Marathon (final) review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

Marathon has been out now for a few weeks and we finally arrived at the point post-release that Bungie requested we wait until to provide a full scored review. While there was no hard demands, initially Bungie requested to withhold the scored review until after the final area was unlocked for the community: Cryo Archive. Well, yesterday, Cryo Archive became finally available to the community and here we are. I’ve poured dozens of hours into Marathon since release in anticipation for being ready for Cryo Archive and I’ve gotta say: It was way harder to get ready for than I had anticipated! Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m likely to get a full, coordinated team of 3 out there to actually give the end game area a run, but I did get to give it a go with some randomly queued teammates. While I don’t recommend that option, it was at least enough to give it an experience. As a heads up in my first paragraph, I am avoiding comparisons to Arc Raiders throughout this writing, as I’ve come to the conclusion that while they are the same genre, they are simply completely different experiences. Arc Raiders offers the friendlier PVP-lite, heavily PVE experience in the genre, while Marathon is offering a PVP forward experience, even often giving valid reasons to avoid the PVE entirely. So without further ado: my thoughts.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an impressions article that dug into many of the points I’d typically focus on in a scored review. I’ll rehash a few things from that article, but I’d recommend reading that as well for some supplemental material on this review that digs a lot more into design and gameplay. I’ve always appreciated Bungie, and while I’ve not always kept completely up to date with Destiny over the years, it’s no question that they’ve poured so much content into their now over a decade-long running series that it was time to see what else they could do. Destiny 2 has a solid fanbase, including many people I know who have the game all but consume their free time when it’s active. Between Destiny and Halo, Bungie has proven that, if nothing else, they know how to make something that sucks people in and keeps them there. In comes Marathon; hotly contentious before it even released, being one of the most widely debated genres of competitive games there is: an extraction shooter. Don’t know what an extraction shooter is? Well, the basic gist of it is as follows: you’re deploying into a large open area at the same time as several other players (12-18 depending on the map in Marathon) and looting the area simultaneously. Players can kill one another, and, when killed, drop everything. That is everything; your whole kit is surrendered when you die. So the goal is exactly that: get in, get stuff, get out to keep it. My favorite short illustration of the concept is “Loot, shoot, and scoot”. Die enough and you have nothing and become reliant on free kits that give you randomly selected non-cohesive gear.

This may (rightfully so) sound oppressive. You die and lose everything? What about the people with less skill? What about those of us that don’t have all day every day to dedicate to farming gear? What happens when I run out of everything? All valid concerns, but rest easy that if this concept even slightly interests you, it is of my opinion that despite the inherent hardcore nature of the concept, Marathon is the easiest entry point to truly grasping ahold of the concept and learning how to enjoy it. Just complex enough to stay interesting, just simple enough to be easy to get into, and just tense enough to keep the adrenaline flowing as you navigate the levels. Dying and losing everything sucks on the surface, but what that really gives you is no reason to care. Okay… that sounds negative, but what I mean is when you’re risking nothing, you can risk everything. You bring in free gear and die- what did you lose? Nothing. Bring in the free gear and play fast, hard, and loose. The other players are likely to have brought actual gear sets in, and the time to kill in Marathon is short enough that you can still feel competitive even with free gear. Get the jump on someone who isn’t paying enough attention and everything is yours.

Free kits even offer incentives beyond simply being free gear. Completing runs with free (so called “sponsored”) kits actually rewards you with a bit of bonus faction xp. Meaning if you’re struggling a bit with being able to level up your factions because of time, skill, whatever reason, you’re actually able to still keep up even with nothing being brought in. The bonus xp isn’t huge, but it does add up, and since all it does is require you to do the run and not worry about extracting, you are always guaranteed to be gaining something every run. That’s where I think Marathon works best to eliminate that inherent feeling of pointlessness that plagues player feelings when doing runs in many other extraction shooters. If you die in 10 seconds from bad luck in Tarkov, tough luck, you’ve lost everything. If you die in 10 seconds from bad luck in Marathon, you will still always receive some small gains from faction bonuses, even when not using sponsored kits.

As I mentioned in my impressions article, Marathon feels great with all of their guns, and pretty much everything I’ve touched has felt like a viable option in combat. Bungie has historically always been great with gunplay in their games, so this comes as little surprise, but it’s good to know they’ve not lost that touch. SMGs feel fast and snappy, ARs feel strong and accurate, snipers tear through your opponents as long as you can aim well, shotguns absolutely shred opponents at short range, and the pistols offer a good all-around balance between the other options. Ammo is somewhat sparse on maps, and largely you’re reliant on the ammo you bring in with small bonuses you find along the way or get after a successful fight with another player. Ammo limits will force you to make choices along each run as to what extent you want to continue engaging with every fight. Engaging the NPC UESC forces on the map offers very little reward, and they love eating up ammo. Engaging with them is also very loud and will almost certainly draw players your way, meaning that you will also need the backup ammo to deal with that inevitability. Everything is a measured gamble, and it keeps the game interesting in motion. Unlike every other FPS genre you’ve likely played, your instincts of just shooting all the AI enemies not only goes to waste here, but it might also mean your downfall.

