How Bungie’s newest sci-fi adventure in Marathon challenges your skills and patience.
When you first hear about Marathon, you might immediately think of Bungie and their legendary history with Halo and Destiny. And you wouldn’t be wrong. Marathon’s roots trace all the way back to 1994, with the original Marathon trilogy that laid the groundwork for what would eventually become some of the most influential shooters in gaming history.
Bungie has always been a studio that pushes boundaries, combining immersive worlds with tight combat and rewarding progression. Marathon isn’t just another extraction shooter—it’s a continuation of that legacy, wrapped in a new sci-fi universe, and it’s demanding your attention whether you’re ready for it or not.
The journey to get Marathon to this point hasn’t been easy. From closed betas to the server slam, Bungie has been testing the waters and trying to showcase the game’s depth. The problem is, the game makes a terrible first impression. If you jump in during a server slam or early free event, you might be overwhelmed by the visuals, the intensity, and the sheer amount of systems at play.
That’s not the game’s fault—it’s just the reality of jumping into a highly detailed extraction shooter as a brand-new player. But if you’re willing to stick it out, Marathon rewards you with layers of complexity, skill expression, and genuine thrills that few other games manage to deliver.
Marathon takes place about 800 years in the future in the Tau Ceti star system.
Humanity has colonized Mars, moons, and planets, and the game begins with the colonies under attack from an alien force. You play as a biosynthetic runner—a consciousness uploaded to the cloud that can inhabit various runner shells. Each run puts you in different situations, often acting as a mercenary for competing factions, performing tasks that range from gathering resources to eliminating threats or sabotaging rival companies. It’s a PvPvE extraction shooter, so you’re not only dealing with AI-controlled enemies but also other players who are just as dangerous and motivated as you are.
Maps play a huge role in the Marathon experience. At launch, there are four maps—Perimeter, Dire Marsh, Outpost, and Cryo Archive—though technically three are available immediately, with the final one, Cryo Archive, unlocking later as part of the endgame raid. Each map is designed to increase in difficulty.
Perimeter is essentially the beginner map, Dire Marsh adds more complexity, and Outpost ramps things up significantly. Cryo Archive is where you really feel the intensity of the game—the combination of challenging AI and player encounters makes it the ultimate test of your skills. Every map encourages strategic thinking, whether you’re navigating toxic rooms, locating loot, or planning your engagement with other players.
You can approach Marathon solo, but the game is clearly designed around three-player squads.
While running alone is a true test of patience, running in a trio allows you to cover more ground and take on more difficult obstacles. In Escape from Tarkov, the Rook system works similarly to scavengers. In order to try and get some loot without committing to a full entry, you can drop into ongoing raids in the middle of the run. Because this mid-raid entry is exclusive to Rooks, if you queue up as a fully equipped runner, you’ll always start at the beginning of the raid, on an even playing field, maintaining consistency and fairness.
The gameplay mechanism in Marathon is layered and complex. You’ll be exploring environments, scavenging loot, engaging in combat, completing faction contracts, and constantly managing your loadout. There’s no vehicle system, but the combat and movement are designed to feel fluid, fast, and satisfying.
Bungie excels at gunplay; whether you’re eliminating AI enemies or engaging other players, it feels dynamic. Depending on the attachments and modifiers, each weapon behaves differently. Experimentation is exciting because some attachments can drastically change a weapon’s behavior, such as tripling fire rate or making bullets ricochet. Extreme effects, like momentary invisibility, can even be found in backpacks, which increases the risk-reward of looting.
In Marathon, fighting is more than just shooting and moving on.
You can’t just run through areas mindlessly because enemy AI is aggressive and has keen detection. Every encounter feels high-stakes due to toxic rooms, environmental dangers, and hordes of adversaries. Long debuffs that can last up to three minutes are applied by some environmental hazards, such as toxic plants, which are detrimental in a fast-paced extraction scenario.
The combination of high enemy durability, long-lasting effects, and AI awareness creates tension on every run. And then you have PvP, where other players bring the unpredictability that makes extraction shooters memorable. Solo players often find themselves outmatched against teams, especially when trying to clear timed challenges or high-value loot rooms, making teamwork not just useful but often essential.
Marathon’s progression system adds even more depth. You gain experience and level up both your runner shells and factions. There are six main runner shells, each with unique abilities that cater to different playstyles—medic, brawler, tank, stealth, recon, and hybrid types—and a seventh, the Rook, for scav-style runs.
There are also six factions, each with its own skill tree that gives you upgrades and bonuses based on what activities they focus on. Arachné, a death cult faction, is an example of a group that focuses on PvP improvements like better kills, self-revives, and better melee performance. Saguchi, which works on runner shell upgrades, focuses on improving implants, cores, and abilities.
