Marathon Durandal is the second game in the trilogy that Bungie made way before they made Halo. As far as facts (and playing through the game) go, this has nothing to do with Halo and it is completely different but there are slight similarities that will make Halo fans buy it.

Chances are that when you first see Marathon you’ll think ‘hang on, this looks just like Doom and Quake…’ Even though it really reminds you of these games, it doesn’t play and control anything like them. There are way more things to do, because in Doom, you’ll just be ordered to kill aliens and monsters and mutants but in Marathon, you will be going from computer terminal to computer terminal flicking reading and reading on what you need to do next. Here is one of the similarities to Halo though; in the Halo series you have your sidekick Cortana who tells you where to go but in Marathon, you have a computer thingy (AI) who doesn’t speak and you don’t ever see him but he tells you (in text…yes you have to read) what to do. Also, it won’t be something like ‘kill one hundred goons in a secret room’ it will be something like ‘go to this planet and unlock the door, then defeat this monster and plant a hacking device…’ so it’s much more complicated.

They also upped the speed so it seems smoother than on the original computer version, but as weird as it sounds, at 60 frames per second it seems like you’re on a boat swaying from side to side and you may feel a bit sick if you play for hours on end. I have never felt sick before playing a game but this does run very strangely…It’s not a bad move, but it stops you from playing heaps because it seems like way too much.

Also, the single player is so long compared to most shooters that it will take longer than Halo 2 and Gears combined to complete. Mainly because it is a lot of trail and error, a lot of finding your way around and, so for a fifteen dollar arcade game, you are really getting an ace deal!

7 is the magic number. You can play seven player co op and play through the entire campaign with 7 people run and gun with unlimited re spawns which I can tell you is very, very fun! You can also play with up to seven other people online in death-match, capture the flag, in fact, this is a similarity with Halo because if you like the multiplayer modes in Halo 1 and 2, you will have a lot of fun with Marathon online, because this is where most of the modes like King of the Hill and Oddball, most of them were in Marathon.

With the story, it has over 13,000 lines of text that you can read through. If you actually read through it you will uncover a pretty good story but I can’t imagine most gamers wanting to sit there and read instead of shooting and killing…

Overall, if you intend on getting Halo 3 (99% of you) then you should give this game a decent shot because although it has nothing to do with Halo, it has a lot of the modes and themes that you see in all 3 Halo’s… For fifteen dollars, give it a shot! You have to try the multiplayer, because it is fun as anything!