(Credit: Bungie)
Bungie's long-gestating, multiplayer-focused reboot of 1994’s Marathon is finally hitting PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on March 5. To mark the occasion (and to iron out last-minute issues), the developer launched a pre-release "server slam" from Feb. 26 to March 2 that offered a gameplay preview, a few runners, a few maps, and a sampling of the progression system. We tag-teamed the server slam to parse the good and the bad of Marathon's public debut, and after 10 hours of play, found it an engaging shooter with a few head-scratching elements.
Marathon Is Back—But What Is It?
Marathon is an extraction shooter, a fairly new multiplayer genre enjoying mainstream popularity thanks to games like Arc Raiders and Escape from Tarkov. In these titles, you're dropped onto a map, battle royale-style, and must search the surrounding area for weapons and munitions. Meanwhile, you're tasked with completing objectives, dealing with hostile AI, and battling other player-controlled teams.
(Credit: Bungie)If you're lucky, you'll exfiltrate safely with additional goodies stuffed in your backpack; if you die, you lose everything on your person. That's where the tension arises: Do you risk bringing high-level gear with you for an advantage, or do you scrape together whatever you can find in hopes you might get the jump on an unfortunate soul carrying a decent kit?
Marathon takes this formula and drops it in the sci-fi world of Tau Ceti IV, a derelict colony that everyone in the galaxy wants to claim. You play as a runner, post-apocalyptic gig economy pawns that have sacrificed their physical form for a biosynthetic shell, each with unique skills to suit different playstyles. Dropped onto the surface in teams of three, you and your party do dirty work for various factions in exchange for rewards, upgrades, and credits.
Graphics, Lore, and UI Issues
Marathon's strongest feature is its graphics, which look absolutely gorgeous. The vibrant, fluorescent colors of the abandoned research facilities and depots contrast nicely with Tau Ceti IV's fauna. The fallen colony is littered with these bubblegum-colored buildings, weapons, and characters that are intentionally incongruous and deeply artificial.
It has a strong visual identity, though an unfortunate plagiarism scandal sullied the game's pre-release marketing last year (Bungie eventually settled with the artist in question). It's one of the best-looking games we've seen from the team, distinct from other Bungie titles and other multiplayer shooters.
(Credit: Bungie)That self-confident design permeates the whole aesthetic. The in-game factions are all vying for control or information as they send runners to scour Tau Ceti IV, each with its own motivations and visual language. Artificial agriculture group NuCaloric, for example, is introduced with a flashy pre-rendered intro video featuring genetically modified crops, pharmaceuticals, and other iconography, with a primarily pink-and-white color scheme that really pops.
It's all eye candy, and each faction feels distinct—even if they're just handing out contracts for you to run down on the planet's surface. Marathon isn't nearly as narratively heavy as a single-player game, but it has a lot of background lore, which helped us feel more connected to what we were doing, even if it is ultimately set dressing for a multiplayer experience. It feels like an extension of what Bungie attempted with Destiny's factions, essentially giving flavor to different quest givers, but with a lot more style.
(Credit: Bungie)We played across PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro, and PC, and the game looked fantastic on all platforms. Marathon is the type of game you'd want to play on an OLED screen with properly calibrated HDR. At the end of the server slam, Bungie acknowledged some PC performance issues, but we experienced smooth performance on a higher-end rig.
That's not to say that Marathon's visual design is free from problems. Its UI, for example, takes some time to get used to. While not as cumbersome as Battlefield VI's confusing menus, Marathon's menus prioritize style over functionality in terms of navigation. It's a maximalist approach, sticking to the game's in-your-face visual design when some clarity would better serve the player.
It's not just that it's visually busy; there's so much to flip through between runner shells, factions, contracts, upgrades, and loot divided between your backpack and armory. It takes a concerted effort to sort through such a visually busy space to internalize the different menus. This is a major challenge in onboarding players. There's only light guidance, so you must actively absorb what you're looking at and read carefully.
