Marathon Review

From ARC Raiders to Escape From Duckov, extraction shooters seem to be enjoying something of a renaissance right now, to the delight of FPS fans like myself. But of all the newcomers to that space, none have captured my attention more than Marathon since I first played its early alpha over a year ago. Even through some of Bungie’s recent lows, the notion of taking the high-stakes looting deathmatch that is an extraction shooter and combining it with the unparalleled shooting for which the studio is known has always been an awesome idea. Now, having sweated it out for over 65 hours in Marathon’s most unforgiving maps and game modes, that rad concept turned out exactly as well as I was hoping it would, with absolutely stellar gunplay, a shocking amount of compelling lore to dive into, and a loot grind so hard to step away from that I’ve had trouble finding time to finalize my thoughts in between runs. There’s still plenty of room for tweaking – whether it’s balancing some of the playable Runners, adding a map or two, and especially cleaning up the war crime that is the UI – but this is already my favorite extraction shooter, and I have no doubt I’ll be playing it for some time to come.

I’ve always had a difficult time describing exactly what makes a Bungie gun feel so damn good but, whatever it is, Marathon’s got it. Maybe it’s the deliberate musicality to weapons, like that crisp snap from a rifle report, the metallic clink of a trigger, or those amazing hollow thuds when you land a shot. Maybe it’s the way recoil feels rhythmic, with pulse rifles kicking like a heartbeat and handcannons bucking theatrically. Maybe it’s the way the world reacts to your shots, with shields crackling and splintering and enemy NPCs staggering in place as you riddle them full of holes. Maybe it’s invisible qualities, like the almost perfectly tuned bullet magnetism and finessed projectile speeds, all working together to make you feel slightly better than you actually are. An old Bungie dev once told me that the secret to building a great shooter is in making four seconds of gameplay that feel perfect, then repeating those four seconds as many times as you can. I don’t know if this remains a guiding philosophy of the current team but, in any case, they really seem to have nailed just that.

With Bungie’s world-class gunplay making the migration to Marathon, it’s not surprising that some of the same flaws I associate with the studio have also made their way over, the chief of which is bad geometry. From getting caught on parts of the environment that feel like they shouldn’t impede me to the fairly hit-or-miss mantling, I find myself once again screaming during especially tense moments when my character can’t seem to climb up a ledge for the third time in a row, while my teammates suffer through an ambush without me. Movement in general can feel a little frustrating early on, like how you take severe fall damage from fairly moderate heights and constantly have to keep your eye on the “heat” gauge (effectively a stamina meter) or risk overheating and becoming a sluggish blob for a time. This becomes less of an issue once you’ve snagged a few perks from the upgrade tree, but I can also already imagine how bad it’ll feel to go back to not having them every time progress resets at the end of each season. In some ways, these limitations serve as interesting obstacles for you to work around, forcing you to approach vertical environments (especially during fights) with extreme caution, or making you think about how much running you’re doing – both to prevent overheating and also to remain undetected by enemy squads. But they can also be a bit irritating, especially when combined with awkward terrain that can frustrate otherwise smooth looting and gunplay.

As someone who adores PvP, one massively refreshing aspect of Marathon to date is how far it deviates from the group hug energy of ARC Raiders’ PvE-friendly community. Don’t get me wrong, cooperating with other players can be a good time, but one of the major drawbacks is that you don’t get to see the PvP shine when it happens so rarely. In a game like Marathon, with Bungie’s legendary FPS chops on full display, I’d be pretty disappointed if PvP encounters were as uncommon as they’ve become in ARC Raiders, because those gunfights are without question the best part of any match. And by God is Marathon an absolutely disgusting pit of vengeful players mercilessly shooting and stabbing everyone on sight – these are my people. The pressure of two teams squaring off in claustrophobic, dark hallways, as you try to outmaneuver one another makes for some of the most tense encounters I’ve ever had, and the loot reward you get for winning those firefights is worth the stress (after all, the best way to loot is to let someone else do it for you and then take it from their cold, dead hands).

The pressure of two teams squaring off in claustrophobic, dark hallways, as you try to outmaneuver one another makes for some of the most tense encounters I’ve ever had.

