Reviews

1. Ribbons. This level was I guess supposed to be a stealth level. You start with no weapons and only a little health. There are no health rechargers or health canisters anywhere in the level, so you die in one hit! This made it the hardest level of the campaign. I just don’t understand where the stealth aspect was supposed to take effect. Enemy triggers seemed to be normal, it didn’t really seem to be possible to sneak past anyone without being detected. There are also two simulacrum Bobs next to some precious ammo. These enemy Bobs have lots of extra health, and while the terminals do warn you about them, it’s quite easy to blunder into them by accident and be instantly killed. Much of the level consisted of wandering around in underwater areas trying to figure out where to go, including one particularly nasty underwater area (“pump station”) with instant-kill platforms. This was my least favorite map of the campaign.

2. Satellite of love. Lack of ammo remains a problem, but at least now we have health rechargers! There’s some good combat, and I liked the circular architecture, which was appropriate for a satellite. Differential shading for this level was great, and helped accentuate the Jjaro tileset. The end has a bizarre gauntlet where you have to run past an un-killable fusion turret in order to hit a switch, which then disables the turret and allows you to proceed.

3. Harpooning. The ammo shortage has been resolved. There is a spectacular 5D space. Basically, there is a portal that starts out closed; it’s basically just a wall in the middle of nowhere. When you activate it, you can step through the “wall” to a whole new area. It’s really creative, and one of the best uses of the 5D space I’ve seen.

4. Melted Wires. Your goal is to activate an engine core that will turn on another 5D portal. There are several battles pitting Bobs vs. Pfhor, but both sides turn out to have a ton of reinforcements so player participation in these fights is actually just going to waste your small supply of ammo. In order to reach the engine core some difficult jumps across a lava lake must be made. The core itself features a decent platforming puzzle.

5. The Rift. Despite being the last level, it features the easiest combat. This is because you’ve got lots of ammo and easy access to health rechargers. Also, there are a lot of enforcers on this level, and they are hostile to the rest of the Pfhor, so enemy infighting is going to significantly thin out the ranks of the opposition. The campaign is unfinished (many of the terminals are missing pictures) but overall Marathon C might be worth your time if you want to see some examples of differential shading done right and some really cool 5D space.

Winter 1 has its own high res texture set that looks really good. There are also a lot of haxored enemies that provide some nice variety for the combat, which was mostly fun and fair. In the storyline both you and the Pfhor are investigating an ancient alien base, and you’ve got to beat the bad guys to whatever secrets can be plundered from the ruins. Despite the name, this campaign has nothing to do with snow, Christmas, winter, or anything similar. The name seems to be the result of the season when this collaborative Marathon mapmaking effort came together. My level by level analysis:

Flushed. My least favorite level, because you’re thrust into combat with nothing but your fists and a paltry amount of ammo. Thankfully, the level is small and short.

The Balance. It’s a huge sprawling alien facility. There’s a nice dichotomy between a system of rough caves populated by F’lickta, and the more organized, functional alien fortress. The ammo shortage from the previous level was quickly resolved and I had no more ammo problems going forward. Architecture was top notch.

Kick the Can. There’s a sewer system that connects to a bunch of above-ground areas. There are six different switches you have to hit which are in the above-ground areas. Thankfully, the terminals provide a decent map, and the level itself is easily traversable. The level flow for this campaign was really good; basically I just wandered around and shot bad guys. When I ran out of baddies to shoot my automap would point me to the next unexplored area, which was seldom far away.

Wishbone. Another good level that does a lot of things right. Terminals that provide useful information! Automaps that can actually be read by the player, because there aren’t huge amounts of overlapping polygons everywhere! A distinct lack of annoying puzzles and hidden switches! I have to mention these things because so many Marathon scenarios make those mistakes, and it’s nice to play a scenario where there is just some good, straightforward combat.

Seven Times Unlocked. My favorite level, the level design was superb. There's a central hub with health rechargers and pattern buffers, and 7 branches that are attached to the hub. Once you enter a branch you have to complete it before returning to the hub (or do some fancy grenade jumping to get back). Each branch has a specific theme to it. Like one branch has a bunch of snipers on ledges. Another branch has a simple platform puzzle. A third branch has a new type of Enforcer that attacks. Fun stuff!

