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Marathon (2026): the game is "ok" but NEVER worth 40 USD.
3 weeks ago
General
So I participated in the Open Beta for Marathon (Server Slam) and I come with feelings of wasted potential.
The story for the game starts off pretty interesting. You take on the role of a runner, a mercenary who is basically a brain-in-a-jar who jumps down to planets in shells and brings back what they can find before they die. You;re tasked with finding out what the hell happened to the Marathon Colony ship that settled on Tau Centi before going dark as the planet is now overrun by a hostile military faction. The story is delivered through doing contracts and dialogue with various factions as you complete various tasks for each faction.
The style of the game is very well done and striking as it does it own thing; feeling a LOT like Mirror's edge and I want to explore more of the world but the game has so much irritating bullshit that it just kills your desire to explore. I love the use of bright flat colours and how each building looks but I feel that the interior lighting could be improved for better way-finding as I got confused in the interiors that are too dark at times and no option for a flashlight.
The gameplay is fine as Bungie is still the king of making good FPS games as you have to fight robots & hostile runners. The guns are ok and killing evil robots is still fun. Its just that this whole extraction shooter
Marathon is a fine game, it just needs a lot more refinement if it wants to target the casual audience with the extraction FPS. I raged a fair bit at marathon because I loved the style as it reminds me of Mirrors Edge 1 but got really pissed off that its somehow a multiplayer game instead of a single player game. The story is very much designed to be a SP one and the multiplayer extraction shooter component adds nothing to the story & world.
The gameply is serviceable at best as the killing of robots is fine. Its your standard extraction shooter game where you drop in, loot what you can, complete faction contracts, and leave. The killing of robots is fun when everything lines up but when you're just dropping in with a starter kit (which you will do often), you end up feeling underpowered to even stomp on some basic goomba-type enemies. It feels like the game just became an extraction shooter just to aggravate your ass.
For instance, inventory management is actual dogshit. I understand that this is supposed to be a more casual take on the extraction shooter genre but this geuinley sucks. It is fustrating having to manage your backpack when everything in the game takes up space for no reason. Fortnite & Warzone made it so that your ammo does not take up space in your backpack but marathon made it so ammo takes up valuable space in your backpack. In addition, you also have to consider space in your backpack for loot and salvage that you sell upon exfil to earn credits. Credits in this game act as your XP and currency as you need creds to get new skills that make your character stronger. This means that you have to consider combat gear, ammo, healing, AND loot to take up space in your backpack. WHY THE FUCK COULDNT YOU HAVE SHOVED THE LOOT AND AMMO INTO A BAG OF HOLDING? Look, every time you use a healing item, you automatically create space for depleted healing items such as empty health and shield packs that you automatically sell upon leaving. PLUS there's also self-buffs and status-aliment healing items you have to manage in your backpack. All this means is that it feels like you're always stopping yourself from having fun looting because you have to do this bullshit inventory management puzzle nobody asked for. You're also capped from getting too strong so you can;t leave with a massive load just because you have to consider your combat performance which means saying no to potential creds, things you need to get stronger. How do you manage to make a game about looting THAT PUNISHES YOU FOR LOOTING.
The loot isn't even that good. I know its a new game and a new universe but I don't see a difference in getting all the combat enhancements (I'll call them perks because I can't be arsed to remember marathon's jargon) just feel too situational to really be useful. You can't tell what each perk is because they all look the same so you have to read what each perk does. For instance, you can get a shield battery but the base shield battery looks the same as higher tier shield batteries and vice versa. Some perks also have the same inventory model but go into different slots so how the hell are you able to tell which perk is which at a glance? Add into the while bullshit inventory management system and you get a game that WANTS you to sit down and manage your inventory WHILE COMBAT IS ONGOING. Fortnite and Warzone's inventory system works because you can tell what perks you have, what attachment does what, etc but marathon.... everything looks the same but is somehow different. How do you misfire so fucking badly? This is NOT simplifying a fucking genre for a broader audience but just copying and pasting shit nobody wanted into your game "just because" you have to.
I finished several contracts and did about 10+ runs. I did have fun but it just got more annoying the longer i played because there's so many constraints that soley exist to either waste your time or stop you from getting stronger. Had there been some sort of system that makes sure you have progress instead of just losing everything, this game would go down better but as it stands I'm playing every game with a starter load-out (That somehow dosen't give you a sidearm to quickswap to) so that I don't lose anything in my vault. I'm not buying anything because credits = XP in this game and I need skills more than i need gear but I can't collect everything I want to because the inventory management is full of such bullshit nobody fucking asked for.
This game had a chance to stand out by saying "We're better to get into than Tarkov and ARC Raider with an interesting world" but they blew their fucking load. This game will not respect you, your time, your money, and your hard drive space. Unless Bungie gets their head out of their ass and focuses more on a fun single player experience, I would stay far away from this game. They decided to target the same group of people that are already playing games they like and this game will flop. Mark my words, layoffs are coming.
