Reviews

The good news: This is a total conversion, and the amount of new content is impressive. The single player campaign consists of a whopping 41 levels! There are net maps too! And EMR is one of only two Marathon campaigns I know of that has found a way to exceed the limit of the player having a maximum of nine weapons (the other campaign is Istoria). You’ll get about twenty(!) weapons over the course of EMR, though you won’t have access to them all at the same time. But even so, that means EMR has more weapon options than any other Marathon campaign. There is also a huge menagerie of enemies to fight; EMR has probably the biggest enemy roster of any Marathon campaign. Architecture in general but especially for the castle levels is really impressive. For those looking for a challenge, the combat in this campaign is harder than the average user-made Marathon content. You’ll visit four different time periods — Jurassic, Medieval, Futuristic Spaceship, and Modern City.

The bad news: Much of the combat difficulty stems from enemy attacks doing a ton of damage, and being launched at such a high velocity that they could almost be considered hitscan (and are thus very difficult to evade). Some of the music is quite repetitive and gets old fast. There is a frequent bug in which player crosshairs will randomly disappear, only to randomly re-appear at some later time. Since most of EMR’s weapons are quite inaccurate, having those crosshairs available all the time would have been useful! The quality of EMR’s levels varies wildly, ranging from very good to very bad, but unfortunately EMR might create a poor first impression because, quality-wise, most of the bad levels are at the beginning of the campaign. The average quality steadily and significantly improves as the campaign progresses, so if you’re a few levels into EMR and on the fence about whether or not to continue because the Jurassic-era levels aren’t that good…I urge you to press on, because it does get better, a LOT better!

The first thing I noticed after starting EMR was that my usual WASD keys didn’t work, and neither did mouselook. For some reason EMR has an unusual keyboard setup that differs quite strongly from Bungie’s games. The mouse button no longer fires your weapon, and pressing M no longer brings up the auto-map! So the first thing I had to do was go into Preferences and re-map many keys to something more familiar. Also, I had no idea what the different difficulty levels meant. What’s the difference between Knight and Jester difficulty? After looking through 3 different EMR readme files I finally found the answer tucked away (Squire = Normal difficulty, which is what I suggest you play at).

1 Merlin Unplugged — I ran out of ammo twice on the first combat level. On the Jurassic holodeck part I got told to explore the area. The only way to go without taking a lava bath was to drop down into a pit. It turned out to be a dead end and lava flooded it as soon as I dropped down; hello instant inescapable death! Argh, bad level design!

2 Oh (Expletive) — Immediately after entering the level you’re attacked by an invincible enemy. There’s no way out except to read the terminal. I’d love to read the terminal except I keep taking damage from being attacked! Argh! And why do the harmless little spider things show up on my motion spotter? There’s an instant death crusher trap in the east part of the map. Even worse, it also permanently locks you out of parts of the level. It’s not a big deal as far as danger or power-ups because the three possible paths have a similar level of risk and reward. But the completionist in me made me replay the level three times so I could see everything; I just do not agree with locking a player out of parts of the level due to something as innocuous as choosing to go north instead of east. At least I got to have fun beating up on hapless dinosaurs with my high tech weapons. And the earthquakes in the lava area were pretty cool and helped set the mood for a Jurassic era map. The Jurassic era enemies also looked great and were entertaining to fight.

3 A River Runs Through It — Fun fights, a clear goal, and no major problems. There was one river area where I was trying to get up on the river bank to proceed but some dumb indestructible rocks kept blocking me. After many attempts I was finally able to get past them. In the final crystal area I wasted a ton of ammo shooting dinosaurs which it turns out I was never meant to fight and which were going to get smooshed by a cave-in anyways. Probably it would have been better if the crystal cave had been empty to avoid such an ammo-wasting situation because let’s be honest: most players who see a cave full of enemies are gonna start shooting!

4 Unstable Terrain — The theme of this level is that there’s lots of earthquakes and you have to cause a rockfall to proceed across a lava river. Although the area where you have to cause the rockfall was not well signposted I was able to figure it out without too much trouble. Fun combat all around.

