How to Play Aleph One - Marathon Trilogy

The Marathon Trilogy, like many other obtuse games, is incredibly difficult to understand as this was before game design made it mandatory to be friendlier to players. Have a look at these tips and tricks to learn how to approach this incredibly interesting game.

• Assign the Caps Lock key as your run key. Always keep it down except when doing some fine maneuvering. If you do this, you may want to switch your action key (default 'tab') to the control key, such that it stays close to your weapon keys.
• Learn to Grenade Hop (also called Jumping). This is very useful when trying to access a place that is too high off the ground to reach normally, as well as for crossing lava. The easiest way to do it is to face where you want to go, give yourself some running room, look down, then run at the point where you want to go, firing a grenade at your feet just before you reach a wall (or whatever). You will take some damage, but you should find yourself at the upper level. Make sure you don't fire right on top of the wall, because you will most likely die. Instead, , you want to time it to be just before you reach the wall in order to take minimal damage. You can practice this on the second level, 'Bigger Guns Nearby.'

• Grenade Walking is also important. In this case, you usually just need to get up to a high step. Back up to the step, aim down, and fire.
• You can also you SPNKR missiles instead of grenades...they'll take you much higher and farther than grenades, but are also much more deadly if mistreated.
• Grenade Climbing is a difficult trick, and requires either full shields or invincibility, and a full load of grenades. You also need a place that is too high for a single grenade, and a good amount of straight wall that leads to that place. (A good example is the Deprivation Chamber on 'Never Burn Money'). Get back as far as possible from the goal along the wall (the wall needs to be perfectly straight). Then turn into the wall slightly (just a tap on the turn key). Aim down, and begin to run forwards. Launch a grenade. It should hit the wall and you will take some damage, but you'll be flying. As soon as your descent starts, fire another grenade down at the wall. Continue until you reach your goal. This is a very difficult maneuver to accomplish.
• You can also reach high platforms with either the flamethrower or the alien gun in the low gravity levels (the Pfhor ship levels).
• Exploding Bobs:  These can be tricky the first time you run into them, but there are some easy steps that you can take to distinguish between a normal Bob and the exploding Bob. First, normal Bobs will always say 'They're everywhere!' (well, assuming you haven't played with the sound file), while the exploding Bob will shout 'Thank God, it's you!' Secondly, exploding Bobs are always green. Finally, if shot with the pistol, exploding Bobs will spill yellow blood, while normal Bobs will bleed red. Thus, if a Bob is in question, fire one shot at it and look at the color of blood that spurts out.

And that's that! If you keep all of these rules, tips, and tricks in mind, you'll have a great time playing Marathon. It's the predecessor to Halo for a reason, and Bungie's signature fingerprints are already, with a wonderfully engaging story taking place in the background and a fantastic atmosphere.