You know how it is when you get into a new genre that you hadn’t really taken note of before. Suddenly a new world is opened to you, one rich with the possibilities of recreating that same magic that managed to hook you in the first place. So given I’d spent a good deal of time in Arc Raiders recently, and the fact that I’d been playing Destiny 2 for the better part of 10 years, it wasn’t hard to sell me on Marathon’s premise. The reality of my experience with it is unfortunately somewhat more mixed, but it’s not something I put against the game itself. More the single player experience, the one that I was only able to engage in due my crew being distracted by other games, meant that my time with the game was very different to the majority of the playerbase. I don’t count this against Bungie or the game itself, but it did mean I left Marathon on the shelf much quicker than I might have otherwise.
The ambition of humanity knows no limits. Driven by the desire to spread their reach further beyond the clutches of the solar system that birthed them humanity engaged in an engineering project beyond any they had attempted before. This is what birthed the Marathon, a colony ship that was built from the hollowed out core of one of Mars’s moons, Deimos. The destination was set for the faraway planet of Tau Ceti VI where it was tasked with setting up a new kind of colony, one free of the bounds of its homeworld. The ship went dark some time ago, leaving humanity wondering what had happened to the settlers aboard the Marathon. This is where you come in, having traded your humanity for immortality, you shall die endlessly in order to find out what happened and maybe even earn yourself a tidy profit along the way.
The aesthetic of Marathon brings back memories of the clean future art style that Mirror’s Edge popularised all those years ago. The oversaturated colour palette is something that really needs a HDR monitor to be seen as I honestly couldn’t think of another game that made me just appreciate just how vivid colours in a game could actually be. The rest of the game’s visuals are clean and pristine with environments overflowing with detail that takes some time getting used to. Some of this did come at the cost of asset reuse however, with a lot of areas using the same building blocks just repeated in slightly different ways. Despite all this visual fidelity though performance remains rock solid, even through the most intense gun fights. It certainly shows that Bungie has been no slouch when it comes to creating slick, gunplay focused games.
Marathon is a class-based extraction shooter, pitting you against NPCs and players alike in a battle to scrounge up loot and get it safely back to your stash. Whilst I wouldn’t exactly call myself a veteran of the genre many of the familiar extraction shooter tropes apply: different areas with varying levels of loot, exposed extraction points, the pervasive tension that makes you question every move and a variety of quests to push you to do things beyond just looting and extracting. The class system is an interesting twist on the formula, giving you some options in building out your kit to maximise your innate abilities. Couple that with the faction system which stands in for the usual talent tree and you’ve got an experience that’s instantly familiar but very much it’s own thing when compared to other games in the genre.
If there’s one thing Bungie knows well it’s FPS combat and Marathon is simply the next game in the long list showing this off. Each of the different weapons has its own personality and you’ll quickly find yourself gravitating to one particular style more than others. If I’m honest the TTK for an extraction shooter felt a lot shorter than I thought it would be with some engagements ending about as quickly as a 1v1 match in Destiny used to. That is, of course, a big function of gear and I will say that as I progressed somewhat I did find it easier to survive longer the more kit I was rocking. Still though with the game’s out and out focus on PVP and rapid redeployment maybe the lower TTK is what keeps people locked in the loop longer.
Which brings me to the main point about my own experience with the game. I played solo for my entire playthrough and, whilst I don’t wholly regret that, it definitely felt like I was getting maybe 20% of the game and doing it the hard way. Partly this was because of my naive thinking that it was more like Arc Raiders, where being friendly and casual is a given if that’s what you want, but Marathon does not encourage cooperative play between squads at all. So once you’re OK with murder first, ask questions later mentality things start to get a whole lot better but the grind starts to sting a whole lot more.
I had a maybe 30% success rate on extracting which meant that I was pretty low on resources consistently. This also meant that in an hour long session I might be lucky to successfully extract once and that’s not nearly materials to afford any meaningful upgrades which would’ve kept me coming back. To be sure part of this is a skill issue, something which further play might have improved, but without something driving me forward I found it hard to continue on. With a crew that shared sense of loss and going on again was enough to keep me coming back but alone? It’s hard to push past multiple defeats when it feels like every one of them doesn’t really get you anywhere.
Which is a shame as it seems like Marathon could be the kind of game I could really sink my teeth into had I been able to convince my crew to come along with me. Reading up on some of the experiences that squads are having in the Cryo Archive raid had me recounting my time when the Vault of Glass opened up in the original Destiny, something which I thoroughly enjoyed playing not just for the challenge and the loot, but the lore that came along with it. By all accounts Bungie has managed to craft yet another one of those moments which, I’m infinitely happy for, even if I only get to experience it second hand.
Marathon felt like a last chance for Bungie; one last attempt at making something great before the big axe of capitalism came to claim another game developer. Whilst my experience of the game might not be what they intended I can still see it for what it is and truly I tip my hat to them. Whilst this likely means that Marathon is the last thing we’ll see from Bungie for a while I’m glad that they’ll likely be around for a good while yet and, maybe, their next IP will manage to strike home for me. For now though Marathon will be one of those lost loves for me and all I can hope for is that they’re happy with someone else.
Rating: 8.0/10
Marathon is available on PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 right now for $59.95. Game was played on the PC with a total of 5.1 hours playtime and 21% of the achievements unlocked.
