You know what the single biggest, most common problem is with Marathon levels? Being lost with no idea of where to go or what to do. This leads to downtime, and downtime leads to boredom! Boredom sucks!

KTA IV has a simple but effective solution to kill boredom where it stands.

Each level is very small and simple (less than 100 polygons), and there is no plot to slow you down. It’s pure, 100% carnage, because in order to activate the teleporter to go to the next level you have to…well, the scenario is entitled “Kill Them All,” so it’s pretty self explanatory.

But the action is about as streamlined as it gets, with no downtime, and no getting lost.

Because there are a whopping 52 levels, they are divided into six different chapters. The first level acts as a sort of hub, allowing you to play the chapters in any order. It is probably best to play them in numerical order, because the difficulty level does ramp up in the later chapters.

Each level is a Rebellion level, meaning you start with no weapons and little health. This keeps things fresh because you never know what resources will be available in a particular level. It also ensures the difficulty cannot become too easy or too hard based upon long-term resource acquisition.

A large amount of authors contributed to this, which is nice because it means there’s a lot of variety in the level design. I’ll just mention a few levels I found noteworthy:

“Power Word Kill” is a level that’s all about the rocket launcher. You get tons of rockets and the high ground, and down below you are large concentrations of enemies just waiting to be exploded. It’s the best case scenario for everyone who loves rockets.

“The limacon” has a truly bizarre architectural design. Pulsating lighting adds to the effect, and a huge battle against invisible compilers is just icing on the cake.

“Purple Haze” sets you on a small island with a central building. Opening one of the building’s doors will pit you face to face with a horde of powerful enemies, and the small available battle area means you’ll need to make good choices about where to fight and when to run.

“Polygons, Platforms, and Duct Tape” features a central room with a pool of water in the middle. As the player explores the level hordes of enemies will be released, and some of them will inevitably fall into the deepest parts of the central water pool where they will become stuck. This caused me some consternation because I knew I had to kill all the enemies, but there were so many baddies stuck at the bottom of the pool I was certain I would suffocate before I could punch them all to death. Plus, that would be really time consuming and boring. Later I found a flechette that could fire underwater and hasten the process, but still it just seemed like sloppy level design. Finally, at the end of the level, it was revealed that the two water pits were in fact platforms that would be raised so that all the trapped enemies would be released to fight again. So the water pit traps were not unintentional, as I first suspected, but I still think that this could probably have been handled in a better way.

“Victoria” is a level that’s all about the shotgun. Now in Bungie’s campaigns shotgun ammo was rare enough that most players would carefully hoard it, using it only in the direst of situations. But in this level your only weapon is a shotgun, and ammo is plentiful, so you finally get to go crazy with this seldom-used but powerful weapon. It certainly helps that the level features close quarters fighting with large clumps of enemies, which is where the shotgun performs best!

This combat-focused campaign is great fun, and well worth playing!