Marathon and Board Games hit XBLA
by Richard Mitchell 
{ Aug 1st 2007 at 9:30AM }
It's Wednesday and that means it's time for some brand new Arcade goodness. This week, you have two games from which to choose (which often seems to be the case these days). You can bring home a little slice of Bungie history with Marathon: Durandal, or you can enjoy some Vision Cam enabled chicanery with Spyglass Board Games. Both games feature multiplayer fun with Marathon offering splitscreen, system-link, and Live play (both co-op and versus), while Spyglass Board Games offers the aforementioned Vision Cam 1-on-1 play. Marathon will cost you 800 Microsoft bucks and Spyglass Board Games will set you back 400. Which will it be for you? Or, dare we ask, are you crazy enough to buy both?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
PacoDG @ Aug 1st 2007 9:53AM
Man, after getting all those extra points from that Circuit City deal, I am very tempted on both games (I am a Chess geek as well as FPS lover)
DjDATZ @ Aug 1st 2007 9:50AM
I won't be getting either...I'm kinda like Dusty...I don't much like arcade games...
rockeranimefreak @ Aug 3rd 2007 11:22AM
Marathon since i want to play it in hd :) i always liked the alephone versions! :D
ridestowe @ Aug 1st 2007 9:57AM
marathon gave me a wicked headache, all the moving around was so abrupt-feeling, its age shows.
in other news, where the hell is dreger, i havent seen him on in forever!
Zeouterlimits @ Aug 1st 2007 10:59AM
I downloaded Marathon earlier, and I'm liking it so far. I can see why people are complaining, but oh well.
Techno-Kid @ Aug 1st 2007 10:14AM
Marathon is extremely awesome. The new survival mode is great, I spent my free time this morning using nothing but the dual shotguns and murdering many aliens.
I might be biased since I'm an old school Marathon fan but seriously buy this game right the fuck now.
xenocidic @ Aug 1st 2007 10:22AM
I'm thinking about getting the chess, but I'm worried if the average XBL user will stick around long enough to finish a game.
inferno3387 @ Aug 1st 2007 10:28AM
Woah, the Board Games are stupid as hell, dont buy them!!
xenocidic @ Aug 1st 2007 10:44AM
agreed. no local multiplayer for the board games is really stupid.
DaiMac79 @ Aug 1st 2007 11:05AM
I literally waited until 4 this morning to download this, I can't wait to get home so I can play some online DM. Its definitely a bit bright/shiny, takes some getting used to if you're used to M2 in Aleph One, but overall I like it. I also really like the controls, only thing I would add is the option to have lookup/down as buttons instead of glance left/right, but thats a very minor quibble as aiming with the stick works ok. One other thing I noticed is that since Marathon has a limited vertical angle (only like 60 degrees up and down originally if I remember) they compensated for that in this version with a weird scaling effect, let an enemy get right in your face and then look at his head and you'll see what I'm talking about.
But yeah, if you haven't bought this game yet I'll accept that as a tacit admission that you are:
A) Completely Broke
B) 360 is down/offline
C) So afraid of me owning you online you're about to wet yourself.
***END OF MESSAGE***
Toph @ Aug 1st 2007 11:15AM
Marathon's demo was boring, and I haven't yet tried the Spyglass demo so I can't say.
I guess I'm still waiting in the wings for Castle Crashers, but also now for Undertow, Hexic 2 and whatever else. I'd love to see Geometry Wars Galaxies hit XBLA!
Pasz @ Aug 1st 2007 11:49AM
#9
your option B fits me really well, i was soo pumped to stay up all night with my friend and download this, then a stupid lightting storm sturck my house a few days ago and it fried my usb port and now i need to spend 100 bucks to fix it.
do you think they would catch me if i just faked the 3 red lights so i get it fixed free?
chenry @ Aug 1st 2007 12:28PM
Oh Durandal, how I missed you!
ccc @ Aug 1st 2007 12:31PM
Well, After buying Marathon and playing it for the first time I gotta say, Its ok. The hd visuals actually make my eyes hurt when Im up against walls and thats odd, seems how I have never had that problem in a fps b4 and Ive played about all of them. Maybe I'll have to adjust the gamma down.