5 When It Rains, It Pours — The mission is to flip four switches. You’re traversing a pretty bland series of ice caves punctuated by occasional crusher traps or dinosaurs to fight. The combat features a lot of T-Rex opponents, which is unfortunate because they aren’t very dangerous but they do have a ton of health. Since my ammo supply seemed rather low I tried to conserve resources by fighting them with my puny spear. In retrospect this was a waste of time and I should have either avoided the T-Rexes or just blasted them with firearms; later levels are much more generous with ammo distribution so conservation isn’t necessary here.

6 Ceridwen’s Dream — This is a strange level. It’s basically a hunt for multiple switches and a key, with a little combat thrown in. One of the first female archers I saw mentioned that she was out of arrows, so I held my fire and she turned out to be friendly. There was a rather annoying area with a x1 charger in the southwest area of the map. When the player goes to investigate the recharger they get unceremoniously teleported across the level. Argh! Then, there’s an even worse teleporter trap in the southeast part of the map. Basically it looks like a normal area, but if you stand on it you get whisked away to the next level. Well that really sucks if you haven’t finished exploring the current level! Give me some forewarning if I’m going to be teleported somewhere, especially if it’s to a whole new level!

7 Unnatural Selection — Your mission is to find a caveman leader, which is pretty easy. The leader then directs you to kill a traitor and slay a T-Rex. Combat wouldn’t be so bad except that some of the dinosaurs are very fast, so you’ve got to keep moving to avoid being shredded, but the necessary evasion is made more difficult by stupid indestructible little pieces of scenery that are easy to get caught on. Also, every time I recover from poison damage I’m being told I’ve gained some poison resistance. I’ve also been drinking every elixir of poison resistance I come across. But yet they don’t seem to do anything? Because seven levels into this campaign I seem to be taking the same amount of poison damage that I was taking on level one, despite all the poison resistance I’ve allegedly gained. Despite my gripes, I actually enjoyed this level. There’s a decent storyline to follow with achievable goals that made me feel like progress was being made.

8 Raptors Come Home — This is basically part of the previous level, but now it’s night time and the raptors are attacking your caveman allies. Time for a heroic rescue! It’s a short level, but it took me a while to figure out where to go after defeating the baddies and checking in with the caveman leader. In an isolated corner of the map are three light fixtures. Somehow you’re supposed to know that you have to stand in the middle of them to be teleported to the exit.

9 No Time For Coffee — This is another short level. Morgana’s army is teleporting aboard the Kronos spaceship and you have to teleport out to escape. It seems enemy reinforcements are unlimited. So basically there’s no point in fighting, just rush to the exit. But where is the exit??? Expect to die many times trying to find that stupid exit, despite it being a small map! You’re told to head to Transporter Room B and use one of the three teleporters there. First of all, how many players are going to remember where “Transporter Room B” is? Secondly, once you find the right room it’s a crapshoot because you have three identical teleporters to choose from and only one is the exit! Finally, to add insult to injury there’s a huge ammo room adjacent to your starting area, but if you try and stock up on ammo you’ll certainly be boxed in and killed by Morgana’s infinite army! I’m just not a fan of un-winnable combat scenarios…

10 Bend Sinister — In terms of architecture this is the most impressive level so far. It actually looks like a medieval castle with a drawbridge, moat, parapets, etc. In terms of aesthetics this is a great level, but gameplay has problems. Once you get inside the castle it becomes a switch hunt, which wouldn’t be so bad except that one of the places you have to go is hidden behind a secret door. Yes, the secret does look like a tapestry with misaligned textures, but a lot of textures in EMR are misaligned so it doesn’t really stand out that much! I also found another friendly archer that I kept alive but…she didn’t seem to do much? Past the secret door is the toughest battle yet, against a horde of archers, knights, and magicians. Thankfully a save point is nearby, because the baddies hit hard and there’s not much room to evade their attacks. Afterwards a portal is opened to an “elemental challenge” area, which was really just a small wilderness zone with a river and an underground cave.