The mark of a great extraction shooter is that “one more run” feeling, and a big part of that lies in how fun the long-term loot game and progression is. That relies on both the badass weapons and gadgets you’ll find, as well as the quest items you’re asked to collect if you want to unlock an upgrade or complete a mission you’ve been given. After dozens of hours, I’m still completely glued to my screen. I’m poring over dense menus and trees to figure out which map I’ll need to play to complete this quest or loot that item, then going into battle with a specific set of objectives in mind – only for it to all go to hell when I run into a rival gang and the shrapnel starts flying. Finding a prestige-tier weapon or piece of equipment that completely changes how you play, like a backpack that generates ammo from thin air whenever you score a kill, makes all the pain of defeat you’ll inevitably suffer worth the heartache. But even when you lose it all, you might at least clear a quest or manage to gather a few materials needed to buy an upgrade that makes you just a little less likely to get your ass handed to you in the future. Unlocking a perk that decreases how much heat you generate from running around, or reduces the fall damage you take, can be a pretty big game changer in the long run – so I almost always felt like I was moving the needle forward in some way.

If there’s one thing holding this awesome progression climb back, it’s the fact that onboarding is quite tough, as very little is explained to you. I certainly benefitted from having played loads of extraction shooters before, as well as the crash courses Bungie gave me during previous preview sessions – but even with all that, there are still lots of moments where you just have to puzzle through some of the more complex systems. With a whole bunch of confusing mod slots to fill and upgrade menus that demand quite a bit of your time to fully understand, it takes quite a few hours of playing to get the hang of some pretty basic stuff. Worst of all are the extremely poorly explained mission objectives while out in the world that are sometimes represented by a single floating icon. This is by no means at the same level of obtuseness as something like Escape From Tarkov, and some of this friction seems like it’s just part of the extraction shooter DNA, but I could definitely see some folks bouncing off Marathon because of stuff like this, and that’s not ideal.

There’s also an impressive amount of diversity in the small handful of maps currently available. Perimeter, the starting map, is a spread out series of structures that isn’t the most interesting map and has a lot of empty space, but is perfectly tuned for newer squads as they rotate from each of the miniature hubs and start to dip their toes into the kill-or-be-killed nature of Tau Ceti IV. Dire Marsh is a massive, sprawling swamp that’s a sniper’s dream, and ups the ante both in terms of the loot to be claimed and the caliber of the players it draws. Outpost is perhaps the best extraction shooter map ever made, with tons of loot and secrets crammed into its tiny, highly vertical design. It corrals players into near constant conflict as they race to acquire keycards and break into the vault-like facility where all the best goodies are kept. Extracting from each of these maps requires you to significantly level up your skills and understanding of Marathon’s challenging gameplay and mechanics, providing yet another ladder to climb as part of its already stellar progression systems. That said, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed at having only four maps to explore at launch, even though those four are pretty great across the board. Here’s hoping Bungie can stick the landing with the live-service model by providing a steady stream of new places to battle it out over time.

Marathon makes use of the hero shooter model, with different character classes that have pre-loaded abilities that compliment one another and appeal to different kinds of players. However, this is one area in which this shooter falls a bit short. Sure, you can turn invisible or hide yourself in clouds of smoke as the slippery Assassin, or heal and revive others as the support character Triage, but these archetypes are mostly generic shapes of characters that we’ve seen a bunch already– and are done a bit better in plenty of other games. They’re certainly not bad, and I’ve actually had a great time giving each a try to figure out which I jive with the most. But compared even to Bungie’s own Destiny, where each class has an extremely unique identity and a suite of interesting skills, Marathon just feels a little underwhelming in this regard. It’s also only been a couple weeks since Marathon came out and I already feel like certain Runners lag behind their peers, like how weak Recon’s ability to ping enemy locations is relative to Destroyer’s defensive shields and devastating shoulder-mounted rockets.

Managing your inventory, which quickly becomes a convoluted jumble of hard-to-identify items, can be quite frustrating.

