Marathon Review: A Wonderfully Reimagined Sci-Fi Shooter That Outguns the Competition

Gamers have wondered what Bungie had planned for Marathon since its 2023 reveal. The venerable developer reinvented the first-person shooter time and time again, first with Halo in 2001 and then with Destiny in 2014. Despite Bungie's accolades, an important question emerged: Could it successfully resurrect a forgotten 1994 Macintosh first-person shooter for contemporary audiences? If you had asked me before I fired up Marathon, I would've said it was an unlikely goal. But after playing Marathon nonstop over the last month, I've never been more happy to be wrong.

In the simplest terms, Marathon is an extraction shooter, a sub-genre that's blowing up in a big way thanks to the success of Arc Raiders, Escape from Tarkov, and similar games. In these titles, you're dropped onto a map, battle-royale style, and are tasked with completing objectives against a time limit, while contending with hostile AI- and human-controlled teams. That sounds basic, but Marathon is so, so good.

Paired in small teams of three, you push toward points of interest to fill bags with loot, munitions, and other rarities, while keeping yourselves alive long enough for your exit to appear. But here's the catch: Exfiltration isn't guaranteed. If you die, you lose everything on your person. As a result, every match is drenched with tension. Do you risk bringing in good gear for an advantage? Or do you wing it and hope to catch someone off guard, plucking a decent kit from their body? 

Marathon doesn't take much time to explain its rules of engagement. After a very short tutorial, I was set loose onto the planet of Tau Ceti IV, a derelict colony that everyone in the galaxy wants to claim. I played as a runner, a post-apocalyptic gig-economy pawn who has sacrificed a regular flesh-and-blood body for a biosynthetic shell. These shells offer unique abilities to suit different playstyles.

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In these opening hours, expect to die a lot. I certainly did. That's part of Marathon’s charm. 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. 

Marathon wants you to be intentional in your movements. Running across catwalks, breaking glass, and skirmishes with AI, no matter how brief, give away your position to other teams looking for a fight. I've encountered very few games that actively integrate sound design into gameplay; audio is crucial for getting the jump on a team or avoiding an ambush.

Marathon also features a brilliant score. Composed by Ryan Lott (of the band Son Lux), the soundtrack is loaded with experimental electronic music that gives the game its synthetic heartbeat. The game is full of sparse tracks, packed with rhythmic hums, low growls, and other sounds that I can only describe as electricity running through electronic wiring, along with pulsating, looping industrial beats. It emphasizes Marathon's decaying, neon environments, making the world the main character, rather than the runner you play.

Marathon is one of the best-looking games released this year. The confident art direction oozes across every inch of the game's aesthetic, including the menu's maximalist UI, visually busy loading screens, and augmented, Ghost in the Shell-like runners and their modular weaponry. Each art aspect is unique with its own cybernetic flair, and they're delightful.

The locales look equally gorgeous. In the abandoned facilities of Dire Marsh, you can nearly taste the microplastics from the artificial plants sprouting in abandoned labs, while Outpost's abandoned construction sites and cold, industrial facade juxtapose the periodic firestorms that force you to seek shelter. Each area is densely designed and immaculately structured, with tons of hidden weapon caches, boss enemies to defeat, and other secrets to uncover. 

The in-game factions vying for control and information from the planet's abandoned colonies are distinct as well, in both their motivations and visual language. Artificial agriculture group NuCaloric, for example, is instantly recognizable by its Pepto-Bismol-like pink-and-white color scheme. Meanwhile, Sekiguchi Genetics features stark white silk worms 3D-printing artificial bodies. It feels like an extension of what Bungie attempted with Destiny's factions, though with a lot more style.

The world of Tau Ceti and its lore is rich with all the intrigue you'd want from your dystopian sci-fi fiction, but it's tucked away in unlockable Codec entries, rather than told in any traditional linear sense. Marathon isn't as narratively heavy as Bungie's previous games, ultimately serving as set dressing for the multiplayer experience. In truth, I wish Marathon were a true single-player game, or at least had a campaign, just to give me time to explore the world without the fear of getting shot in the back of the head.

Marathon's gameplay loop is simple on paper, but the longer you play, the deeper the hooks sink. Marathon feels incredible, with weapons that are a literal blast to fire off at enemies. Each runner also has their own set of unique abilities. It doesn't take long before you're adjusting your attributes and actions to complement the team's skill set.

For example, my team encountered another team fighting a batch of UESC bots. While they were distracted, our thief sent a drone to pick gear off of the enemy's sniper, while I used my assassin's cloaking ability to reposition for the kill. With the whole team accounted for, we pounced on the unsuspecting trio. We were elbow deep into the enemy team's loot when another squad, attracted by our noisy firefight, made sure our victory was short-lived.

These fights become even wilder with proximity chat. While I've had a few friendly encounters, the player base (so far) is not inclined to be cordial—if you’re on an enemy team, that is. Arc Raiders, this is not. Luckily, I've had more success finding strangers willing and able to work together to complete contracts. It's possible to play Marathon as a single-player game and queue up in solo player lobbies. Although this makes contracts easier to complete, Marathon was clearly crafted with teams in mind. Bungie has also experimented with two-player lobbies, so the developer is open to experimentation.

That said, the game offers a shell for single-player play. Called "The Rook," this runner type is unique in that you can't choose its loadout before deploying. You also cannot complete contracts with it. Rooks spawn roughly 10-15 mins into a game already in progress, and your sole purpose is to loot whatever remains. It's a great way to restock on supplies if your armory is cleared out after a string of losses. Additionally, you probably won't lose anything good if you fail to extract, because the gear is randomized.

Marathon is dynamic in the same way Hades II and other roguelikes keep things fresh with every run. Sometimes, you'll run into nobody and exfiltrate without issues. Sometimes, you'll find that everyone in the lobby seems to have the same objective as you. Loot also changes from run to run, so it's best not to always follow the same path.

As you complete objectives, you'll be able to upgrade each faction's skill tree, improving abilities while unlocking weapons and gear that’ll give you a better chance on the battlefield. Emphasis on chance, because better gear doesn't always mean an easier fight. And there's plenty of guns to find, including shotguns, pistols, and railguns. In true Bungie style, each gun feels distinct, with its own weight and sound. More importantly, they all feel exceptional to fire.

As I lost more time to Marathon, I came to appreciate the gameplay friction. Marathon may seem dense at first, especially for someone new to this genre. The menus are dizzying, the gameplay loop unforgiving, and most of the game's objectives are vague. Still, no matter how frustrated I got after a bad run, the highs of a hard-fought victory, getting the last hit in a tense firefight, or finding a rare material and successfully extracting with it, made it all worthwhile.

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In truth, Marathon reminded me of one of my favorite games, the very unrelated Dead Rising—and not because of its difficulty. It's how the game expects you to play by its rules. You're supposed to experiment, wander levels, and repeatedly die. If you're frustrated by how homogenous shooters have become, Marathon is a breath of fresh air. It's confident in its mechanics, so you'll find a game that's rich in depth if you're willing to buy into what it offers. 

Although there's an overblown obsession with Marathon's dwindling player count, Bungie's determined to keep the game's content flowing. There's no indication that Marathon will go the way of Concord, Sony's last attempt at a AAA live-service game (one that shut down after only three weeks). Since its release, Marathon has introduced a ranked mode and a new, weekend-only map called the Cryo Archive, a high-level area that requires you to bring your best gear every time you enter. Hopefully, Bungie will support this title for years to come.