Faktree. The theme behind this level is that there are some yellow lighted areas which you are warned not to step on. The first such area cannot be avoided, but it teleported in only a few weak baddies that I easily dealt with. The next yellow area could be avoided, but I was feeling so confident after overcoming the first yellow ambush that I deliberately stepped on it. “Those yellow areas don’t scare me!” I said. I immediately regretted my words and actions, as a massive teleport ambush commenced! It was a huge, difficult battle, and I died many times. But I was laughing about it, because I sure got my deserved comeuppance for my overconfidence! There was also a weird bug that happened when I went to use the x1 health recharger and it got stuck; I got a continuous recharging sound but no health. But reloading from an earlier save fixed the problem.

Airport Extreme. The final level has multiple objectives. Looking at it on the automap; everything is based off a giant central circular area, which is pretty cool. However, this level did have a lot of overlapping polygons, and that, coupled with its large size and numerous objectives, meant that it was the most difficult level to navigate, and I had to do a lot of backtracking over a large area. On the upside, the enemy does spring several clever ambushes upon the player as they progress. I was not a fan of the final battle. You do get a save terminal and x3 health going into it, which I appreciate. But then you’re thrust into combat against a major juggernaut and an infinite supply of super troopers. After much death and frustration on my part, I discovered I was just supposed to run past the bad guys, flip two switches, and smash a panel to win. It seemed kind of underwhelming for a final battle, and a player was highly unlikely to win without using “a priori” knowledge, which I don’t agree with. But overall, Winter 1 has a really solidly made campaign, and it’s well worth checking out!

While attempting to teleport out of the Moon Man level the game crashes. Normally in a case like this I’d just use the level skip cheat to bypass the problematic level and continue with the campaign (see my review for Marathon Aeon where just such a thing occurred) but with Operation Tantalus it’s so confusingly nonlinear I have no idea what the next level would be, or how the level progression even works! So I was never able to complete the campaign.

The obvious thing that stands out about this campaign is that it’s non-linear. At the end of the first level you’re given the choice of three different missions/levels to tackle. I chose one, then shortly thereafter I again got a choice of three new missions/levels to complete. Meanwhile, the number of intra-level and inter-level teleports was excessive, so it was very easy for me to get confused about where I had gone and where I needed to go.

I like giving the player meaningful choices. Player agency is good! But the non-linearity of this campaign quickly became more of a liability than an asset. Firstly, it was too complicated, I have no idea how it worked, and it was never explained. Was I making progress going through these levels, or were some of them kicking me back like in Marathon Infinity? I have no idea. I was just making random choices, since plot-wise nothing seemed to make any difference. For example, one time when I was offered my pick of three missions/levels, one of them was to raid an armory. Well that seemed like a good source of weapons and ammo, both of which are in short supply for this campaign, so I chose to go to the armory. Instead, the bad guys intercepted my teleport signal and sent me into an arena level where I had to waste a bunch of my precious ammo fighting tough enemies, and if I chose the wrong exit door the ammo-less level would reset and I’d have to play it again and lose even more resources!!! So my choices seemed to be mostly illusionary, not real. Also, I kept finding ammo for weapons I didn’t have. Presumably, if I had made different level choices, I’d have those weapons, but how was I supposed to know what choices were “best?”

Anyways, the first level starts out with a neat gimmick. You have a tough human marine as an ally to help you kill all the monsters on the level! How the dev got this ally to move around the map and (sometimes) kill things using the primitive Marathon AI I have no idea. Actually your ally will have to kill most of the baddies for the first half of the level, because there are almost no weapons and ammo on this map, which I’m guessing was a deliberate choice to force the player to stick with their ally. Unfortunately, the execution of this was flawed. There are hostile Bobs scattered across the level as a common enemy, and if (when) one of them damages the UESC marine, the marine will inexplicably start shooting at you!

This is a Marathon 1 campaign, so there is no ambient sound. For some reason the dev chose to include no music, either, so many of the levels seemed strangely quiet. There are new sounds for the weapons, enemies, and platforms, but the new enemy sounds were horrible, loud, ear-splitting shrieks that made me want to turn off the sound altogether! Many of the Pfhor enemies enemies had new color palettes and were tougher than their original counterparts, though the hardest part about the combat in this scenario was the lack of save terminals and shield rechargers.

