![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Pace or Two Back on Marathon
The news Microsoft was buying Activision for a fabulous sum did show up where I couldn’t miss it, but also had me supposing that not owning a video game console or even being able to play “PC games” (from this side of the millennium, anyway) detached me a bit from the moment. There’s a danger in looking too askew at “video game narratives,” though, or at least in making too big a deal of that. A few weeks later, there was an announcement Sony was buying Bungie, and with the games Bungie made on the far side of the millennium a few more thoughts drifted through my mind (although I’m at least aware Activision wound up owning Infocom.)
One column, in mentioning that second and not quite as costly acquisition, mentioned how “Halo” comes to mind for most people when Bungie’s brought up, then added “Oni” was a title “a particular breed” would invoke. My immediate thought was that I’d rather mention “Marathon” (and its immediate predecessor “Pathways Into Darkness”), but that’s a matter of having used the computer Marathon had been the “Doom clone” for, and as ever I could suppose that amounts to “detaching yourself from the main line of computer gaming.” In any case, in the column’s context I could understand the “anime-esque” Oni being brought up.
All of this, though, reminded me it’s been a while since I’ve played Marathon. When “The Digital Antiquarian” got around to “Doom” I did dip back into that long-memorable first-person shooter, acknowledging it’s a lot more visceral than Marathon (even as commentators on the weblog’s series kept saying Doom’s design in general was better and longer-lasting). At last, though, I did go looking for the “Aleph One” updates of the Marathon games, realising a decade has passed since I last found versions of those game bundles. I also noticed the control schemes had been changed to a more modern mix of “left hand on the keyboard, right hand on the mouse” where I’d played with my right hand on a numeric keypad (and it’s been quite a while since I’ve used a keyboard with one of those standard). I wound up finding a “video game-style controller” I got quite a while ago and haven’t and used a lot since. It did seem to work a bit better for me than my trackpad, but I am still aware there’s nothing wrong with interests shifting over time.
One column, in mentioning that second and not quite as costly acquisition, mentioned how “Halo” comes to mind for most people when Bungie’s brought up, then added “Oni” was a title “a particular breed” would invoke. My immediate thought was that I’d rather mention “Marathon” (and its immediate predecessor “Pathways Into Darkness”), but that’s a matter of having used the computer Marathon had been the “Doom clone” for, and as ever I could suppose that amounts to “detaching yourself from the main line of computer gaming.” In any case, in the column’s context I could understand the “anime-esque” Oni being brought up.
All of this, though, reminded me it’s been a while since I’ve played Marathon. When “The Digital Antiquarian” got around to “Doom” I did dip back into that long-memorable first-person shooter, acknowledging it’s a lot more visceral than Marathon (even as commentators on the weblog’s series kept saying Doom’s design in general was better and longer-lasting). At last, though, I did go looking for the “Aleph One” updates of the Marathon games, realising a decade has passed since I last found versions of those game bundles. I also noticed the control schemes had been changed to a more modern mix of “left hand on the keyboard, right hand on the mouse” where I’d played with my right hand on a numeric keypad (and it’s been quite a while since I’ve used a keyboard with one of those standard). I wound up finding a “video game-style controller” I got quite a while ago and haven’t and used a lot since. It did seem to work a bit better for me than my trackpad, but I am still aware there’s nothing wrong with interests shifting over time.