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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, after playing Marathon for over 20 hours during its Server Slam, that rad concept seems to have turned out about as well as I was hoping it would, with absolutely stellar gunplay, some interesting characters and lore, and a loot grind that’s so hard to step away from that I watched them pull the pre-launch servers offline and delete my progress with the heaviest of hearts. It’s still too early for me to say if any of this will have staying power in the long run, plus there’s still loads of stuff I haven’t seen, from the unexplored maps to the final playable character, but my time with it so far has left me with a serious craving for more.
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 the world-class gunplay I’ve come to expect from Bungie, it’s not surprising that some of the same flaws I associate with them have also been carried over to Marathon, 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 at times, 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. 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 so far 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 hell of a 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. 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 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 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. In the early hours, I’ve been completely glued to my screen, 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. I’m really impressed by how fast the progression feels so far, and even during failed runs, I’ve seemed to make at least some kind of progress despite losing valuable loot along the 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, upgrade menus that demand quite a bit of your time to fully understand, and worst of all, extremely poorly explained mission objectives while out in the world that are sometimes represented by a single floating icon, it takes quite a few hours of playing to get the hang of some pretty basic stuff. 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 awesome.
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, and 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 which are done a bit better in plenty of other games. Don’t get me wrong, they’re in no sense 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 existing games, like Destiny, where each class has an extremely unique identity and a suite of interesting skills, Marathon feels just a little underwhelming.
Thankfully, acquiring a new weapon on the battlefield, like a long-distance rifle capable of one-shotting poorly-armored characters, then customizing said weapon with neat mods you’ve found along the way feels awesome. But there are also little ways you can progress outside of those weapons, like unlocking the ability to buy a larger backpack if you’ve lost all of yours on the battlefield, or gaining access to better shields in the store instead of having to rely purely on your ability to loot them out in the world. So far I’ve never felt like any of the progress lost on failed runs has hindered my desire to immediately jump back in, even when a particularly devastating loss left me with only white-rarity weapons.
The worst part about acquiring new gear is, sadly, the menus you then deal with them in. While certainly as stylish as just about everything in Marathon, the menus are a painful jumble of nonsense that you’ll have to stare at for way too long to understand. 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 messy 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 remember 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 I continued to fumble on occasion even after 20 hours. This is the area I think needs to most immediately improve – it’s quite messy as of now.
That all said, it has been great to see the story play a larger role than I expected it to. After each mission, I’ve had some new faction to meet, a few quick lines of dialogue thrown my way, or some lore unlock for me to read, and I find myself really interested in learning more about this world and its inhabitants. I haven’t had nearly enough time to actually dive in here, as it can be tough to find reading time when your crewmates are waiting on you to launch the next match, but the vibe of these cutscenes and the spooky cyberpunk aesthetic is so damn interesting. I’m eager to know more. Here’s hoping the pace of lore continues to be this strong, and that it actually leads to some kind of payoff, since Bungie notably isn’t always great at that.
I should also mention just how good Marathon looks and performs, as even playing on my regular, ol’ Xbox Series, I almost never encountered connection problems, dropped frames, or almost any technical issues – pretty impressive for a pre-release Server Slam. Really the only issue I encountered was a single crash that happened while I was having my ass handed to me by a rival player, and that was perhaps my Xbox simply saving me from embarrassment in front of my teammates. 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.
The Server Slam alone doesn’t paint a full picture, but working my way to character rank 30 was a really promising glimpse at the first stretch of progression in what looks to be quite an intense climb to the endgame. I’ll be diving deep into every aspect of Marathon at its full launch and be back with a final review once I’ve seen what the later half of that experience feels like – some of which is being held behind planned updates in a couple of weeks. But at least right now, I’m feeling extremely good about the chances of this becoming my next obsession.
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