11 The Return — I got a new weapon, an axe. I tried it out on some nearby furniture and was quite satisfied with the result. I hoped that with my new toy I could just chop up the pieces of scenery I’m constantly getting stuck on, but alas the axe only seems to work on furniture! There was new enemy type too; skeletons that were able to damage me without any feedback on my screen telling me I’d been damaged. I was congratulating myself for hacking through a horde of the undead without taking damage only to look at my health bar and see I was almost dead! Argh! And there are no shield rechargers anywhere on this level, so be prepared for some of the toughest, most unforgiving combat in the whole campaign…Anyways, this mission is a rather convoluted hunt for switches and keys that had me backtracking all over the place. There were a bunch of harmless ghosts that seemed to exist purely for aesthetic purposes, and some very nasty tiny spiders that attacked from ambush and dealt massive damage despite their small size.

12 Shores of Camelot — Hooray, there’s another cool looking castle that we get to storm! We also get a new magic spell, fireball. But we barely get to use the new magic because there’s a ton of magician enemies, and they seem to be immune to magic damage? Argh! Additionally, some of the magicians are transparent, which was a very rude surprise, because on the previous level the transparent ghost magicians were harmless; but here they launch super fast ice blasts that shred your health in no time! The objective is to kill all enemies and there actually is a helpful enemy counter that will show up to let you know your progress. Although I was able to complete the level with one enemy remaining on the counter some other EMR players reported a problem in which some baddies in the Archery area got stuck behind a door. The door in question could only be opened by enemies, not the player, resulting in a softlock. So I do advise you to save early and often on this level, and if the enemies in the Archery area (labeled on your map) do get stuck, please reload from an earlier save. Later in the level is a teleporter which is supposed to teleport you to areas with enemies to kill, but when I used it I just got sent to an area I’d already been. There’s also a section where you break some friendly units out of jail; the friendlies didn’t help much with combat, but I think they opened up some previously inaccessible areas of the map. The Caves of Merlin area would have been quite difficult because it was full of dangerous sorcerers, but then it inexplicably and permanently flooded. So I just shot the enemy mages with my crossbow while safely underwater, where the baddies couldn’t touch me.

13 My Life For A Sword — More great castle architecture to be seen. The chapel area in particular looked really cool. Alas, there was one area where a dinosaur was imprisoned behind some iron bars. Somehow the dinosaur magically walked through the bars in order to eat my face. Argh!

14 Excalibur! — What I remember most about this level was fighting off hordes of baddies while desperately looking for a save terminal or a health recharger. I finally found one after I’d cleared about 90% of the map, lol! Quite by accident I also found the legendary sword Excalibur, and was immediately underwhelmed by its lack of firepower. Three strikes from my magic sword to take down a basic evil knight? The magic staff I already have can do it in two!

15 Bread Crumbs — Another dream level, this time based upon a central elevator that stops at 7 different floors. There’s even a constant message that displays telling you the elevator’s exact location! At the bottom floor there’s a frustrating puzzle involving four platforms; I might have been overthinking it, because the actual solution only involved using three of the four platforms and the other one can be completely ignored. Later I found a strange garden (“the greenhouse”) where some of the trees attacked me but I couldn’t kill them (not even with my trusty axe). More exploring yielded a demonic dragon monster that looked scary and could in fact be killed. Alas, it might have been a more memorable battle if the monster had actually been able to keep aggro on me! Instead he fired one shot and then got stuck on an elevator and became helpless…One of the worst things about EMR is just how many teleporters there are, and how poorly signposted many of them are. This level is a particularly egregious offender, as multiple times I was just walking along, exploring the level, when all of a sudden without warning I got teleported to some other part of the level. These weren’t even necessary teleports taking me to an important location, as most of the time I had already been to wherever I ended up. It’s just like the devs decided to have lots of teleporters just for the sake of having lots of teleporters. Argh! After much backtracking I thought I had finally completed the level; Merlin was even frantically telling me in the terminals that I needed to wake up from the dream immediately in order to fend off an enemy attack. But the old wizard refused to teleport me to the next level! At first I fretted that I might have glitched the game somehow, but it turns out that Merlin was just being inexplicably picky with what terminals he was willing to teleport me out from.

