Thoughts on the Marathon series?

I remembered playing a little of the first game on a friends mac as a kid and thought it was pretty cool at the time because it reminded me of Doom. I looked it up some years back which led me to the Aleph One source port so I gave it a shot. The low framerate was pretty unpleasant though so I dropped it almost right away. I went back to it later and found interpolation had been added but it just sat on my hard drive for quite a while since. Finally tried getting into it recently. It still feels a bit off even with interpolation but more playable than other old games I've put time into. What I am finding to be an issue though is the floaty momentum based movement coupled with the level design. Something as simple as walking down steps requiring you to slowly tap forward to avoid flying across the room uncontrollably feels well, bad. It just doesn't feels like the levels were designed with that kind of movement in mind. Needing momentum to get speed and having cramped layouts to prevent it seams a weird choice. It also makes the combat feel weird without much room to move and having to be sort of hyper aware of verticality to keep from going airborne and losing control. It's possible these were deliberate design choices and end up serving a purpose but I get the sense they aren't. I can overlook flaws in games if they have enough good or interesting things going for them but this makes for a pretty bad first impression.


Curious what opinion anyone else may have of the game and it's sequels? Does it get better once you get comfortable with the movement? Does it ever get comfortable at all? Does the map quality improve? Are the sequels better? I know there are a handful of mods for it. Are any worth checking out? Or is it all just shit and my time would be better spent playing more Doom?