- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
If you were there in 94 and played Marathon when it came out you will always love it, and chances are nothing will truly beat the nostalgic feeling you get when you think of Marathon. Those were the first great computer games I played, and they had the combination of a compelling story, good single play, and you could kick the crap out of your friends. The only other game at the time that came close to Marathon was Quake I believe, and the single play and story sucked there.
Halo of course now outpaces marathon as far as graphics and what you can do in and with a game engine. But Nostalgic feelings aside (well, maybe not entirely aside), I do have reasons for liking the Marathon series more at this point. I liked multiplay more in Marathon. Each of the weapons had good uses, and the flame thrower and missile launchers were fun as hell. If I could have picked one map out of Marathon to put in Halo 2 it would have been Thunderdome or Return to Thunderdome. 5D space was also a good one.
Invincibility and cloaking were good too, and killing an invincible person with the zeus pistol was hilarous, especially their corpse.
I liked one player in marathon more as well. The puzzles that would be thrown into the mix helped make it more than just a shooter. The story progression was good as well and kept you thinking. It felt like there were more layers to the story, everything felt like it had a history that you learned about as the game progressed, like the interaction between Durandal and Tycho (and Leela in Marathon 1), your need to save the ship and the colony, the S'pht, the Pfhor, the wars on Mars because of the CRIST failures and the political maneuvering of placing the 10 cyborgs on the UESC Marathon. Of course a lot more depth was added in Marathon 2 with information about the Jjaro and the ancient S'pht AI. Halo 2 might blow the story of the Haloverse wide open, but I still feel Marathon 1 had more depth vs. Halo 1.