Overall, it’s difficult to recommend this campaign in its current state. In order for it to be playable, the inter-level teleport crashes would need to be fixed. Also, because the level design and progression were super confusing, there needs to be either a hint guide, spoiler guide, in-game terminal explanation, or something similar so the player isn’t constantly lost. If this happens I will re-visit this review.

This is an action-packed campaign, but it has some major problems with the modern Aleph One engine. The biggest problem is that you’re going to have to use the level skip cheat to bypass level 7 (I go into more detail about that in my level-by-level analysis). Though the combat is generally fun, there are some questionable design choices, and Aeon was never finished. On the combat side, most of the enemies have been haxored and sport a new look and new capabilities. Aeon’s baddies present some nice variety; those looking for challenging combat will not be disappointed.

Graphically, Aeon is a mixed bag. In terms of the sheer variety of textures, Aeon is in a class by itself. It uses all the default Infinity textures, plus it poaches textures from a large number of third party scenarios. I don’t know if the author got permission to use those textures; hopefully he did! But the result is a curious and confusing sort of graphical hodgepodge that, aesthetically speaking, doesn’t look so good. In just one level you’ll see Jjaro textures next to Pfhor textures next to 3rd party medieval castle textures; there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, in fact in many cases it just seems to be variety purely for the sake of variety. There are also many, many doors placed in every level, but most of them will never open. My “tab” finger got worn out trying to figure out which doors were “legit” and which were nothing more than window dressing!

In terms of architecture there’s a lot of variation in elevation, and large numbers of polygons are used for even small areas. In some ways you could almost say that the levels are overbuilt, but the good news is that they are simple enough that they can be easily navigated, which is a huge plus in my book. There is some nice looking chapter artwork, and some new sounds/music that I think also came from other 3rd party campaigns. My level-by-level analysis (minor spoilers ahead):

1. Our Lives a Mimicry. At first glance this seems to be a plot exposition level, since you start out near a terminal that will take you to the next level. But if you take the time to explore a bit you’ll find lots of weapons and ammo, as well as some baddies to fight. At first I wasn’t happy about this, because it seemed that people who didn’t explore were getting heavily punished and might end up under-prepared due to their lack of stuff. But it turns out that this campaign is not stingy with either weapons or ammo, so my fears about unbalanced gameplay did not come to fruition. However, I was unhappy that there was one ammo cache in a cage that (apparently) could not be reached by any means. Taunting players with inaccessible ammo caches is never a good thing, though even Bungie was guilty of that sin.

2. Apoptosis. Right off the bat you’re dumped into a massive firefight between Bobs and Pfhor. At first I thought it was a pretty cool set piece battle where I could help turn the tide…until I realized that both sides were having an unlimited amount of reinforcements teleport in, so all my heroism was for naught, and I was just wasting ammo. Once that unfortunate fact had been established, it was a simple matter to explore and complete the rest of the level, which was small.

3. Founder Effect. More firefights. Better firefights! This was an easily navigated level that still provided interesting tactical opportunities for combat. Fighting against the buffed up new Pfhor enemies was fun. There were a few teleport ambushes in which bad guys teleported in directly behind the player, which I don’t agree with. On the whole, though, this was a really solidly designed level.

4. Eternal Lucid Dream. You’re assaulting an enemy base perched precariously on the side of a cliff. I liked the aesthetics, and the combat was intense. New enemy types were introduced, and they were tough! Unfortunately, the problem of enemies teleporting directly on top of the player did recur a few times. At one point the player is given two switches to toggle. One of them opens the path forward, but it is not set to “trigger only once”, so if the player gets confused about what switches they have hit, they might hit it again, closing the path forward. The fact that the other switch uselessly closes a nearby window just adds to the potential confusion. Switches that open the way forward should always be set to “trigger only once”! At another point I found an unmarked teleporter next to a staircase, the sole purpose of which was to teleport me a paltry two meters away if I should happen to wander into the area. I’m guessing that there was some kind of clipping problem with some polygons and so the dev didn’t want me traversing that area. But rather than fixing the problem, the dev came up with the rather bizarre solution of teleporting the player away from the offending polygons!

5. Pfherrous Oxide. A short level in which you’re tasked with grabbing a chip. A rather nasty ambush occurs shortly thereafter, but you’re explicitly warned about it in a terminal, so I’m OK with it.

