Prelude

So the year is 1993, and some crazy bastards from Texas calling themselves id Software have just put out a game for the PC called Doom. A game that plays from the first person perspective, has variable floor and ceiling heights, and is a Technological marvel made on an engine programmed by naias omniscient technomancer of the far beyond realms and actual, real life hyper genius John Carmack.

Now let’s say you are a video game developer who just saw this happen, saw how popular it got and also you have connections with Apple, and therefore Mac, a platform that at this time cant run doom, and therefore is a platform that is lacking a first person shooter to give its user base. Well, if you can imagine that, you can imagine what it was like to be working on Marathon in 1994.

Nowadays, we obviously know Bungie for the Halo and Destiny franchises, but back in the Day they were tied inextricably to the Mac platform and were probably ids main competitors, at least when it came to platform against platform. Now, Marathon wasn’t bungie’s First FPS game, that was Pathway Into Darkness, but Pathway Into Darkness is a fantasy game for one thing, and the other is that it plays more like an FPS RPG, with stats and an inventory, than a proper FPS.

Ok so this is all cool, I hear you say, but why are we talking about Marathon now? Well, for one thing Halo Infinite, a game series that bungie did following Marathon and a game that shares some interesting similarities with their previous works, is launching in just a week, and also coming up is Bungie’s 30th anniversary, which will be celebrated in Destiny 2 with a bunch of cosmetics based on their older games, Such as Marathon.

Marathon launched in 1994 for Mac only 3 months after Doom 2, and the same day as Rise of the triad, which did some of the exact same things Marathon did on a far more primitive engine (RoTT was made on the Wolfenstein 3d engine, where are marathon runs on something akin to dooms engine) kinda blowing the wind out of the games sails.

So with all that in mind does marathon hold up? well….

Port Wars

So Marathon ran on mac. Ok cool, I own a MacBook… yeah no. It ran on macs from 1994, not modern ones. If you have an original marathon copy and no retro machine to play it on, well sucks to be you. And, let’s not forget, I am a writer for a niche games website. I can’t afford to go out and buy a Retro Mac just to play some game from 1994.

So, source ports. A source port is a fan made engine based on the source code of a video game. Most older FPS have source ports, because they just would not run on modern hardware if they didn’t. Probably one of the Best Known is GZDoom, a source port of Doom that not only runs the original 2 games, Master Levels and Final Doom, but also runs Hexen, Heretic and strife. Other notable source ports include EDuke for Duke Nukem and build games, Chocolate doom for Doom but with a more vanilla feel than GZ offers, and Slavdoom, for if you want the game to run on Vodka.

Luckily For me, rather than having to wade through a hundred different Source Ports for Marathon there is only one. Aleph One is technically based off the marathon 2 game engine, but it is able to run all 3 games fine. Also Aleph One is downloaded with the games themselves, you dont have to get the files stand alone. Bungie have officially endorsed Aleph One which is why they are able to do this, but this means that these 3 games are all now free to play. And they run on PC

Yes, not only does Aleph one let you play the games for free, it lets you play the games, for free, on PC. which I did. I am a rebel.

Last couple of things before moving onto the actual game: you’re gonna need to adjust a few settings. Most of this can be done in game using the built in preferences menu. Aleph One includes key rebinding, renderer option for Software rendering or Open GL, and a suite of other features in the game itself, as well as an updated HUD which plays a lot nicer with modern sensibilities. What it does not have… is an FOV slider. And this is a problem. The default FOV both on the original HUD and the updated HUD is shockingly low, sitting around 60 on the updated HUD and even lower on the original. To change this, you have to go into the game files, into plugins and manually change the FOV in the FOV.MML file. This wont break anything (I had mine set to 120 and all I saw was a cutoff on the rocket launcher) but its a bit of a tedious step that could easily be an in-game option