(Credit: Bungie)The visually clutter spills onto the field as well, with icons and effects littering the screen. There's a clear influence from Ghost in the Shell and other anime. In fact, the loading screens reminded us of Japanese movie posters due to their visual density. Even though the menus are a headache, it's tough to fully say it's not worth it, because Marathon looks so good and cohesive. Bungie just needs to dial back the flash and turn up the usability.
Gameplay and Weapons
With such a colorful world, dense with lore and detail, we wanted to spend more time just exploring the surroundings. That's not a luxury in Marathon.
If you've never played an extraction shooter, you'll need to rewire your brain to play Marathon properly. Approach the gameplay like Call of Duty or Destiny, and you'll get flatlined pretty quickly. It's a player-versus-player-versus-enemy (PvPvE) game, so you must be choosy about whom you attack and when. The UESC bots, the name of the enemies that litter the world, are no meager threat, and can quickly overrun a team that underestimates them. But if you choose to attack them, you may draw the attention of other parties stalking nearby.
(Credit: Bungie)In one instance, the AI's turret locking onto another player alerted our team to the enemy at large. In another, a firefight between players drew the UESC to our position, allowing one team to push up on the other. Proximity chat also adds fuel to the fire. Some players may call for a truce, but most conversations ended with a knife in the back and a bullet through the head.
Unlike Arc Raiders, the player base (so far) is not inclined to be friendly, nor does the game motivate you to be. The pace is more akin to a battle royale, since you must be wary of another team jumping you at any time, but with added complicating factors of AI, persistent loot, and objectives. Playing solo instead of with friends, like any game, can be a hit-or-miss experience. We think Marathon is best enjoyed with two friends entering the battle as a duo, much like us.
This balance of bots and human players can prove annoying at times due to your time to kill (TTK) being much lower than the UESC's. That means fights against humans can end in less than a minute, but fights against bots can take a while and feel like a waste of ammo. The UESC hit hard, too. More than a few runs were ruined by an accidental (or purposeful) kicking of the UESC hornet nest. There is the persistent potential disappointment of losing a run without finishing your contract objective, or losing your favorite gear when you were headed toward the extraction point.
(Credit: Bungie)In typical Bungie fashion, Marathon feels great to play. The crisp shooter action found in Destiny and Halo returns, though it looks and feels more like the former. Despite their 3D-printed appearances, the weapons don't feel like toys and pack satisfying punches for their respective classes. The different runner shells also serve as characters or classes, complete with a few Apex Legends-style abilities. This makes cooperative play more fun, since you can head out with complementary skill sets. The sound design is slick, too, with an understated soundtrack and satisfying sound effects.
Are You Ready for Marathon?
Between the UI issues, lack of guidance, and inherently "sweaty" gameplay, it's pretty clear that Marathon seems more likely to attract a hard-core crowd than a casual one. That said, we don't think it's a simple binary: enjoy extraction shooters or not. Neither of us was particularly fond of the genre heading into the server slam. Yet, we both kept coming back to Marathon—or at least wanted to see more, even if we aren't quite yet head over heels. It's a tougher ask for the average player to give Marathon a try when it's not free-to-play like Apex Legends or Destiny 2, but the high quality on display may make the $39.99 price easier to swallow.
Right now, our biggest concern is Bungie’s live service ambitions. For every Apex Legends or Fortnite, there are a dozen live service games that release and close within the year. Even after nearly three years, the embarrassing failure of Concord still rests heavy on PlayStation's catalog. And while Destiny 2 still enjoys its core community and updates, can Bungie afford to support Marathon, a potentially polarizing shooter?
Bungie hopes players stick around for more. Additional areas and a ranked game mode are planned to be released in the back half of March as Marathon's first season kicks off. We'll see you back on the surface when the full version blasts onto PC, PlayStation, and Xbox on March 5.