After the server slam a few weeks back, one of my main complaints was that the UI and menus were an incoherent mess that I still felt like I was wrestling with after 20 hours. Now, having gotten quite far into the weeds with the final product, that frustration has only deepened with understanding. While certainly as stylish as just about everything in Marathon, the menus are a painful jumble of squares and rectangles that feel like they were designed with vagueness in mind. For example, it’s baffling to me that mods are represented by identical, nondescript icons, so you have to physically hover your cursor over them to even understand what they are. Managing your inventory, which quickly becomes a convoluted jumble of hard-to-identify items, can be quite frustrating for this reason – especially when you’re in the heat of combat and need to make a swap of some kind, but first have to figure out which absurdly generic item is the one you’re looking for. There are other small things, like how the controls handle swapping held items for ones you find, or moving things like mods from your weapon to your backpack that are just way more cumbersome than they need to be. This is the area I think needs to most immediately improve – it’s quite messy as of now.

While bad UI isn’t the most surprising issue in an extraction shooter – where that’s practically the industry standard – one area in which Marathon unexpectedly excels is through its lore and drip-fed story. After almost every mission I’ve had factions to meet or chat with, a few quick lines of dialogue thrown my way, or some lore unlock for me to read. I’ve found myself really interested in learning more about this creepy world and its bizarre inhabitants, like the bioscience AI Nona, who talks to you as a weird silk worm and asks you to unlock the hidden potential of your Runner shells. Once you reach level 25 and start getting pulled into the Cryo Archives and the endgame content, these loose threads and hints at the mysteries of this unsettling universe start to feel like they’re coming together. I won’t spoil the particulars, but longtime fans of the Marathon universe should be pretty pleased with what’s in store, and I’m really curious as to where they’ll go next.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time now diving into Marathon’s most harrowing mode yet, the Cryo Archive, and am happy to report that it’s one of the most intense and badass things Bungie has created in a long while.

Speaking of the endgame, I’ve spent a fair amount of time now diving into Marathon’s most harrowing mode yet, the Cryo Archive, and am happy to report that it’s one of the most intense and badass things Bungie has created in a long while. The special map requires that you bring some of your best loot into battle (a minimum ante of 5,000 credits worth of gear), and transports you to the first floor of the UESC Marathon ship from the original game. What starts out as a straightforward process of taking down beefed up NPC enemies and unlocking higher levels of security clearance to access other wings of the ship devolves into absolute mayhem when you inevitably encounter enemy players armed to the teeth and fighting for their lives. With the best loot currently available up for grabs, and a fairly high barrier of entry just to get into the map, this place is guaranteed to be packed almost exclusively with tryhards leaning all the way forward in their Secret Lab chairs with your demise occupying their every thought. Not only are you expected to outplay them all while surviving a constant stream of robot foes, but you’ll have to learn one of the most labyrinthine maps I’ve ever seen and figure out various puzzles to open up vaults or even extract out of the level. You’ll also need to contend with the possibility of eventually reaching the final boss in the center of it all, while also keeping your eye on the timer that ticks down from 30 minutes and will kill you if you don’t find a way out in that time. My runs in Cryo have been filled with devastating losses and overwhelming victories that made me feel like an absolute badass (and rewarded me for my sweatiness accordingly), and it’s been incredibly hard to step away from these past two weekends.

There’s also a ranked playlist that requires you to bring in a certain level of valuable gear (similar to Cryo Archive), and pits you against some of the most skilled players Marathon has to offer as you try to acquire a certain threshold of loot before successfully extracting. It’s an awesome addition, since it turns every map into the same cesspool of no-lifers that you find in Cryo, and offers some unique cosmetics and other incentives for risking it all in the name of glory. I’m not nearly good enough to seriously compete in this mode just yet, but could absolutely see myself practicing and grinding my gear to the level where I could compete here. The prospect of that climb lends a near limitless level of replayability for an aspiring cold-blooded killer like myself.

I should also mention just how good Marathon looks and performs, as even playing on my regular, ol’ Xbox Series X I almost never encountered connection problems, dropped frames, or technical issues. Really the only issue I’ve encountered were two or three crashes that happened while I was in the middle of a match, but I was able to load these matches back up and rejoin the action anyway. Not only are the frames rock solid, but environments are stylish as hell, with spooky and offputting loading screens that show weird metaphors for transhumanism and immortality – and gorgeous levels that have an odd, artificial feel to them. I will say that after playing more than a dozen hours in a single day I left feeling like I was losing my mind from prolonged exposure to that incredibly unsettling aesthetic, but hey, maybe that’s how I should feel about my life.

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