Another issue to flag up is the alien gun, dropped by the Enforcer enemy late game. For me at least, the game would freeze the screen but keep running fine in the background when the weapon is picked up or equipped, making it borderline unplayable. I am not sure if this is a source port issue or a me issue but its is annoying enough to flag up here and did, on occasion, lead to death. [UPDATE: according to the people over at the Marathon discord, this is potentially caused by using the enhanced HUD in software rendering Mode]

Welcome to marathon

Marathon itself is set nearly entirely aboard the UESC Marathon, a ship orbiting the colony planet of Tau Ceti IV. The ship is boarded by Aliens called the P’fhor, and the player, taking control of a cyborg security guard, “Mjolnir Recon Number 54”, is tasked with taking them out. Along the way you will also encounter some other enemies that are members of other races the P’fhor have subjugated, such as the S’pht, the Wasp and the Hulk.

You are aided by the ship’s AI, Leela, who guides you through the first few missions, before being overridden by Durandal, the ship’s other AI who has gone insane and developed self awareness. The story is… there and it’s not bad, but it’s also not amazing. Durandal is an interesting character, never fully entering an “antagonist” space within the narrative but flip flopping constantly between being an aid and a threat. Leela is boring, and I think Bungie knows this as Cortana from halo is pretty much a reworked Leela who is a way more compelling character with her banter. The plot is easily ignored though, there isn’t much really going on and its all told via computer terminal, so if you just want to blast aliens, go for it.

Unlike a lot of its peers, marathon tends to have level objectives that need to be completed to advance. Some of these are simply “reach the exit terminal”, but others are different. Some missions, especially those featuring the Friendly BoB Npc’s are based around merciless extermination of the P’fhor, with you only able to move on once every last alien is dead. Others, specifically the ones set on the alien spaceship, require you to explore the entire level, sans secrets, before making your way to a window to teleport out.

That’s another thing Marathon does: teleports. Levels don’t end with a stats screen, you teleport out of the last level and into the next one. While this does not create an unbroken world like Strife would later try, it does lead to the game feeling much more like a single adventure than a set of levels.

As for the levels, they are fine. I don’t think marathon ever really does anything exceptional with its levels but for what they are they work acceptably. One of my biggest gripes though is the switch puzzles. Slightly too frequently throughout the game you need to turn switches on and off at precise times to make it across gaps. This can be frustrating, and really doesn’t tend to gel well with how you play the game.

Guns, Guns, Guns

Marathons Guns are a little different to what your probably expect from the arsenal of a boomer shooter. For one thing, they all reload, which was unheard of at the time. Sure, the super shotgun from Doom Reloads, and 2 years later Duke Nukem would reload his Glock after every 9 shots, but that was it. In Marathon, everything needs to reload.

You start with a Pistol and a fist. The Pistol is pretty good. Not the most accurate thing but far from inaccurate and can be used akimbo for double fire rate. Your Fist… is a Fist, it sucks, don’t use it. 

The first weapon you are likely to get after that is the Assault Rifle which doubles as a grenade launcher and it will become your best friend. The grenade portion… doesn’t really function like a grenade launcher, the rounds fly mostly straight and don’t bounce, meaning its more like a low damage Rocket launcher, but what they can do is press buttons. That’s right, we are using grenades to flick a switch. Also you can grenade jump with it, which… feels like a bug honestly? Like there are places where you are clearly meant to use it to escape pits for example, but it never feels intentional.

Also there’s the Plasma Pistol, which can fire both a standard shot for higher damage than the base Pistol or can be… charged with alt fire to send off a higher damage projectile? Look I get it’s not plagiarism if you do it to yourself but gees.

There’s the Flamethrower, which is great against lower tier enemies but does bugger all to anything that is even slightly armoured, the Rocket Launcher that cant press buttons, and “The Alien Weapon”, which as previously discussed makes the game unplayable so I barely used it. [UPDATE: Again, I am a dingus, this is caused by running the game with the advanced HUD in software mode.]

