OH YES! After 7 hrs downloading time (my modem sucks) I could finally install the beta. Guess if I by that time had some pretty high expectations...
I started up the sp first, knowing that it was no aliens around and that it should be considered far from finished, but too curious not to try it. And from what I could tell it looks like you guys have captured a lot of the old marathon feeling. Standing in the startingpoint in "Arrival" looking around, sneaking up to a window and seeing the stars revolve and the alien ship hovering in the distance was incredible! Even the music felt right (and I never played M1 with the music on). I was first taken aback by the first look of the terminal text window as I didn't like that it was so small, I would rather have had the whole screen turned into a terminal window. I hope you'll change this for the full version. But the idea of using a camera instead of a map is brilliant and works very well. I didn't think it would but it does. Will you be able to see the aliens in the camera as well by the way? That could be a bit of a spoiler IMO.
When I finished exploring the rest of the levels I was struck of how much of the Marathon you have recreated with these textures and the maps, adding more feeling to it with lightning and the 3-d engine. It looks like this wil be worth the wait!
The mp was at first a bit disappointing because the bots was so bad. But after playing trough all the maps I found myself laughing while I played. The physics model is awesome, playing "Whrat no more" and "Beyond thunderdome" utilizing the lift jumping and rockets gave some serious hang-time and was the most fun I've had in any mod I've tried so far. Can't wait to play against human opponents. The weapons was all very well balanced and I think that removing the cross-hair, keeping true to M1, is a good thing because that will keep them balanced. Imagine the sniping ablility of the SMG otherwise...
The only bug I found in mp was that I was unable to change weapons while having the invincebility-powerup. Oh, and the bots wasn't so good but I think you already know that :-).
There was of course some minor thing I didn't like (for instance that the ammotypes aren't coloured differently, the animation of the phor-staff and so on) but I belive that those thing has been covered previously in this forum so I wont bugg you about it.
All by all, this is the best mod I've played so far!! You guys rock and I hope you soon will release the demoversion. Thanks again for bringing the old Marathon back to life!
Oh, and keep the map not namned yet from Electrofryer in the release version please. That was a nice one. Gött mos you could say ;-)
/SilentMan
