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When I think of FPS royalty, a few videogames spring to mind. Doom. Quake. Half-Life. Wolfenstein. GoldenEye. We wouldn’t have the powerhouses of Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, and the overlooked Titanfall 2 without these classics. The same goes for Bungie’s Halo, and while the studio has moved onto the greener pastures of Destiny, Marathon still stands tall as an iconic sci-fi classic. No, I’m not talking about Bungie’s upcoming PvP reimagining, but the classic ‘90s trilogy. It’s a shooter all FPS fans need to play, and the second game in the series just came to Steam for free.
Bungie already gave its blessing for the Aleph One open source team to release the original Marathon on Steam earlier this year, and now the sequel, Marathon 2: Durandal, is available as well.
If you’ve never played Bungie’s Halo progenitor, it’ll immediately look like old-school Doom. The FPS game trilogy has the same grungy yet vibrant style, but Marathon was also one of the initial shooters to let you aim with your mouse as well. Marathon is a slice of gaming history that everyone needs to experience, just like with Doom. You’re not going to be wall running or doing 360 shots, but there’s an irresistible charm to Marathon 2 that I can’t help but adore. You also can’t argue with a free Steam game, no matter how old it is.
With both a single-player campaign and multiplayer, Bungie released the Marathon trilogy’s source code back in the year 2000. From here the Aleph One team made enhanced versions of the trilogy for free, but now you can easily add the first two games to your Steam library. Marathon and Marathon 2 have widescreen HUD support, positional audio, 60 fps interpolation, and even 3D filtering. So while you can play the classics in their original glory, new players can enter Marathon’s world with all the modern trimmings.
The classic Marathon trilogy is quite different from Bungie’s new upcoming take on the series, as we wait for the Marathon release date. Three players squad up in this PvP extraction shooter version of the game, with no single-player element to speak of.
Classic Marathon 2 is available on Steam right now, and you can play it for free here. You can also download the Xbox Live Arcade graphics pack for free, giving you another choice in how you want to play.
Marathon isn’t all that’s worth revisiting from the birth of PC gaming, as there are plenty of excellent old games that still hold up today, and loads of space games to scratch that sci-fi itch as well.
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