Marathon: Durandal Trial Impressions

Marathon: Durandal was released onto Xbox Live Arcade last Wednesday (1st August) for 800 Microsoft points and it's a fairly sizable download for an Arcade game at 138MB.

The Marathon series of games, of which I believe this is the second, are FPS games developed by Bungie Software of Halo fame. With an attack by the alien race the Pfhor imminent, Durandal an AI is the only hope of defeating them and this game sees the player exploring the ruins of an alien civilisation known as the S'pht on their homeworld of Lh'owon.

The full game offers a good selection of multiplayer deathmatch modes such as "Every Man for Himself" and "King of the Hill" or you can play the single player campaign cooperatively with up-to seven friends. The trial game allows you to play the first level of the single player campaign as you start exploring Lh'owon.

The controls for the game are straight forward with the left joystick used for movement, the right to look, with fire controls assigned to the triggers and weapon selection to the bumper buttons. The only real oddities are the "X" and "Y" buttons which are used to glance 90 degrees to your left or right respectively when they are held down.

You can either play the game using the original or HD enhanced mode, with the latter mode sharpening up the graphics noticeably. Overall the graphics are what I'd expect from a game that was released in 1995 with some fairly decent backgrounds, sprite animation and details. The gameplay seems fairly typical of first person shooters and sees you trying to achieve mission objectives and flipping switches while dispatching enemies.

The available trial level didn't really impress me and unfortunately it left me feeling fairly nauseous after I'd played it for a while, which is something I've never experienced before from a FPS. I also found that the glance buttons only added to my feelings of nausea and I stopped using them fairly quickly. If you're a fan of this genre and have an interest in older games then this game may be worth a go but it's not one for me.