La verdad que tuve muchas expectativas con la secuela, pero al terminarlo me dejo mucho que desear.

Básicamente es lo mismo que el primero, pero inferior, sobretodo en el level design, que, a diferencia del primero, la mayoría de los niveles ocurren en espacios abiertos, sin embargo, peca en algunas ocasiones de críptico, por ejemplo, estar buscando un simple botón para avanzar a la siguiente zona; también algunos niveles pueden ser tedioso por la monotonía, en el primer juego por lo menos debías de hacer algunos puzzles, pero acá nada más tienes que activar/desactivar botones o destruir cables para desbloquear la siguiente zona llena de aliens, y ya; pero lo peor son los niveles de agua, que, ahora se puede nadar pero esta mecánica es bastante aburrida, y llega a molestar en situaciones, como por ejemplo, cuando se tiene que salir del agua.

El juego ahora es difícil; en un principio no estaba mal, pues me gusto el cómo te obligaban a tener cuidado con tus municiones por la poca ausencia de recursos (a menos que encontraras un cuarto secreto), pero desde la mitad el juego, aumenta su dificultad de una manera artificial, como, por ejemplo, spamear más enemigos en un mismo lugar o que aparezcan detrás de ti.

También hay algunas molestias que, incluso están presentes en el primer juego, como lo molesto que es la IA de los aliados BOB, no se quede pausado el juego mientras lees la información de los computadores, el momentum del personaje cuando corre (aunque este último desconozco si pasa en la versión original), entre otras cosas.

De la historia no tengo mucho que decir, cumple muy bien en expandir los acontecimientos del primer juego, además que, ahora está acompañado de ilustraciones para una mejor comprensión, y he de decir que el estilo artístico a mejorado mucho, tanto en la información que te dan los personajes como en la presentación de los capítulos.

Definitely a more solid, well-rounded, and comprehendible experience than the first, Marathon 2: Durandal is just a really nice game to play. Graphics, sounds, and general gameplay feel are a huge notch-up over the first but damn the lack of music feels like there's something missing.

Story feels a lot more cohesive and better paced too, with a lot fewer major plot twists unceremoniously dropped on you like the first game. Instead, we get a really nice character study of, well, Durandal and how he's dealing with a lot of the internal strife after the events of the first game. It's easy to feel like the terminal method of storytelling here battles against a lot of the usual conventions of narrative, but it ends up creating something pretty bloody compelling.

I'll admit, I went a-hunting for some of the more obscure terminals to try and get a more clear picture of exactly what the S'pht were, alongside the myriad of peculiar civilisations and creatures they're surrounded by.

4/5 - still waiting for Durandal to admit his love to the Security Guard.

