: Check out this unbelievable review of Marathon "the Doom clone."
: It's old and it might have been mentioned before, but I can't remember it.
: http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/JCGD_Volume_8/Design_by_Cloning.html
Well, it's less of a review and more of an essay. The writer has simply used marathon to illustrate a point. The whole thing is incredibly elementary and this guy doesn't come across to me half as smart as he'd like to with his smug writing style. Even for something written in 1995 (?) it lacks perspective and seems incredibly naive. He's trying to make some fundamental points about game design but seems to ignore the nature of the industry ( "Wow, you took someone elses great idea, and made it better? How unusual!" ).
For someone discussing the fundamentals of game design, claiming that marathons interface features are unintuitive simply because they're different from dooms, whilst complaining about the game being a clone in the same argument is just ridiculous.
As a fan I'm not at all insulted, given hindsight this poor fool is eating his words. Look at FPS games today, most of Marathon's features the author finds so un-attractive are now established conventions.