Enemies

Your main enemies are going to the P’fhor. They come in a number of varieties. Purple and green armoured P’fhor are melee only, with purple having a chunkier health bar. Red and blue can shoot a projectile attack, but are otherwise identical. There the troopers, who wear Space suits and have an assault rifle. There are green and purple troopers, with the purple ones MAINING THE GRENADE LAUNCHER ALT FIRE OH GOD JESUS CHRIST! Then there are the hunters, h0eavily armoured P’fhor who shoot green stuff at you. 2 colour variations, brown and green, but this is just health. If they are killed with an explosive weapon they blow up, so thats nice.

Finally there are the Enforcers, who drop the alien gun that haunts my nightmares, and the Juggernauts, who show up in one level and are flying tanks which shoot 2 homing rockets. They are extremely tough and, while you only encounter them in a single level, its a level where you are required to kill all 4 of them to move on.

Along with the P’fhor are a number of sub races of aliens. Wasps come in swarms but are relatively weak, the Hulks are large with high health but have no ranged attacks and show up in a grand total of 2 out of the 27 levels, and The S’pht are floating cloaks that launch orbs as you. A word on the S’pht: if you are hit with their attack, the screen will glitch, which could be a major issue for players with photosensitive epilepsy, so maybe dont play the game if you have that, as they are a common enemy that appears throughout the whole game.

Finally there are the Simulacrum, BoB clones who run at you and explode. They can be differentiated in this game because they say “thank god its you” rather than “they are everywhere” and also they all were green. Shoot the green BoB’s.

The curse of 2.5D

Marathon, like all other games of its era, isn’t true 3D. These games are considered 2.5D, and have a number of limitations. However, Marathon gets past some of these. For one thing, you can look up and down, although due to how this is rendered looking up gives you a fish-eye lens effect, similar to games on Ken Silverman’s Build engine. Another trick is that Marathon can handle room over room. Doom notably cant, and to be fair marathon probably can’t either. It’s all smoke and mirrors using teleporters and fake lifts. However, this is still technically impressive for the time, so I am not knocking it.

Summary

Marathon is a fine game. Its perfectly competent and when playing through it you can see some of the building blocks bungie would go on to use to craft Halo. however I could never shake this feeling playing it that the whole reason for its success was because it was for mac.

Mac users didn’t have anything else, and while marathon is good, it lacks a level of polish and skill that games like Doom have. I think if your a fan of Destiny or Halo, yeah, you should probably check out Marathon, if only to see where they came from. But for the average person? Probably skip it

Bungies 30th is coming up and I plan to make it though the other 2 games in the marathon series soon.

If you are interested in playing Halo Infinite or Destiny 2, you can do so on Xbox series X/S, which you can register interest in at go2games.com

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The post Marathon: Cyborgs and aliens first appeared on Get2Gaming.

NBA 2K22: Arcade Edition app is set to be released with the launch date being confirmed.

NBA 2K22 has been available for just over a month with the game releasing September 10^th. The NBA community have been divided on the release with a clear opinion not being set. Some enjoy it as it is a newly updated NBA game whereas others feel “the game adds nothing to the series” specifying on there not being many additions from 2K21. With the NBA season fast approaching, NBA 2K announce the release of the Arcade Edition for the season start, October 19^th with hopes of impressing the community as a whole.

With the NBA 2K Mobile App already available for Android and iOS devices. The Arcade Edition app is set to be more of an advanced experience bringing a great feeling to console, PC and mobile devices. The app intends to allow players to engage more, portably and anywhere they would like. NBA 2K plan on bridging the gap between the mobile experience and the experience of playing on console and PC. NBA announced the return of the Arcade Edition for this years’ adding that there will be significant differences.

Although the Mobile App is available on both iOS and Android, the Arcade Edition App will exclusively be available on iOS devices. With the release so close, despite the fact it is free of charge. It will cost reportedly a little more than 6.3 GB in file size if no patch or adjustment is made during release.

