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Re: Rampancy Shake It!
Posted By: NarcogenDate: 7/20/13 1:50 a.m.

In Response To: Re: Rampancy Shake It! (Antarctico)

: Tee-hee, yeah, comical agony indeed!

: As I watched this video, I actually had to mentally cut these guys some slack
: because it was clear they had never played Marathon before.

Well, that's not exactly true. I've actually played through it more than once, although that was nearly 20 years ago. I've played Marathon 2 quite a bit more than that, and both of those titles more than Infinity.

Back when Marathon came out I was the only one in the family with a Mac, so Blackstar had to wait for me to let me have a turn.

Back in 1999, before I left the country, the three of us (Blackstar, myself, and our sister Octavia) did a weekend co-op playthrough of Marathon 2, and I think that was the last any of us played of the series before the game was re-released on XBLA. (Shortly after that happened, Blackstar and I as well as some others, including KP, did another co-op run through the game.)

I mean, think
: back to when Marathon first came out and there was scarcely anything
: resembling an Internet, who knew where all the secrets and hidden goodies
: were?

Well, there was comp.sys.mac.games and I think alt.games.marathon if memory serves. I don't think I knew about the HyperArchive until much later.

To be fair, these two are clearly not doing a walkthrough, it's just
: two dudes stumbling through a game for the first time together.

It's not exactly that, but it is much closer to that than a definitive walkthrough. I do look at the spoiler guide (or try to) before playing a level, but on a lot of these we are going in pretty cold, intending to re-create as much as possible the feel of a first-time experience of the game, rather than running through everything and saying "here it all is, I already know". The spoiler guide, I think, also already assumes a player is pretty familiar with the level, and a lot of times its instructions really aren't helpful unless you are.

I was just editing our playthrough of "Neither High Nor Low" where I think we missed all the secrets, and one of the spoiler guide hints says "In the small stairway that leads to a half-height ledge"... well you certainly can't find that location by looking at the map (since it doesn't show height) and I think one would be unlikely to remember that location after a first playthrough (or, as in our case, a first playthrough in almost 20 years). We're also aiming for a length of about 20-25 minutes for each vid. Playthrough actual time ranges from that up to 60 minutes or so, with most of the backtracking and getting lost removed. Checking every wall for secret doors-- to be thorough-- means recording a lot more footage that has to be dumped and sort of interrupts the feel of the play experience, I think.

I am collecting a list of missed secrets and intend to go back and make some bonus videos that show them.

I do
: think, to increase the comedy value, they should be forced to do a shot
: (tequila, whatever) every time they die. These videos need more boozes!

Well, this would work for me, since playthroughs are done in the evenings my time, but it might be detrimental for Blackstar to start out his mornings with tequila. However, I think you've got the germ of a good idea there, since nobody is going to actually learn how to play Marathon well from these vids, we ought to try and build in some other kind of incentive to stay alive. Right now, playing each level invidivually, Blackstar actually feels that there's an active incentive for him to commit suicide so he can get another free pistol clip :)

Maybe instead I'll make us each pop off a key top from a control key for each death.

Of
: course, these videos are also a nice demonstration that sometimes two
: heads are not better than one, so that's going on too. :)

Oh, absolutely. A lot of times, my vague memory of where something is, or what something is for, or how to find something, is detrimental to just looking around and seeing where it might be. I just edited Pfhor Your Eyes Only where we missed the secret ammo room in the co-op run. Blackstar was standing in the room and I was trying to tell him how to find it, but I wasn't helpful, and then we got teleported out unexpectedly because I passed by the window at the starting position while just looking around for stuff I'd missed.

There's also, frankly, a lot of non-obvious stuff in Marathon that's designed in ways that modern games just don't use. For instance, the hallway button that activates the lift platform that goes to the secret ammo room there is pretty far from the actual lift itself, and the lift does not show on the overlay map the way others do (probably because of the slime). You can't hear the lift from the button, and there are other pools of slime on the level that are not significant at all.

Things like that are intended to be rare finds you almost luck into. Knowledge of them spread over the internet, first through newsgroups and then websites and walkthrough videos. Somehow it's a little less special when those things are considered necessary things to hit because you already know about them, rather than something you just find on your own.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Rampancy Shake It!Godot 7/19/13 4:09 a.m.
     Re: Rampancy Shake It!Narcogen 7/19/13 6:09 a.m.
     Re: Rampancy Shake It!PerseusSpartacus 7/19/13 11:35 a.m.
           Re: Rampancy Shake It!Antarctico 7/19/13 12:16 p.m.
                 Re: Rampancy Shake It!Narcogen 7/20/13 1:50 a.m.
                       Re: Rampancy Shake It!Godot 7/20/13 3:42 a.m.
                       Re: Rampancy Shake It!Antarctico 7/21/13 2:14 p.m.
           Re: Rampancy Shake It!Narcogen 7/20/13 1:57 a.m.
                 Re: Rampancy Shake It!Godot 7/20/13 2:41 a.m.
                       Re: Rampancy Shake It!Narcogen 7/20/13 6:41 a.m.
                             Re: Rampancy Shake It!Godot 7/20/13 7:18 a.m.

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Pre-2004 Posts

 

 

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