That is to go into the next point: other players are not friendly in Marathon. You might occasionally meet the odd player willing to speak with you over voice chat and offer a truce, but in my experience, 99% of players I encountered in Marathon are strictly shoot on sight. There is no negotiation, there is no discussion, there is only immediate battle to the death. For good reason: the map only has so much loot and there are only so many other players. Kill enough and everything is yours. With the exception of the Rook character class, there are no other players spawning into your matches after you begin, so if you’re good enough, you can thin out the herd pretty heavily and have the run of the place all to yourself.

There are currently 7 classes, or “Shells” as Marathon calls them. Each offers a unique set of abilities that are pretty well stood out from one another in action and keep every encounter pretty unique (except in solo queue, where it seems most people prefer to use the Assassin class thanks to its invisibility abilities allowing both easy escapes and ambushes. I’m not going to go over all the classes, but there’s nothing here that stands out as too crazy or like something you wouldn’t have seen before in other class-based shooters, so you can probably guess at what to expect. They all feel good in action and do well to serve specific roles on a team while being able to fend for themselves. The only one that has a more unique style is the previously mentioned Rook class. Rook is intended for solo play only, doesn’t allow you to bring in any of your own gear, always receives random kits, and spawns exclusively after a match has already begun. Rook is the scavenger, intended largely to come in after all the fights are over in a match to pick at the corpses. Rook cannot complete your contract objectives either, so it’s largely for the purpose of gathering loot and not much else. Interesting concept, but rarely if ever have I felt like choosing Rook was the way to go.

As of writing, 4 areas to choose from to play. The areas you can go into offer environmental variety that are all quite different from one another. Perimeter offering a bit more open areas to familiarize yourself with the game while allowing a bit more safety feeling by way of spreading out a lower count of players more than the others. Dire Marsh offers, of course, a marshlands area with buildings spattered about with some interesting points of interest from the “anomaly” in the center of the map. Outpost offers a heavily industrial level design that increases the player count sharply and also forces everyone indoors after a few minutes due to weather. Outpost is where you will find yourself fighting other players most. Last but not least is Cryo Archive: end-game content taking place entirely within the UESC Marathon ship. Cryo Archive is much less friendly and forgiving than anywhere else in the already rather hostile environments of Marathon otherwise. Requiring a minimum value of 5,000 credits on your gear and a team of 3 to even enter, you are required to risk something for the privilege to even attempt this area.

If you can actually get the opportunity to experience Cryo Archive, which, at least as of now is only available on the weekends, it is definitely a highly elevated experience beyond what the rest of the game offers. Seemingly channeling their experience with the numerous raids in the Destiny franchise, Marathon’s Cryo Archive is deeply complex in its mechanical functionality that can only really be compared to exactly that: Destiny’s raids. While it’s hard to ever get quite the same level of deep and convoluted as you’ll find in the completely PVE experiences of Destiny’s raids, the experience here is no less challenging and intriguing in its process. Any layers of written complexity are made more of a hassle just by way of the fact that quite a few other players are present on the ship at the same time as you. Combined with an ever ongoing onslaught of UESC forces, Cryo Archive’s endgame experience is definitely a level of hardcore above any other part of Marathon. On the map as well, there is a boss, the Compiler, whom everyone playing is going to be focusing on trying to succeed in arriving to and killing first. I have not had the opportunity to properly face this opponent, but I made sure to watch a video of the self proclaimed “World’s first” successful run through of the Cryo Archive and the rewards seem to be quite heavy. So long as every run gives equivalent to what I saw from them, this is definitely a challenge worth taking on… but it could very well also mean losing much of your best gear should you fail.

I will not pretend that Marathon is a game for everyone. I don’t even think it’s a game for most people who enjoy FPS games, but… that does not stop it from being a great game in the end. Marathon offers a lot to give people the ability to experience a hardcore looter shooter in a more well-designed and refined environment than has otherwise been available before its existence. Tarkov or Delta Force might look good, but what they are both missing is that casual friendly polish that you can only get from a studio with a long history like Bungie. In my opinion, both of the aforementioned games suffer from being unpolished in the grander view in a way that, while not necessarily making them bad, definitely makes them hard to approach. Marathon’s UI might be a bit wild, but it’s not the crazy patchwork that you’ll find in its competitors. It does what every other extraction shooter before it has done, but more polished and cohesive. There’s always clear goals and expectations, and upgrades are easy to understand and progress. Marathon is, in my opinion, the clearest winner of the genre to date that offers the kind of experience it does.

Note: Bungie provided us with a Marathon code for review purposes.