Marathon 2 Demo

Marathon 2 is the sequel to classic Macintosh FPS Marathon. It was made released for the Macintosh in November of 1995 and PC in September of 1996 by Bungie software, most famous for the Halo games from 2001 on.

The story so far from the readme file from the demo:

"In a remote and now half-forgotten time, the human colony ship
Marathon set out from Sol for Tau Ceti, 94 light years distant.
The year 2794 found this fledgling colony in its seventh year,
still suffering many hardships but striving for success.

That year, humanity made First Contact with the Pfhor, a ruthless
race of slavers. The Pfhor attack came swiftly and without warning.

The Marathon was disabled in orbit and the colony overrun. Having
been sent up to the Marathon in the first hours of the attack, you
were the sole colonist left to face the onslaught. But you weren¹t
entirely alone...

Damaged, one of the Marathon¹s onboard synthetic intellects,
Durandal, struggled to organize a defense of the stricken vessel.
Another, Tycho, was destroyed. The S¹pht compilers ( cybernetic
slaves of the Pfhor ) invaded the Marathon and rebuilt him,
but in the process Tycho went insane.

Durandal struck a deal with the S¹pht. In return for their
freedom, the compilers agreed to rebel against their masters
and give control of the Pfhor ship to Durandal.

After teleporting a boarding party to the giant Pfhor scoutship,
Durandal transferred himself into its massive computer array and
assumed complete control. Fearing imminent Pfhor retaliation,
Durandal left Tau Ceti, taking the Rebel S¹pht with him.

Three Terran months later, the Pfhor armada arrived at Tau Ceti
and razed the planet to bedrock.

Seventeen years after the dust settled on Tau Ceti, Durandal
found the lost homeworld of the S¹pht..."

Gameplay:

Pretty good, you face a variety of Pfhor baddies, with about five weapons (Your fist, a .44 pistol, a assault rifle with a built in grenade launcher, a double barreled shotgun, and a fusion pistol.) You go around completing tasks as Durandal assigns them via consoles. The demo has three levels, from the first half of the full version.

Aging:

It hasn't aged to badly, it's still a pretty fun but tough FPS. Limited resolution doesn't really bother me.

Sound:

The demo has a lack of active music going, but the weapons and ambient noise makes up for it. Some rocking tunes asides from the kick ass intro tune could have helped.

Overall:

Marathon 2, is a good FPS that is still pretty fun and challenging to play. It is now an open source game as Bungie released the source code for all three games in the trilogy in 2005. I found the demo on CNET again like my last demo.

Why haven't I talked much about anything, well it's pretty good, and I like to keep it sweet. I promise my next review will be more than half assed.

Well see you next time at Anicent Demos and Shareware.

Footage from Marathon 2 Shareware: