As Bungie continues its problem-ridden development of the extraction shooter Marathon reboot, the classic Marathon trilogy is now completely released on Steam, now that Marathon Infinity is out and about. All thanks to the efforts of the Aleph One team, we now get to enjoy classic Marathon without any fuss.
Whereas Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal at least pretended to be simple, straightforward run-and-gun shooters at face value, Marathon Infinity throws any pretense of common sense right out the window with its ridiculously broad, time-hopping main narrative. It’s phenomenally weird, and now that Infinity is properly available on Steam, you, too, get to try to make sense of the game’s hard-hitting final screen. It’s an absolute hoot, I promise you that.
Download Marathon Infinity for free on Steam
Setting its delightfully insane main story aside for a little bit, the Steam version of Marathon Infinity still plays much like a true Marathon game in the sense that it’s an extremely puzzle-heavy Doom-alike. Originally released back in October 1996, Marathon Infinity was revived thanks to the efforts of the Aleph One development team, who keep all three classic Marathon titles up and running on modern machinery.
To that end, playing any of the three Marathon titles is easy as pie now that they’re all on Steam. Simply install them much as you would any other Steam title – for free, of course – and hit play. There’s a heck of a learning curve in getting accustomed to the games’ strange delivery of the story, puzzle and movement intricacies, and the hardcore nature of combat. Is it rewarding, though? Absolutely. For context on what’s what in Marathon, I recommend checking out MandaloreGaming’s reviews of classic Marathon on Youtube:
And that’s about all there is to it, really. I do recommend installing some of the more recent mods for all three Marathon games to improve assets and whatnot, but aside from that, playing through this surprisingly abstract trilogy of shooters is quite unlike anything else. Oh, and if you’re familiar with Destiny‘s weirdness, you’ll feel right at home playing Marathon.
