Apotheosis is worth playing for many reasons. The most obvious of these is how visually stunning it is. The architecture and textures look great and there are tons of incredible details everywhere. You can see in some of the screenshots where hypersleep has placed scenery objects with exactly the right lighting, at the right distance, to make them look like real wires or vines hanging down. In another instance, a huge turret object raises up at the edge of the ship. Objects like that in particular, such as the space ship from Infinity, can do more harm than good, but here hypersleep makes the most of them. Fires give off smoke and sparks; alien plants emit pollen. Even more amazingly, much of this is straight in the engine and could have been done in 1996. It's just never been done so well as in Apotheosis.

Animations are also breathtaking. Hunters block your shots with their armor; MOAHs absorb them using a force field; enforcers raise their weapons with deliberation; giant bugs skitter around fluidly. Then you have boarding parties blasting through walls; you have sparking gouges in metal. The list goes on and on. You already know this is Marathon's most beautiful scenario and you have to see it firsthand to understand just how good it looks.

I like the soundtrack and the sounds as well, although I'll get into the latter shortly. The soundtrack is subtle enough not to ruin the immersion. The sounds are all very different from what we know and on their own sound really beautiful.

All of this creates a unique atmosphere. Maybe some of the similarities in palette make me say this, but I think the scenario that comes closest is Rubicon. There's a grit here that you don't really see in any other scenario - ironically, something you wouldn't get without the polish and care the Apotheosis team put into the game's presentation.

The gameplay itself is good, too. Levels, although they can feel huge, are fairly linear and hard to get lost in. When I say "linear" I don't mean it in a bad way. You know where you need to go, either because a terminal laid it out clearly or because the design is very intuitive. I feel a little bit like I'm on rails, but I can't complain too much about it. When I listen to a great record, I'm not going to whine that I didn't pick the track order myself.

There are some things that keep this from being a "perfect" game for me. Most of them involve the game's difficulty. I played on TC and so expected a difficult experience. I quit playing the original out of frustration, but it's not so extreme here. It's small things. For example, the weapons for the most part look utilitarian, reinforced, heavy-duty, but in a lot of cases feel just a little too weak. A lot of the time I feel like I've almost gotten my ass kicked by a gang of 3-4 hunters. This isn't my usual experience. Maybe if I weren't seeing "fighters," "hunters," "troopers," and the like, I would adjust my expectations. The large scrabbling bugs planetside don't make me feel this way.

Ammo is a bit scarce at the beginning, to the point that secrets are almost required. I had to get into the habit of walking into just about every corner so that I could snag the occasional single clip of whatever was there. This definitely isn't the end of the world, but it can be frustrating before you get used to it.

And maybe that's part of my problem: I still haven't gotten used to things. Believe it or not, the most frustrating example of all for me comes from the sounds. I've said I love the sound design, and that's true. The sounds are all great in isolation. But I've found it difficult to identify what exactly is going on in my environment when I can't see it. More than in a lot of other similar games, Marathon relies on this - which is why it works so well without music. I'm not sure what it is about the sounds in Apotheosis that give me such trouble. Are they all crowding a certain frequency? Does stereo or some similar effect throw off what is otherwise a point-based composite sound image? I don't know. I do know that I've been taken by surprise again and again when a huge volley of fire seemed to come out of nowhere, or when multiple enemies walked right up to me from the side while I was too occupied to look at the motion sensor. Item pickups are also hard to gauge. How much did I just grab? Did I just waste that health can by getting it too early? I think in this case I might be too accustomed to the earsplitting sounds from the original games, but maybe they seem louder because they stand out better from the mix and not because of their amplitude.

Finally, in the early ship sections, I had a lot of trouble getting stuck on architectural features. I tend to back up a lot, or slide along walls until I can sidle into an opening, while I dodge incoming fire. For some reason, this bit me in the ass quite a few times. I would end up in a corner or maybe would slide right into the aesthetic wall damage, getting stuck just long enough that I got killed. Either I adjusted or the levels stopped having this type of architecture. Just something to look out for.

Overall, Apotheosis is an amazing achievement. You might not have the same trouble I've outlined above, and I would be just fine with that. I never thought I would see a Marathon scenario that I could recommend just based on "superficial" elements, but I think Apotheosis offers an experience above and beyond that provided by a typical Marathon game. I stopped caring much about story long ago, and aside from the above quirks, it's been a pleasure getting to know Apotheosis. Will I play it again any time soon? Probably not. Was it worth doing once? Definitely. Try it out.