[wsc981]

I preferred Marathon a lot over Doom. Some reviewers have called it "the thinking man's" shoot-em-up and I think this holds some truth. Of couse Marathon was released almost a year after Doom's release, so Bungie had plenty of time to improve the genre in many areas. Not just in looking up and down, the game also featured:

- weapons with multiple modes and reload mechanics

- advanced lightning effects

- "5D" space (one of the multiplayer levels used this)

- physics (e.g. grenade hopping and missile ballistics)

- neutral and allied npc's

- more varied elevator / switches system (e.g. in the "Colony Ship For Sale Cheap" level)

- motion tracker in UI

- nifty level mechanics, like the levels without air (e.g. "G4 Sunbathing")

I still wonder if Jason Jones could have become an equal to Carmack if he kept his focus on coding games ...