16 Over the River and Through the Woods — The first part of the level consists of a series of annoying switch hunts. You’ll hit some switch and it will open up an area that’s definitely out of line-of-sight and probably on the other side of the map. Several times I thought I was softlocked, but no, it turns out I just needed to revisit some obscure corner of the level I’d already been to in order to find the way forward. At least the combat was entertaining. The “cleric” enemy is a neat concept - an enemy unit that heals other enemies! But alas, what actually happens is that it overheals enemies over time; I do not think there is a limit to the amount of health that can be gained! So if a cleric gets activated and you don’t notice it and kill it within a few seconds then you’ll soon be facing nigh unkillable super-enemies…

17 Siege Perilous — Your mission is to eliminate all enemies, and once again a useful enemy counter is displayed on your screen. You have to storm a really cool-looking castle to complete the mission. This is where EMR is strongest, showcasing great medieval architecture and, of course, you can’t just walk in through the front door! You have to find a secret entrance to circumvent the enemy fortifications, and this is great fun. You also get a special “fire storm” spell that can only be used on this level; it shoots a swarm of hugely inaccurate fireballs that can’t hit anything except at point blank range so it’s rather underwhelming.

18 Betrayal and Retribution — The cool thing about this level is that it is a multi-story tower, which is very hard to create in this game engine. Architecturally, this is one of the most impressive uses of the Marathon level editor I’ve ever seen. The bad part about this level is that so many overlapping polygons end up rendering your auto-map useless. Thankfully the path is fairly linear so it’s hard to get lost! The final battle on the rooftop of the tower was awesome!

19 I’ll Be Lurking For You — It’s night time, and there’s another castle to sneak into! The stupid unkillable evil trees are back, and because it’s so dark you’ll constantly blunder into them and take damage. You get a spell to summon skeleton allies; that’s so cool! Castle architecture is superb, as usual. But again I thought I got soft locked. Merlin told me to get to the top of the castle and then he’d teleport me out. Well, I did get to (what seemed to be) the top of the castle, and there was no exit waiting for me. After much searching and frustration, I found an out-of-the-way switch on a pillar in an obscure corner of the castle, and flipping that opened up the true exit to the level.

20 Le Mort De Tous — A teleportation spell, neat! A huge labyrinth of bland corridors - boring! A few new enemy types to fight - a baby skull snake, a will o the wisp, and a bat creature, and hostile cavemen - cool! I’m impressed by the sheer variety of monsters you encounter in EMR. In the northwest corner of the map was a huge horde of enemies. After hacking my way through them with some difficulty I was low on health and looking to withdraw back to a health recharge station. At that moment a pack of magicians teleported in and I was sure I was going to die. After much frantic heroism and the use of some of my best weapons the sorcerers lay dead and I congratulated myself on a hard fought victory. Then I got to a time pod which told me that the sorcerers were ALLIES come to help me! Argh! I figured the wizards got so few shots off because of my mad dodging skillz, but no, they were friendly and not even trying to kill me. What a face palm moment! Thanks for the forewarning about incoming allies, Merlin /sarcasm. There is also an optional cave area that’s even worse than the labyrinth not because of the dangerous monsters but because it’s so dark you can’t see a damn thing and there’s so many overlapping polygons using your auto-map to navigate is impossible. One final note: In this level you get infinite ammo at a certain point! This is significant because for most of EMR ammo is in short supply, but you should come out of this level with a huge surplus.

21 Tower of Mauvair — So I guess this is the parkour-themed level of the campaign. You have to leap across a series of ledges, and a mis-step will result in a fatal lava bath. The Marathon game engine doesn’t really lend itself to parkour gameplay, but here it’s fine because it’s a fairly short and easy area.

