not all streets are thru streets. Same with government buildings: they are all mazes. It's why the Marathon is credible: they probably started remodeling it less than a week out of port. When we get to roam it, it's been undergoing remods for 300 years. That's why it looks the way it does.

Also, the level design has a lot to do with it; and the scenery.
For example, in Shotgun Sonata, often I have a couple of ways to go. I always (try to) run full speed. There's one place where I run up a slope and go airborne, curve around, land, turn, then tab the door at just the right moment so it will open in time for me to go thru without slowing down. Getting a door to open so you can run through without slowing is challenging.

Can I get around the corners without spinning out of control? Can I make it around the ledge without falling off? Subtract 2 points for bouncing off a wall. On rare occasion I've come around a corner and there was a trooper standing there. Hey bud, gotta light? Always looking for the perfect runback.

It's not a grind. Though if you want to make it one, you can.
I just play 'em; I don't know how they work.
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