The Arcade Edition App will include My Career and The Association. The Association being a new inclusion which combines features from MyGM and MyTeam that feature on console; allowing you to create your dream team with all the inclusions of scouting rookies, making trades and recruiting free agents. Arcade Edition also allowing you to play multiplayer game modes against others online, PvP modes with hopes of improving previous controller issues which saw players struggle to connect controllers to the app which is now supposedly compatible with both Xbox One and Dualshock 4 (PS4) controllers.

NBA 2K22: Arcade Edition launches on the same day NBA’s 75^th season tips-off; making it a monumental moment with fans having the expectation of big things. Players will be able to rock the court on nearly every iOS device in date as soon as tomorrow. Including iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.

NBA 2K22 is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch and PC

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The post NBA 2K22: Arcade Edition release date revealed first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Whether you want to manage like Jose Mourinho or Pep Guardiola, your time is coming. Football Manager 2017 is coming on November 4 so everyone will be able to get back to being tactical geniuses.

This year, everyone who purchases Football Manager 2017 will receive a free copy of Football Manager Touch 2017.  Football Manager Touch is a more streamlined Football Manager experience and it will include “Board override”, “No firing”, “All job applications” and “National management” for everyone that pre-orders.

Football Manager will be available on PC, Mac and Linux from November 4.

The post Football Manager 2017 Release Announced first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Clown House is available as a full game download. Get ready to jump behind the sofa!

This game does exactly what it says on the tin. You have to contend with (supposedly) the creepiest of all things known to man – the clown!

The aim of the game is simple. Just get a hold of the key and escape the house. Easy enough? NO! The key is hidden, and hidden in a different location each time. Of course, there are the clowns milling about who may or may not kill you. Sometimes they’ll just be content and leave you alone, but other times they may be hot on your heels!

Having said this, death does overrun content in this game, so you should probably continue to run throughout the game! You are also issued with a gun, but it carries only one bullet. We suggest saving this bullet as the game will be a lot more interesting without using it, and experiencing peril (if you’re a thrill seeker?).

The game produces many scares and jump throughout, so if you can’t stand the sight of clowns… The definitely play it!

The post Be Afraid! – Clown House Full Game Download first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Over 20 million copies of Minecraft have been sold on PC & Mac

Well, it’s not like we didn’t see that coming really! Minecraft has managed to sell over 20 million copies for Mac and PC, and just in time for this weekend’s Minecon too.

On the official website, the sales tracker has revealed that 10,430 people have bought the game in the last 24 hours, for the Mac and PC, which has boosted the sales on these platforms to a staggering and outstanding 20,007,781.

it has, however, been a little while since we heard how the game is doing on the other platforms. We learnt that Minecraft sold 12 million copies last year in April on the Xbox 360, and the PS3 version was on 1 million within the same year in January 2014. The Pocket Edition had also sold over 30 million by January 2015.

I don’t think we’ve ever heard of a game to do so well?! Are you a Minecraft player? Let us know how you feel about this news!

The post Minecraft – Over 20 Million Sold on PC & Mac first appeared on Get2Gaming.

The Mac port doesn’t seem to be going too well for Final Fantasy XIV

In the recently released Mac client, players have been reporting performance issues with the latest release, Final Fantasy XIV. Low frame-rates, hanging launchers, and graphical errors are among these major game issues.

Players have taken to reddit and official forums to say that the game runs a lot better on Bootcamp, which is a way to run Windows OS on a Mac computer, than on the native client. Kotaku has claimed that the game isn’t “technically” a native client, but simply the Windows client being run through a wrapper. This is what was needed to heighten the game-play.

Square Enix and Transgaming, which are the company who ported the game, have yet to report on these issues, even though there are quite a large amount of people commenting on it all!

The post Final Fantasy XIV – Mac Port Isn’t Great first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Armello

This digital board-game will be arriving on the PS4 this September 2015, and has a Game of Thrones air about it!

The director and founder of League of Geeks, Trent Kusters, announced yesterday on the PlayStation Blog that this brand new and exciting digital board-game will coming to the PS4 in September 2015. Here is what he had to say about it..

