"See Ya Starside,"
said the Bob as he beamed out, leaving you all alone to face the alien
menace. Sure, he and his friends will come back occasionally to help you,
but you're on your own most of the time.
Durandal, the rogue
computer who helped you defend the colony ship
Marathon, has
teleported you to one of the alien's homeworlds.
Durandal will only
tell you information on a need-to-know basis, he doesn't think you're
intelligent enough to figure things out for yourself. So, with him as the
brains and you as the brawn, you've got to free Lh'owon from the Pfhor and
give it back to the S'pht.(Wow, that's a mouth full.)
It's finally for the PC; the only
Doom type game with a plot, and a darn good plot at that.
Marathon 2:
Durandal takes over where the last game left off. Macintosh users have enjoyed
Marathon 2 for about a year. PC users finally get to see what they're missing.
Being the only first-person shooter with a plot, this game has a lot more depth
than the normal shoot first, ask questions later type games. Though the concept
of the game is not that revolutionary, the game itself is more addicting than
Minesweeper.
Unlike
Doom, the graphics seem more three dimensional. While
Doom is just a 2D maze pretending to be 3D,
Marathon 2's
graphical engine allows rooms to be overhead, the ability to swim, and your
motion sensor to detect aliens above or below you, freaking you out like in
the movie
Aliens. You've got to have a good sense of direction to
keep track of which way you're going. With little additions like platforms
rising out of lava and aliens lying in an unidentifiable mass on the
ground,
Marathon 2 is visually stunning. Unfortunatly, the graphics do not run as smoothly on the PC as they do on the Mac. Some serious polygonal errors harm what would otherwise be a perfect translation. Even on a 200MHz Pentium Pro,
Marathon 2 for the PC just doesn't look as good.
Opting not to have music throughout the game was a good move by the folks
at
Bungie. Instead, they used ambient sounds such as water flowing
or the hum of electric lights to guide you through your journey. These
sounds set you in the mood of fighting off an alien menace. You feel as
though you really are there, not just someone staring at a computer screen.
The plot and gameplay are where
Marathon
2 rises above the rest. Throughout the game, you encounter computer terminals
that tell you more of the plot. You either receive a message from
Durandal
or you read about the history of the Pfhor and S'pht. You raid everything from
their heavily manned garrisons to their ancient citadels, trying to follow
Durandal's
directions. You have help, too. The Bobs from the first game are back, but this
time they're armed. They beam in to help you when the going gets tough. Unfortunately,
most of them end up dead, leaving the dirty work up to you.
Marathon 2 also has some interesting game options for playing over a
network. You need additional serial numbers for more than two players, which
you must purchase from Bungie for $15 bucks each, but, boy, are they worth it.
Play Tag, King of the Hill, or Kill the guy with the Skull among
up to eight players. You can even play the real game cooperatively, and
when you die, you drop everything you were carrying. With this kind of
in-depth gameplay, it's no wonder that this game is a winner.
One problem is the installation of Marathon 2. Unfortunatly, it has to install Directx 2 to run on any machine. This, as I found, may conflict with video drivers on more advanced video cards and mess up gameplay.
PC users should rejoice at the addition of Marathon 2 to their computer's library. It follows in the footsteps of other great Mac games that ended up on the PC, such as Myst. Though not as smooth and textured as it's Mac counterpart, Marathon 2 is still worth a look from any fan of this genre.
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