TL;DR, Marathon is fine but not $40 / $60 (After-tax) CAD fine and you will be seeing a significant falloff in March with a small dedicated playerbase, not the numbers that Sony wants.
The story for the game starts off pretty interesting. You take on the role of a runner, a mercenary who is basically a brain-in-a-jar who jumps down to planets in shells and brings back what they can find before they die. You;re tasked with finding out what the hell happened to the Marathon Colony ship that settled on Tau Centi before going dark as the planet is now overrun by a hostile military faction. The story is delivered through doing contracts and dialogue with various factions as you complete various tasks for each faction.
The style of the game is very well done and striking as it does it own thing; feeling a LOT like Mirror's edge and I want to explore more of the world but the game has so much irritating bullshit that it just kills your desire to explore. I love the use of bright flat colours and how each building looks but I feel that the interior lighting could be improved for better way-finding as I got confused in the interiors that are too dark at times and no option for a flashlight.
The gameplay is fine as Bungie is still the king of making good FPS games as you have to fight robots & hostile runners. The guns are ok and killing evil robots is still fun. Its just that this whole extraction shooter
Marathon is a fine game, it just needs a lot more refinement if it wants to target the casual audience with the extraction FPS. I raged a fair bit at marathon because I loved the style as it reminds me of Mirrors Edge 1 but got really pissed off that its somehow a multiplayer game instead of a single player game. The story is very much designed to be a SP one and the multiplayer extraction shooter component adds nothing to the story & world.
The gameply is serviceable at best as the killing of robots is fine. Its your standard extraction shooter game where you drop in, loot what you can, complete faction contracts, and leave. The killing of robots is fun when everything lines up but when you're just dropping in with a starter kit (which you will do often), you end up feeling underpowered to even stomp on some basic goomba-type enemies. It feels like the game just became an extraction shooter just to aggravate your ass.
For instance, inventory management is actual dogshit. I understand that this is supposed to be a more casual take on the extraction shooter genre but this geuinley sucks. It is fustrating having to manage your backpack when everything in the game takes up space for no reason. Fortnite & Warzone made it so that your ammo does not take up space in your backpack but marathon made it so ammo takes up valuable space in your backpack. In addition, you also have to consider space in your backpack for loot and salvage that you sell upon exfil to earn credits. Credits in this game act as your XP and currency as you need creds to get new skills that make your character stronger. This means that you have to consider combat gear, ammo, healing, AND loot to take up space in your backpack. WHY THE FUCK COULDNT YOU HAVE SHOVED THE LOOT AND AMMO INTO A BAG OF HOLDING? Look, every time you use a healing item, you automatically create space for depleted healing items such as empty health and shield packs that you automatically sell upon leaving. PLUS there's also self-buffs and status-aliment healing items you have to manage in your backpack. All this means is that it feels like you're always stopping yourself from having fun looting because you have to do this bullshit inventory management puzzle nobody asked for. You're also capped from getting too strong so you can;t leave with a massive load just because you have to consider your combat performance which means saying no to potential creds, things you need to get stronger. How do you manage to make a game about looting THAT PUNISHES YOU FOR LOOTING.
The loot isn't even that good. I know its a new game and a new universe but I don't see a difference in getting all the combat enhancements (I'll call them perks because I can't be arsed to remember marathon's jargon) just feel too situational to really be useful. You can't tell what each perk is because they all look the same so you have to read what each perk does. For instance, you can get a shield battery but the base shield battery looks the same as higher tier shield batteries and vice versa. Some perks also have the same inventory model but go into different slots so how the hell are you able to tell which perk is which at a glance? Add into the while bullshit inventory management system and you get a game that WANTS you to sit down and manage your inventory WHILE COMBAT IS ONGOING. Fortnite and Warzone's inventory system works because you can tell what perks you have, what attachment does what, etc but marathon.... everything looks the same but is somehow different. How do you misfire so fucking badly? This is NOT simplifying a fucking genre for a broader audience but just copying and pasting shit nobody wanted into your game "just because" you have to.
I finished several contracts and did about 10+ runs. I did have fun but it just got more annoying the longer i played because there's so many constraints that soley exist to either waste your time or stop you from getting stronger. Had there been some sort of system that makes sure you have progress instead of just losing everything, this game would go down better but as it stands I'm playing every game with a starter load-out (That somehow dosen't give you a sidearm to quickswap to) so that I don't lose anything in my vault. I'm not buying anything because credits = XP in this game and I need skills more than i need gear but I can't collect everything I want to because the inventory management is full of such bullshit nobody fucking asked for.
This game had a chance to stand out by saying "We're better to get into than Tarkov and ARC Raider with an interesting world" but they blew their fucking load. This game will not respect you, your time, your money, and your hard drive space. Unless Bungie gets their head out of their ass and focuses more on a fun single player experience, I would stay far away from this game. They decided to target the same group of people that are already playing games they like and this game will flop. Mark my words, layoffs are coming.
TL;DR, Marathon is fine but not $40 / $60 (After-tax) CAD fine and you will be seeing a significant falloff in March with a small dedicated playerbase, not the numbers that Sony wants.
