Let's Play Marathon, pt 11 - Bob-B-Q

Poor Robert.

A brutal new chapter screen greets us and it’s not lying. When Durandal tosses you back into Leela’s hands at the end of the prior level she says something brief about crew being in danger and sends you here. Somewhere. Maybe storage compartments? Hard to say, but that’s really not the point of this level.

Bob-B-Q is a knife fight. Like The Rose, your whole purpose here is to save what crew you can. What The Rose has that Bob-B-Q doesn’t have is breathing room. They’re both horror movies, but The Rose is about exploring dark spaces and dreading what’s around the next bend, while Bob-B-Q is a slasher bloodbath. Marathon’s graphics aren’t actually capable of this, but tonally, it’s a fight in pitch black lit only by muzzle flashes, a strobing nightmare.

Run, Robert.

The level’s architecture is brilliantly claustrophobic and terror-inducing. To start with, you and the bobs you’re trying to save are running around small rooms and smaller hallways while the Pfhor prowl platforms that run all around at head height, firing down into the scrum. You’re fish in a barrel, and you spend the first frantic minutes trying not to die while scrabbling for any way to get off the killing floor and up to the walkways. The other thing about confined space is that it’s not just hard for you to avoid being hit, it’s also hard for you to shoot back without hitting the bobs yourself.

Jagged for jagged’s sake.

The level’s other main visual attribute is very dark spaces punctuated by very bright doorways and bulkheads. I really like this stark design. The pops of harsh white light emphasize the prevailing darkness and despair, sticking out like spectral claws raking the walls of a tomb. The silhouettes of fleeing bobs and rampaging aliens flicker past the strips of light and vanish into the gloom, and you don’t know if your next burst of gunfire will hit the alien or save them the hassle.

We’re all mad here.

Like most knife fights, Bob-B-Q is short. When you scrap your way to the ending terminal, Leela will probably scold you for not saving enough people. And man, if any criticism deserved an ‘Okay, you try it,’ this is it. I’ve played this level enough times to’ve gotten the ‘good job’ ending more than once, but it’s an awfully high bar to surmount. You’re very lucky to keep yourself alive through this broom closet rumble, let alone anybody else. In any case, the Pfhor are heading to the Marathon’s main reactor, so this’ll all be moot if you don’t head them off at the pass.