This is more about games in general, but Marathon makes for a good reference point.
If you're part of this community, it's probably a pretty safe bet that you were around to watch the evolution in video and computer games from the era of Atari and NES all the way to the current state of things. Usually when people talk about the evolution in video games the focus is usually on graphics. The evolution in graphical fidelity in the short period of time in which Bungie made Pathways, Marathon, and Halo: Combat evolved is obvious. But I've been thinking more lately about the evolution in game mechanics. Playing the above games you get a very real sense of what's possible in the more recent games that isn't in the older ones: You can't have stairs Pathways (unless they're a 2d sprite that triggers a level transition) and you can't drive Vehicles in Marathon. But what evolution has there been in mechanics in the almost 20 years since Halo: CE? I haven't really bought in to the current generation of video games, but for those of you who have, were their any purely mechanical game play experiences you've had recently that you think couldn't have been replicated using PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era hardware and software?