“After our successful Kickstarter campaign and a solid stint on Early Access, Armello’s community has helped us hone the game into the unique, polished and deeply thoughtful experience it is today,” Trent Kusters has said. “However, we’ve also been secretly working away on a PlayStation version of Armello that uses every inch of the console, with brand new high end assets, redesigned UI and controls specifically designed to ensure feels right at home on PS4.”

The game “thrusts players into a Game of Thrones-esque struggle for power” in a board-game like style. The are eight animal heroes which the player can chose from, to battle enemies and, finally, fight to gain the throne!

Armello is expected to launch in full on Windows PC, Mac, and Linux this September. 

The post Digital Board-Game ‘Armello’ is Arriving on PS4 this September and has a Game of Thrones Feel first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Sons of Anarchy: The Prospect

The first of ten episodes in the ‘Sons of Anarchy: The Prospect’ series comes to iPad and iPhone

The exceedingly popular Sons of Anarchy TV series may have to an end, but the franchise now lives on in the form of an episodic mobile game which is available now for $2!

The first episode is available to purchase now on iTunes and is aiming to capture the  “vivid action and life-and-death decision-making” of the recent television show. The game has an interactive narrative which features an original story that “explores new and familiar characters, setting, and intrigue” from the overall Sons of Anarchy universe. 

Kurt Sutter (creator and showrunner of the Sons of Anarchy TV series) and his writing team have collaborated with Silverback Games in the development of the game series. Sutter has been trying to make a Sons of Anarchy game for a very long time and seemed much pleased that it has now all come to light – “It’s finally f**king here,” Sutter said. “It’s awesome. Play it. Live it. Be the prospect.”

The game features voice work by Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates, who played Alex “Tig” Trager in the series. It has yet to be revealed if any of the other actors from the TV series are getting involved with game at all.

There will be ten Sons of Anarchy: The Prospect episodes in all, with various instalments to be released later in the year. The game is also planned for release across Android, Mac and PC, with release dates for those platforms to follow.

If you are an avid watcher of the Sons of Anarchy TV series, then this game could be just the one for you! You can watch the trailer for the game HERE, on our ‘Exciting Game Trailers’ playlist on YouTube.

The post Sons of Anarchy – The Long Awaited Game is Finally Available! first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Christmas Shopper Simulator
GAME launches this season appropriate simulator for PC and Mac

GAME has created it’s very own simulator game which is aptly named ‘Christmas Shopper Simulator’! It includes abilities  such as falling over, buying presents, walking up escalators and halting abruptly. This is GAME’s version of Goat Simulator and looks “awful”ly brilliant!

“At GAME we are passionate about two things: gaming and shopping so, in our first foray into game development, we’ve combined the two,” said director of shopper simulation development Fred Prego. He went on to state that “Whilst we have games that prepare us for zombie invasions or Premier League football matches, there is nothing to get us ready for the equally daunting experience of Christmas shopping – and we’re very proud to have filled that gap in the market.”

“Of course it’s ridiculous, but it’s so brilliantly addictive we can’t believe someone hasn’t made it already! One warning though: Christmas Shopper Simulator can feel so realistic that you might believe you have already done your Christmas shopping. You haven’t. Don’t forget to go shopping for real!”, which Prego also stated.

For PC and Mac, the game is absolutely FREE from the GAME website and was created by Freak Storm Games.

Sherif Aziz (Freak Storm Games Developer) adds: “The stress of Christmas shopping is now available and at your fingertips in this exciting new game. In Christmas Shopper Simulator you can prepare to be prepared for this season’s most traumatic task: complete missions, achieve achievements and have your expectations matched in this awesome new game from GAME.”

Well… We certainly look forward to having a bash at this. It appears nothing short of intriguing and you can watch the game-play HERE on our ‘Exciting Game Trailers’ playlist on YouTube!

The post PC And Mac – GAME Launches Christmas Shopper Simulator first appeared on Get2Gaming.