6. The Rise and Fall of Digit. You’re dumped into the middle of a huge firefight. Hopefully you live long enough to get your bearings and use the nearby save terminal! After that it’s a fight through an impressive-looking river and temple area.

7. The Asphodel Meadows. Oh no! The game crashed on attempting to load this level! Even using the level skip cheat didn’t work. I had to level skip past this level to continue the campaign! After consulting knowledgeable people, I learned that this level will never open in modern Aleph One due to having too many lines/points/polygons/sounds.

8. In our Dreams Awake. Plot exposition.

9. Frameshift Mutation. Apparently some important plot points were revealed in the level that I had to skip, because now I have no idea what’s going on — some Bobs, Defenders, and Pfhor are shooting at me, but others are on my side??? OK, I looked it up, and apparently, some bioweapon was released that’s causing everyone to go crazy. In level 7 you have the choice to side with the infected or un-infected people. By level skipping to level 8 I started on the infected branching path. One last note: there was a big unfilled polygon near the initial save terminal that looks bad.

10. Vae Victis. You board a UESC ship, and it actually looks like a ship if you pull it up on the mini map! That is so cool. Architecture is good. A lot of the combat involves fighting Bobs at long range with pistols, which is a nice change from the normal close quarters combat focus. The biggest problem with this level is that there isn’t a single pattern buffer, and that, coupled with some unfair teleporter ambushes, made this level frustrating. It did have a catchy soundtrack though.

11. Jjaro jjaro Evolution. It’s a Rebellion level, and you start out with nothing but your fists to take on hordes of fighters, as well as a trooper and hunter. Yuck! Combat is absolutely brutal; the only health recharger and save terminal are at the start of the level and quickly become inaccessible. To make matters worse you’re fighting on a series of precarious lava ledges and it’s all too easy too strafe too far in one direction and fall into an inescapable lava pit. Towards the end of the level you end up fighting some extremely dangerous defenders and compilers that will shred your health in no time. With so little cover to work with you have to engage in what might colloquially be described as “door fuckery.” Open a door, take a few potshots at some aliens, close it before their return fire eviscerates you, rinse, repeat. At the end you’re teleported back to the main menu (even though the plot is clearly unfinished) so I guess that’s it for the “infected” story branch!

12. Blaze. The start of the un-infected story branch. Lots of firefights! One time one of the new infected compilers hit me so hard that I got knocked into a rock formation and couldn’t get out!

13. Lapsus Linguae. This level has some really nice lighting effects! Good combat too.

14. Words Which I Command. This is nothing more than a rehash of the level “Vae Victis” from the infected story branch. Only this time you’re fighting Pfhor in vacuum. Although the combat is easier, the total lack of any save terminal or oxygen recharger really sucks. There were a ton of terminals to read but who has the time when the O2 clock is constantly ticking down???

15. Asking A Shadow to Dance. You get a ton of ammo and health canisters in order to take on a huge horde of infected. Carnage ensues. Architecture is really impressive: Much of the fighting takes place on a huge spiral staircase that looks beautiful. Completing the level kicks you back to the main menu, even though the story is not finished, so I guess that’s the end of the non-infected story path. It’s probably years too late to make this observation, as the dev seems to have moved on, but I don’t see any reason why the storyline of Aeon couldn’t be completed just using the existing levels. 90% of the story had already been wrapped up; with just a few terminal re-writes the story could be considered fully completed.

16. More Dakka. This must be a secret level, though I have no idea how to get to it normally. I entered via the level skip cheat. It is identical to level 6, but with a lot more combat. I wasn’t able to beat it though. A telepad took me to a cavern area with a lot of baddies. Once they had been disposed of, I found a pattern buffer, two flavor terminals, a non-functional terminal, a locked door, and a chip insertion outlet. But there was no chip anywhere on the level that I could find, and in any case once you take that telepad you can’t backtrack. The end of the level was probably behind that locked door, but with no way to open it…I had to give up. Perhaps the player was expected to already have a chip with them when they entered the level?

17. Illumination. This is multiplayer version of level 15. It’s based on a big circular arena with lots of opportunities to shoot at people from different elevations, which is good. But it’s a big map that would work best with 4+ players, and finding such a multiplayer Marathon game in the year 2024 is gonna be tough.