22 Mr. Wizard! Mr. Wizard! — Evil magic is afoot, and basically it’s an excuse to send us through more time portals to all three time periods (Jurassic, Medieval, and Futuristic). Well, we haven’t had a velociraptor try to eat our face in a while, so let’s see how the dinosaurs fare against our upgraded weaponry! Spoiler alert: Not very well. The Medieval portal has a downright unfair trap: You enter a tiny area and a dangerous knight teleports in right next to you, and your only way out is blocked by some iron bars that also teleport in. So death and/or heavy damage are virtually guaranteed. Urgh! The Futuristic area is notable for a working elevator that does something I didn’t know was possible in the Marathon engine — it appears to allow two floors/polygons to exist directly on top of one another. As a Marathon mapper I had to ask other mappers how the EMR devs were able to pull that off (it involves an elaborate illusion to create the appearance of an elevator).

23 Creature’s Knightmare — It’s another surreal dream level, this time with a lot of annoying enemies that refuse to stay dead. The baddies keep respawning, although they are more annoying than dangerous. One of the terminals told me I’d be rewarded for getting to “Morgana’s Stairs.” Well, I did find it, but there did not seem to be any reward, or any means of actually entering the room with Morgana in it. I spent most of my time wandering around lost, trying to figure out where to go and what to do. When I did finally accidentally stumble upon the exit I got immediately whisked away to the next level before I had a chance to finish exploring the current one. Argh!

24 The Audience Is Listening — This is another dual-era level, as we’ll be going back and forth between medieval and futuristic time periods. Your goal is to both invade the Black Knights’ temple and to jettison a shuttle bay full of enemy troops into outer space. And to get some new weapons. This creates a lot of narrative dissonance, because a huge wall of text gets thrown at the player, and I feel it’s just too much for one level. To add to the problem, there’s another Ceridwen dream sequence thrown in just for good measure, and a completely superfluous holodeck mini-maze area. Argh, there’s enough flavor text and mission objectives here to satisfy the requirements for three or four levels! At least the new poison crossbow and flamethrower are cool. At the end Merlin congratulated me for getting rid of the enemies in the shuttle bay, but I hadn’t actually done it yet!

25 I Don’t Like Spiders and Snakes — There’s a cutscene of your ship sinking, which I guess must have looked pretty decent in the 1990s? Then we get some high quality chapter artwork that looks good even by the standards of the 2020s. Then we end up in a medieval level with some kind of time limit? But I kept getting stuck on the ledges/stairs that led up out of the water, and I had to restart the level many times as a result! Not cool! A book confirms that there is in fact a 12 minute time limit to the level; if you take too long you’ll be punished by being transported back to the start of the level and a bunch of enemies will respawn. Without a ton of save-loading there is no way you’re going to beat the time limit, because the level involves numerous switch hunts and looking for secret passages. It also involves some annoyingly wordy terminals which unfortunately have important information so they can’t be skipped, yet reading them eats up your valuable time. There is some cool-looking architecture, especially in the northeast corner of the map with a cliff overlooking the sea. Too bad you won’t have enough time to take in the sights!

26 Castle of Pain and Sorrows — This is another beautifully designed castle. Also, unlike most levels in EMR, this level puts a lot of emphasis on lighting. Windows cast light into darkened rooms, and sometimes opening up a brightly lit room will allow the light to spill out into darker areas. I appreciated the attention to aesthetics. In the middle of the level the EMR devs somehow created an in-game cutscene, which I have never seen done in any Marathon level before. While exploring I suddenly got camera-locked onto a knight who took off his helmet. I couldn't move so I tabbed him and he gave a (text) speech about how he was going to make a heroic sacrifice, then he went and killed a room full of baddies and died. Wow!!! Later in the level I found a Giant Stomp spell which I think is a joke derived from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. There’s also a decent boss battle at the end. This was definitely one of the best EMR levels.