I find the x and y button used as a quick look left and right is completely retarded.
The fact that U cant reload(unless there is a way I dont know of) when U want is really stupid considering alot of times I'm entering a new room and have only 1 or 2 bullets left in my clip but cant do a thing about it but march in there and have to reload right away in the very begining of combat.
There is no jump button at all. To compensate for this, there is this retarded auto jump when U move off a ledge that is the height of the ground U were walking on. Thats an alright idea but, when U land there is a second or so of this floating thing going on because of it.
I dislike the excessive amount of reading involved in the game. How much memory would it have taken to nar8 the game for us if clips were taken out? Like less than 1 meg?
As far as the Multiplayer goes, it was more blah than anything, U kill with ease just like halo and thats all I got to say about that. The achievment descriptions are really vague and just for the record, achievments that give U these off number gamerscores are really gay.7 GS? 21,14? WTF guys? Whoever is smoking crack at your job needs to be fired.
This game,even though it has dual wielding,hd graffix,looking up and down and all the other glam, is not as good as Doom at all. Remake the graffix in Final Doom in hd and this game is forgettable. As far as comparing this game to Duke Nuk'em, this game dosn't even deserve mentioning. Despite all this, as far as arcade games go, this is well above average for what has been comming out in the arcade as of late.
I give this game an 8 out of 10 on a scale for live arcade games. It may have issues to me but its definatly worth 10 dollars.
Spitkicker @ Aug 1st 2007 12:58PM
Well seeing as I own all other 75 arcade games...I had to buy both this morning. Honestly I have been waiting for Chess for XBLA for a LONG TIME...so I am happy about that..Marathon? Of course!
Quick Fixer @ Aug 1st 2007 1:03PM
I think ccc's analysis is right on the money, minus the pejoratives; I assume based on his reaction that he's never played the original Marathon series. For those of us who have, the 'retarded' features are part of the game's charm; it's a retro game, make no mistake. While it's good to see how far FPS games have gone in the intervening years, it really takes me back to have to decide if it's alright to waste those two bullets to be ready for the next challenge. To answer your question, ccc, there is no manual reload button; if you want to reload, waste the bullets into a wall. You can, however, change the controller settings to re-map x and y to something more useful than 'glance.'
I was happy with the game, though I wish the netcode were slightly better. The XBox Live online experience with this game has far more lag and disconnect than most I've played. But overall, it's a great trip down memory lane.
Richard Mitchell @ Aug 1st 2007 1:28PM
ccc,
There's a reason the Gamerscore is doled out in multiples of 7.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie_Studios#Bungie_mythos
ccc @ Aug 1st 2007 3:23PM
Halo Bible, are U kidding me?
Next thing U know people are gonna get tax exemptions for loving Halo.
DaiMac79 @ Aug 2nd 2007 10:27AM
ccc: "I dislike the excessive amount of reading involved in the game. How much memory would it have taken to nar8 the game for us if clips were taken out? Like less than 1 meg?"
Quite frankly you probably shouldn't have downloaded this game if thats a problem for you, as its a major point of appeal for many of us who owned the original game. I've seen the comment online that the terminal text (from Marathon 1 in particular) could be printed out as one long document and make an enjoyable read for people who've played the game, and I fully agree. Plus, not only was voice acting not in Freeverse's budget most likely, but I wouldn't want the story ruined by low quality voices.
I'm a little mixed on this version now though, having been very disappointed by my first stab at netplay last night. Very laggy, and no options that I saw to force players you host into similar settings, like AlephOne does. Hoping I go home tonight and plug my modem directly into Xbox this will help, but we'll see.