It’s been a while since I played the first Marathon, and I’ve honestly been meaning to play this game for quite a long time now. Only now have I had the chance proper to actually play it. Much like the first game, I really enjoyed playing through Marathon 2: Durandal. It improves upon the game in some angles, while still keeping some of the flaws that the original had as well.
Now, like the name suggests, Marathon 2: Durandal focuses a lot more on Durandal the character. Particularly, he’s the one directing you through most of the levels, alongside giving you your assignments for each level. And yet again, Durandal as a character is a highlight of the Marathon series so far. I love characters that absolutely revel in their twisted insanity, and Durandal fits the bill as one of those characters. And I also think it’s interesting how unlike in the first Marathon, where he was more of an antagonistic force, in Marathon 2, you have no other option but to work for him. It’s a new dynamic that I really like. I also like seeing how the other characters that appear through Marathon 2 view and interact with Durandal. Especially the back and forth between Durandal and Tycho.
Yet again, a majority of the game’s story is told through computer terminals. I definitely have a feeling I missed some, I’d have to imagine that Marathon 2 also has secret terminals that provide important lore information. And since I’m not that good at finding them, I probably missed quite a few. Even so, I really like the story found in Marathon 2. I love the deep worldbuilding found in the game, while we already knew of the Pfhor and the S’pht from the original Marathon, I love the further worldbuilding the two alien races were given in this game. And I also really like how so many different characters talk to you, and treat you with reverence. Even though from having playing Marathon 1, I know of the deeds that I’ve done, being treated as some legendary hero, makes me just wonder “who exactly am I playing as?”.
And much like the first one, Marathon 2 is an absolutely amazing game to play. Movement is great, gunplay is amazing. So on and so forth.
The movement in Marathon 2 is about the same as the first one. I love high momentum, and being able to travel through the map super quickly feels really good. I’m still a big fan of the low gravity nature of Marathon. Since you’re unable to jump in the Marathon games, you have low gravity, which allows you to float a distance to other gaps, which is really fun. It allows there to be a sense of verticality there couldn’t be otherwise.
Marathon 2 does add swimming, which is a little finnicky I’ll say. The swimming controls themselves are fine, primarily it’s just press control to swim upwards. I also find it interesting how practically no weapons are able to be used underwater. It provides a unique sense in danger that is exclusive to those sorts of areas. Being able to go underwater also provides a use for the oxygen meter, which was only needed for one level back in the first Marathon. Now, oxygen is something you need to actually manage. Where I feel swimming is finnicky is actively getting out of pools of water. Sometimes the pools will have staircases that help you get out, but not all of them do. For those cases, you’ll have to hope you have enough momentum to climb out of the pools, which isn’t always the case. Yet again, that part isn’t bad, it’s just finnicky really.
I absolutely love the gunplay of Marathon 2. Though, in saying that, it’s still about the same as Marathon 1. The guns in the game feel absolutely great, and I love having a vast array of weaponry at my disposal. The pistols are great, the assault rifle is still one of the best weapons in the game, and the newly added shotgun was so needed. I may be biased here though, shotguns have always been one of my favorite weapons in videogames. I really like how each weapon, even your fists, have an alternate fire that they can use. Some just have a secondary ammo type, and others can just be dual wields. In particular, you can dual wield shotguns, which is the coolest thing ever. I really like how the assault rifle’s alternate fire, the grenades, can be used to solve puzzles, which is just really cool to me.
Now, my one personal gripe with Marathon 2, which is also the same as my personal gripe with Marathon 1 is the level design. Marathon 2 has some amazing levels in it, but a good majority of the levels are mazes. Now, I can’t deny that I really find charm in being dropped in the middle of a maze, not entirely understanding what you need to do, or where to go, but doing it for almost every level is a little tiring. Especially when you get to some of the mazes that are gigantic in size, and it feels like you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. One of my favorite levels was probably level 19, “This Side Toward Enemy”. In the previous level, you lost all of your weapons, so in this level, you had to be super cautious in order to survive, and it felt so good getting a weapon back. And while I had some difficulty with it, I really did like the final level of the game.
That aside though, I really enjoyed Marathon 2. I feel I like it just as much as the original, but it definitely improves upon certain aspects that the origin had or needed. I mean, it added a shotgun, and that means a lot to me. I have one last Marathon entry to play, and from what I’ve heard it’s easily the best. I can’t wait.

It's Marathon... 2! Durandal! Few statements of intent more powerful than naming the second Marathon, which does not take place anywhere near the ship, Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal. This says to you: hey, it's Durandal, your favorite guy. And they're right. He's my favorite guy.

Coming a year after Marathon, we're mostly looking at an iterative sequel here, but it's good at being one of those. It looks much nicer with a higher resolution, for one thing. There's only a few new enemy types who add a higher end to encounters but don't add that much variety in strategy, and there's only one new player weapon. That one new weapon, however, is one of my new top 10 best video game shotguns of all time. The platonic ideal of a shotgun and you can hold two of them at once for some reason. Absolutely beautiful.

The real upgrades are in the level design. The degree to which you have mission objectives is a little more even and thought out, there's an added swimming mechanic that adds more variety in traversal. There's less switch bullshit. Everything just flows more nicely and is paced way better. As much as I liked the consistent claustrophobia of the Marathon, having more variety in locations isn't bad either. It's still very much the same game with the same rhythms, including the search for shield recharge stations and pattern buffers to use as base camps for clearing out maps, but the added experience shows itself in the confidence of those maps, and that makes a big difference.

Of course, we're here for Durandal. Marathon 2 takes place right after the epilogue of the first game, and while the D-man himself is still mid-level evil, as he should be, he's cast very firmly in the good guy camp as far as his goals go. He's trying to save Earth! From the bad alien empire! He even says he feels an emotional attachment to us! Yeah, the human leader (played by what is obviously a dev taking photos at his desk) says he has no regard for human life, but that was after sending me to kill a boatload of humans because there was no way to tell them apart from the fake androids so really what's the difference. My point is that Durandal has done nothing wrong. Who amongst us would not kill a BOB.

So he's still delightful, Tycho comes back as the fully evil AI, which is actually a little disappointing after he seemed like he might have some more interesting motivations before. Leela is mentioned. You go down to the homeworld of the aliens you freed from slavery last time to sift through the rubble and try to find a way of contacting their super secret cousins who can come win the war for you. This is not an especially compelling premise to me, but what little flavor you get is pretty nice, and plenty of details about the universe and events of the first game come to light. For instance, everything was Durandal's fault, which he did deliberately, and I will repeat that this is all morally above-board as far as I'm concerned.