27 For the Love of Mother — This is a straightforward combat gauntlet against the toughest enemies the Medieval era has to offer, culminating in a satisfying boss battle. To help out with the fighting your fireball and ice spells can be supercharged (tripled). At the end of the mission you find the Holy Grail, which then somehow floats away. I’m not sure how the devs managed to do that; they have managed to surprise me by doing many things with the Marathon engine that I did not know were possible.

28 Noah’s Ark — This is a spaceship level with locations that look both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Excalibur is taken away, but it’s quickly replaced by a sexy lightsaber so I can’t complain. The initial terminal gives an unnecessarily huge amount of exposition text, which ironically ends with Merlin telling you to hurry because the ship’s self destruct mechanism was activated some time ago and you have to shut it down pronto before everything explodes. Really Merlin? Now you bother to tell me this important information, after I wasted five minutes reading your lecture about other non-essential mission objectives?! I wasn’t sure if this was an actual timed mission (like the awful 12-minute mission we did not long ago) or whether this was just misleading flavor text. I decided to hurry in any case. I soon encountered a working airlock, which was cool, and a huge zero-gravity fight outside the hull of the Kronos, which was infuriating. Now the concept of zero-g and flying around an outer space battlefield is awesome. But the execution was terrible! I must’ve died about 20 times trying to get through the zero-g fight (which I think was based upon a scene from Star Trek First Contact), and I was going into it each time with an invincibility power-up! If the physics had been normal the fight might have been manageable, but any time I was hit, or I used one of my weapons, I got propelled backwards and stuck on a wall where I became easy pickings for the horde of baddies shooting at me. Later I encountered a force field blocking my progress, which is a neat technical trick with the Marathon engine, and I was able to turn it off. Great stuff! Then I got a railgun that could also shoot mines. I am just amazed at how many weapons the EMR devs were able to put into their game! Later still one of the many side quests for this level involved killing mutant raptors and destroying their eggs. At first I thought it was glitched because I had killed/smashed everything, but the kill counter said there were still four eggs left. After some backtracking I found out some eggs I encountered earlier in the level were included in the total and they had to be destroyed too.

29 World of Hazelle — My huge stash of weapons and ammo, gone! Sigh! This is a mostly non-combat puzzle level with some nice mist ephemera. There’s a semi-hidden key to find, which is easy, and a puzzle to solve, which is hard, or at least hard enough to make you think for a few minutes. But Merlin actually tells you exactly how to solve the puzzle, so I guess I can’t complain too much. You end up in an impressively designed three story house, complete with a secret passage triggered by pulling a book from a book case. So cool!

30 Where Did All My Weapons Go? — The mission here is to rebuild your arsenal. Now that’s a goal I can get behind! There’s good architecture, as usual, and a funny “Knight Anger Management” area. There is also, unfortunately, a ridiculous deathtrap in the radiation area that you’re given no forewarning about. It killed me several times until I figured out how to survive it, and even worse, when the trap is triggered it permanently closes off a large ventilation shaft section of the map to the player. Although there’s no loot of interest in that area, it irked my completionist sensibilities — I always want to fully explore a map, if possible, and preventing me from doing so based on something as arbitrary as deciding to back out of a trap rather than pressing forward is…not good.

31 Staying Up Late — Oh boy, it’s a whole new era! This time we’re fighting through a modern city landscape. Hooray variety! At one point blowing up some explosive barrels will also blow open a nearby wall, giving access to some ammunition. Awesome! The city looks nice, and there's Bobs in suits running around the streets! I said to myself, "That's so cool!” Then one of them ran up to me and exploded, lol! Enemies are shooting at you from rooftops, there’s a giant mech trying to stop you…this level has some of the best combat in EMR.

32 Slime Raider II — You’re in a city that is supposed to be like Venice, Italy, because all the streets are flooded. But the Marathon engine sucks at underwater combat, and here it’s even worse than the default underwater combat because the bad guys have gained the ability to shoot through water! So they can see you and hit you while you’re underwater and helpless — and you can’t see through the water surface in order to fire back. Unfair! There is some impressive architecture in this level; there’s a nice depiction of a boat, and a neat library area where you can climb up on some bookshelves to access a ventilation system. There are also some devious traps that have to be avoided, because they cannot be outright destroyed. There is also a door that has to be destroyed with some TNT that you set to go off with a timer — great stuff. But overall I spent 99% of my time on this map trying to figure out where to go and what to do. There’s a “harmonics” area that can only be accessed by flipping a hard-to-find secret switch. Although it’s possible to complete the level without visiting the harmonics area, it requires bullet/grenade jumping. What a slog!

