Aleph One - Marathon Trilogy 1.3b

Any gamer alive nowadays has at the very least heard of the Halo series. Its developer, Bungie, gained acclaim in the community for creating and revolutionizing an entire genre with it. However, fewer people know of Marathon, Bungie's first MacOS exclusive trilogy that was released in the 90s. It wasn't popular, but gained a cult following and, with Bungie's blessing, the community has revived it and ported it over to Windows with Aleph One. It's still being updated to this day - the latest version was released just this year! How does it hold up?

All you have to install Aleph One is unzip it and run the executable. It's as easy as cake. On initial bootup, the sound and graphic design may off-put you a little bit if you play a ton of modern FPSes, the controls even more so. This is an old game - a classic, but still old. You'll want to check the options and modify the controls to your liking, otherwise, you're not likely to figure out how to interact with things.

Aleph One does a fantastic job modernizing it technically speaking. It upscales all the graphics while also sharpening them, making the art direction stand out even more. The sound design is similarly fantastic, setting an atmosphere that's difficult to find in today's games. And the story is well written, if not at the forefront. It's wholly possible to miss entire segments because you didn't interact with the correct terminal.

Marathon was one of the greats of its time, hindered only by its exclusive release on the macOS and the release of other greats at that time taking over the discussion.  If you're curious as to what Bungie was like before Halo, there is no better look at it than Aleph One