Classic Marathon 2

This one's honestly the weakest instalment in the (now "Classic") Marathon trilogy. On the positive side, the music is gone and is now ambience replacing it. But everything else is crappy. Leela, despite returning at the end of the first game, is nowhere to be seen, and is only mentioned once in the whole game, in the ending screen. You're stuck with Durandal most of the game, and the levels where he is gone funnily enough are also the only levels in the game that are actually fun. Every other level consists of Monsters being copy-pasted a million times (especially the one that has tank tracks for feet and shoots homing grenades at you) throughout the level and almost no way to heal, or any ammunition. Sometimes you can't even shoot, and have to use your punches underwater, but underwater you can't run to do more punch damage by moving fast. (that's a real mechanic, it was in the first game as well) Don't play this one, Marathon Infinity can be enjoyed without playing this one, everything you need to know about Marathon 2 is brought up in the first level of Marathon Infinity, and that game's manual. Skip this game.

this game peak

Frog blast the vent core!

Marathon 2 feels more like a glorified expansion than an actual sequel, and no, that's not because of the minimal additions to the base gameplay besides some excellent new guns. It suffers from the exact same labrynthian level design issues and boneheaded save system (yes, running back and forth between rooms to save lest you lose a chuck of progress is objectively awful and unfun). That being said, the new Pfor setting is a nice change of location and Durandal is a delightfully unhinged host. The new environmental features - water that can be swam through, and that rises and lowers as the level progresses, primarily - helps distinguish it from it's contemporaries, and gives new mechanical utility to the underused Oxygen meter of the original. If you can tolerate the sometimes horrid level design and whack difficulty curve, hey, it's literally more Marathon.

[h1]Certified Hood Classic[/h1] Marathon 2: Durandal is an exceptional game. I've been playing it for a few years, even before it got ported to Steam, and it's definitely my favorite boomer shooter ever, possibly favorite game ever. There's nothing quite like it or like either of the other Marathon games. So here's a "brief" overview. At least, I'll attempt to keep it brief. [h2]Story In A Boomer Shooter?[/h2] What other boomer shooters place such heavy emphasis on their lore and worldbuilding, their narrative and central characters? It differentiates itself from mindless run-and-gun games from around the same time by doing so. Part of me imagines it was motivated by the Mac exclusivity, as Mac users were an entirely different audience, consisting largely of academics, college students, so on. Something more... "sophisticated," so to speak, was what the doctor ordered. Bungie itself also consisted of staff with backgrounds in philosophy and history, which made this direction a natural fit, especially following up Pathways Into Darkness, which kinda required some good story as an FPS-RPG hybrid (maybe the first of its kind?). Irregardless, Marathon and, of course, Marathon 2 fill …

Marathon! Such a cool sequel to an already cool game. There were some parts I didn't quite enjoy, such as the water segments where you can't use any of your weapons, two segments that were strangely high in difficulty compared to the rest of the game, and a few confusing choices when it comes to progression that I couldn't figure out myself. Despite that, I loved every second of this game just as I did the last. Setting foot on an alien planet, hearing the flow of water, the gentle hum of machinery, and the occasional sound of some distant alien creature was a welcome change from the quiet, empty corridors of the Marathon space ship. And the WSTE-M5 shotgun has to be one of my new favorite video game weapons. Not a game for everyone, but if you liked the first Marathon then you should try this one too. It's free, after all!