You might like Marathon 2 more, it’s often bright, open, and garish
stay away from marathon infinity tho lol
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yeah I also don’t really like this feeling at all, the first PC game I ever got really into as a kid was tie fighter which while very much a PC game of its era is also the exact opposite in many ways
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i like it a lot it but my exposure to doom wasn’t more than seeing a level or two at a friend’s house until college when i finally played through the whole thing. it reminded me of of a dungeon crawler at that point.
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I’ve been thinking that, moreso Marathon than Doom, the vibes we’re talking about come from some reverence or direct lineage to dungeon crawl aesthetics, which seem to always rely on the production of at least a sense of dire tension through exhaustion and mystery, which is, if anything really is, fundamentally horror.
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well knowing it’s not just me and it’s supposed to feel that way restores my resolve to finish these someday, hah
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the levels are really cramped and sparse haha. The way that save points are distributed it’s really easy to overextend and have to redo whole parts. The fact that you can’t autosave when you start a new level and have to redo parts of the last level is pretty cruel. Ammo carrying over from one level to the next makes balancing really difficult, I have more grenades than I do bullets for the assult rifle. Sometimes there’s an arena where you’re swarmed by enemies and have to get around them. This is around the time I always quit Marathon and play something else. I guess if I had a mac in the 90’s i would be more committed.
That said the lighting and mood of the levels, especially early parts of Couch Fishing, are really good.
this is really just making me want to make my own doom wad I’ve been thinking about for a while.
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You can totally just punch everything with your fists. That actually works most of the time and is a really satisfying way to play the game.
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make sure you get a good run in before you punch it feels so good
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Yeah you do considerably more damage if you do it while running at full speed. It’s so cool that someone thought of that. Where is the Bungie that made that. That Bungie needs to be making games again.
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idk i’ve found plenty of running into and punching stuff in d2, that’s a strong play for synthoceps arc titans in 2025
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Doom and marathon and other games that come from this era of labyrinthine level design are dungeon sprinters
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Pathways into Darkness was a dungeon crawler
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fun fact I believe this is also true in Halo CE. (thank you to the old school halo LAN players for finding this one out)
halo 1 is so good
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I am now officially glad I failed my programming interview at Bungie.
Twice.
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I failed a narrative technical designer interview there. 8 hours on 2 hours of sleep. good riddance
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i remember a map on halo 2 with a lot of ramps and maybe low gravity and i was decking my mates with one-hit sprint punches it was funnn
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this is why the vidmaster’s oath is
I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level except Total Carnage, to never use Caps Lock as my “run” key, and to never, ever, leave a single Bob alive.
you can carry an unlimited amount of ammo on TC, you should be trying to group 'em up to use MA-75 grenades, you should be punching everything possible. naturally this makes the game even harder (try the first level on TC, you will laugh) but i don’t know i’ve always enjoyed the completely psychotic way you have to play marathon on the hardest difficulty
you may also consider backtracking to save stations to save before the end of a level if possible. that way you’re only killing time walking to the end terminal instead of replaying encounters. obviously sometimes bungie knows you’re going to do this and won’t let you or Leela/Durandal automatically teleports you out but yeah.
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Neither High nor Low was the hardest map I’ve completed yet. But it might be because I missed the health station at the beginning. Not sure if that opened up much later, or I just walked past it… but damb!
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I love how insane the map designs are in marathon
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