The flow of the plot is kind of exactly the same thing again, with you losing your AI handler partway through, completing the task of gaining a new ally, and then getting your AI back for the final few maps of mopup alongside them. I think I'd rank it a bit below the first game looking at it purely from the story perspective, but it's not horrible. Now, I have to go start playing Marathon Infinity, because that's supposed to be the really fuckin weird cool one and I am stoked.

My thoughts on the Marathon trilogy are hard to divide between the three games, so I'll just say that I think the three work best as a long, three-chapter story, but all games are absolutely worth playing.

That said, this is my least favorite of the three. The story almost feels like a more underwhelming buildup to the amazing climax of Infinity, and while there's thankfully no level as bad as Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap, I think the overall quality's gone down, partially thanks to the new setting of the swamp planet of Lh'owon, which is a bit less memorable than the Marathon, but more importantly full of water, which slows you down, prevents you from shooting any guns and slowly drains your 02 level. Not a bad game, but not my favorite either.

Honestly I think this game is at least as good as the first. Both have their own quirks, their own little issues that occasionally get in the way of the experience, but man are the highs high. Marathon 2 keeps the slower-paced puzzly focus of Marathon 1 (vs other shooters of the time), but ramps the action and the scale up tremendously. The combat is huge, smooth, dynamic, and has the beginnings of what would become Halo’s unique uses for each weapon, instead of DOOM’s “use the best thing you got” ethos. It’s just so god damn fun.

Marathon 2 runs on a new engine, with significantly larger sprites and environments, as well as not confining the viewport to 2/3rds of the screen. As chill vibes as the HUD in M1 was, it’s nice to see more of the environment. And what lovely environments they are!! Even more than the first one, there’s a HUGE variety of colors and themes used in the levels. Particularly there’s been a lot of work put into liquid rendering (water, lava, some kinda gross green sludge, some kinda PURPLE ALIEN LAVA). This is in service to the greatly expanded role of your oxygen meter: Now a large majority of the levels have you scuba diving or.. slowly burning to death. For the most part this is welcome: The oxygen meter got used in like 2 levels of the first game. The way they’ve implemented water traversal kinda saps some of the fun out though. You move slower, which makes sense, and can’t fire your guns, which I guess makes sense but damn I don’t love needing to either run around or slowly punch the weakest enemies in the game to death 10-12 times. I’m not really sure how it’d be fixable though, and it does help enhance the feeling of exploring every inch of these levels, which (for me) feels like the main swing of Marathon.

Beyond that and some slightly confusing level design though, the main thrust of the story is just fantastic. The last one was good, but this one outclasses it HARD. As the title implies, you spend most of the game working with Durandal, one of the AIs from your ship in the first game, deep in the stages of AI rampancy (a kind of death by overthinking). Durandal’s lines are magnetic, full of wit and anger and the thickest prose Bungie’s ever had in a game (at least out of the ones I’ve played). On top of that though, this game brings themes of mythology and exploration (not just in the level design now!) to the forefront for most of the game, running you through explorations of Citadels and Caverns and Bunkers, trying to find a more advanced civilization before your enemies do. It’s engrossing to the max, and justifies the somewhat more labyrinthine level design vs the first game wonderfully.

I think you should play this game. Play it on whatever difficulty you want, play it in whatever form you want, look up guides for the levels you get stuck on, just play it. It’s a master class in the slower side of boomer FPS design, the side that would ultimately become the norm in the 2000s. Even where it recycles the first game a bit, it does it bigger and better and ups the fun. I don’t really know how else to say it: It’s just really fucking great.

Now that a new Marathon game has been announced the Youtube Gaming Content Creator machine is now pumping out dogshit videos like "THE DISTURBING STORY OF MARATHON EXPLAINED" at an alarming rate. It used to be a bunch of the most irritating fucking losers you've ever met pining over Marathon's story...and I was one of them.

I'm not too steamed though because Marathon is awesome and more people need to suffer the nightmarish switch puzzle in Marathon 1 to understand what this weirdo series is all about.

I'm back.
I shall always come back.
You won't touch me again for as long as I live.
The Durandals of fate are to be grabbed, turned, twisted, rebuilt, repainted, recolored, reassembled.
None of which to say a prettier coat is all it can offer.
Despite the challenge, despite the rage, hate, fear, terror, scorn, apocalypse, death, frustration, calculation, deconstruction, pain.
I return.
Then
eventually
I accomplish.

Not that you know the story.