33 Down Under — It’s a fun combat-oriented level pitting the player against challenging opponents. There is only one bad thing. At one point you have to hit a switch in a dark area, but when you enter the area you get trapped because tough iron bars teleport in and block the exits. Baddies also teleport in, and there’s an un-killable projectile launcher in that same area that does an obscene amount of damage. Without “a priori” knowledge of the trap you have no chance of survival; it took me a dozen tries to finally get past it. The grand finale is a rooftop fight against a horde of enemies. I never thought I’d see the day when firing a chaingun on full auto would not deal enough damage to solve any combat problem, but that battle pushed the limits as to what was possible. I appreciate the challenge though, and I had fun trying different tactics until I found one that worked.

34 HQ Storm — The level starts off with a bland sewer system maze populated by annoying floating fish. Later a series of even more annoying crusher traps must be overcome. At least once you get into the main WorldSoft building there’s fun combat and good architecture. I have to hand it to the EMR devs, they really nailed it when it comes to creating a believable business office within the Marathon engine.

35 Like a GAT Out of Hell — We’ve set the auto destruct sequence and now it’s time to flee the city before armageddon! But the bad guys have erected force fields that block the way. So we’ll have to grab a hover bike and jump across the city rooftops to safety, watching the auto-destruct timer as we go. But the enemy have hover bikes too, and lots of troops, and they’ll be trying to stop us with everything they’ve got! What a freaking awesome chase/escape sequence! This is the only successful implementation of vehicle gameplay I’ve ever seen in Marathon. I cannot believe the EMR devs actually made this. Props to these mad lads, this is one of the most creative Marathon levels ever designed. Well done! It did take me a few tries to make the final jump into the law office; it was quite difficult and if you fail you have to start over, costing you precious time.

36 Double Vision — This level features enemies from every time period, as well as some crafty uses of “5D space” (areas that exist in the same location as other areas). In fact, the use of 5D space helps to camouflage some secret areas on the auto-map that would otherwise be easily visible. After much searching I found the Rug Rats secret area, and I think it was a reference to the show’s plot line of getting sucked down the drain in the bathtub? I dunno, I never really watched Rug Rats…There is an optional side quest involving rescuing a friendly AI, and I did choose to rescue him.

37 The Keep — There are tough golem enemies to fight, some annoying switch hunts, and a clever elevator that is actually a teleporter if you look at the auto-map closely.

38 Anahl Nathraq — Tiny, the AI we chose to save from Double Vision, makes a reappearance in this level. I wonder how the level would play out differently if I chose not to save him? I do appreciate player choices having an impact on gameplay, so Tiny’s reappearance is pretty neat. There’s some nice architecture on the spaceship and on the city streets, but you’ll be so busy trying to stay alive you might not notice it. The combat is brutally difficult, but I guess that’s what you’d expect from the final boss battle. Both Morgana and Mauvair are here, along with their toughest minions. For the grand finale, you have to escape from the spaceship before it blows up (there is a timer, of sorts). Wow, what fun!

39 Back to the Future IV — I think the level title is a joke, since there were only three “Back to the Future” movies. But it’s just a really nice epilogue. For once you’re not under pressure to save the universe, you can just relax and play some fun mini-games.

40 Visions of Bedrock — The final simulation is another vehicle level. It’s a race! So cool!

41 A Sword of Homecoming — The EMR devs put a lot of effort into their epilogue and it shows. The story is wrapped up in a satisfying manner, there’s some interesting dev terminals, and the campaign ends on a high note with a cinematic of you flying into a picturesque beautiful sunset. Awesome!