This two-layer progression system makes you try out different strategies and keeps the game fresh by changing your skills and strategies.
Leveling up and moving up in your faction have a big effect on how you play. Because you’re underleveled, under-equipped, and don’t know the maps well, early runs feel hard. This is part of the game’s learning curve. As you level up, you get new skills, better gear, and more complex strategies that let you take on tougher PvE and PvP battles. You can really feel like you’re making progress and achieving things with this progression system. That’s a big part of why Marathon can be so rewarding once you put in the time.
Graphics and pictures are a big source of contention. The art style in Marathon is stylized and bold, not hyper-realistic. It’s bright, has a lot of contrast, and can be very intense, which can make some players’ eyes tired. If you don’t like bright colors or flashing lights, the graphics might be too much for you at first.
The world does a good job of showing off its beauty and supporting the overall gameplay once you get used to it. Enemies, loot, and things you can interact with are all made to fit this style, but it can be hard to read at first. Icons are very stylized, and some types of enemies can blend in with the environment if you’re not careful. Over time, you’ll be able to tell the difference between elite grenadiers and regular ones, find turrets that blend in with walls, and understand the visual cues you need to win.
Marathon is also very good at designing sound.
Audio cues are important because they let you know when enemies are nearby, when there’s loot to be found, and when there are dangers in the environment. Gunfire feels real and satisfying, footsteps have weight, and the sounds in the background add to the tension of each raid. Voice lines and music are used sparingly but effectively to make the experience more immersive without being too much. Overall, the sound adds to the game’s mood and helps players understand important gameplay information, which is very important in an extraction shooter where awareness is key.
Even though Marathon has some good points, it also has some problems. First impressions are bad because the graphics are too bright, the UI is too complicated, and the game is too hard. Solo players may feel weak compared to trios, and for some classes, like assassins, stealth mechanics can seem unfair, especially on higher graphics settings, where they can be almost invisible.
Managing your inventory and swapping attachments is clunky and time-consuming, which can be annoying for players in the middle of a fight. Sometimes maps don’t make the goals clear, so players have to use external guides. PvP density can change from run to run, with some feeling empty and others full, which can change the pace. These problems don’t ruin the game, but they do change how new players feel about it.
The server slam, which let people in for free at first, brought some of these problems to light.
All the players were level one, had very little gear, and hadn’t made any progress in their faction. This doesn’t show how deep the game is once players put in some time. This reset environment can make first impressions wrong because new players see the game at its worst when it comes to being ready. After you level up and learn how the game works, it opens up in ways that are hard to describe in short reviews or streaming clips.
Marathon is a great experience for people who are willing to work through the first few hurdles. Looting is fun, and the balance between risk and reward is done well. Even basic gear can help skilled players beat opponents who have better gear, and rare items give players powerful bonuses without changing the overall gameplay. There are many different types of missions, such as standard extractions, high-risk loot runs, and faction contracts.
Bungie has also shown that they are very committed to helping players after the game comes out.
There have been many updates from Bungie that address issues such as spawn rates, difficulty levels, and player feedback. Ranked play, new maps, more runner shells, limited-time modes, and map modifiers are all things that will be added to the game in the future to keep it fresh. The Marathon team, which includes former Valorant lead Joseph Ziegler, says that design and balance for competitive play are top priorities. This should give players faith in the game’s future.
At its heart, Marathon is about taking risks and making strategies. You choose how to run each time, what gear to bring, how to talk to other players, and which faction to join. The fact that the game doesn’t hold your hand is part of what makes it fun. You’ll lose a lot, get angry, and die a lot, but those losses matter because they change how you play the next time. It stands out in the extraction shooter genre because it has both PvE and PvP modes, complicated progression systems, different maps, and combat encounters that matter.
Marathon is a game that requires time and effort, but it rewards players with one of the most complex and exciting extraction experiences available today. The first impression might not be great; the graphics, user interface, and difficulty can be scary. But if you stick with it, you’ll find a really fun game. Marathon is worth the time and effort if you like extraction shooters and skill-based progression. The base Bungie has built is strong, and there is a lot of room for growth and change.
So if you’re ready to dive in, strap yourself in, and accept that the first runs may be punishing, Marathon has a lot to offer. It’s a game that grows on you, rewarding your persistence with depth, excitement, and skill expression that few games in the genre manage to achieve. Give it time, explore the maps, master your runner shells, and start building your own story in the Tau Ceti system.
Marathon isn’t for everyone, and it shouldn’t be. Its first impression is harsh, but its long-term experience is rich, rewarding, and full of moments that will make you want to come back again and again. Once you learn its systems, understand its maps, and invest in its progression, you’ll see why it’s one of the more compelling extraction shooters released in years.
