Marathon - The (Solo) Review

I won't bury the lede here; Is Marathon good? Yes, absolutely, I legitimately adore this game, got my money's worth and see it in many ways as a triumph of experimental design and storytelling. Do I recommend buying/playing Marathon? In its current state... probably not. For solo players, almost definitely not. This game isn't just hard to recommend, its play is surprisingly shallow and rough around the edges for a 40 dollar game. But it's not bad. It's just so complicated. This review almost had a title calling the game a "Mids-sterpiece" or calling it "A bold vision held back from greatness" but at this point I respect the game too much to do anything so tacky. But I also respect people's time too much to tell them to play it. Ugh. Let's get into it ~ Without further ado, here's my review of Marathon (2026) :

Gosh where to even start? Marathon (2026) is a live service extraction shooter[*1] that costs $40, boasts 3 (soon to be 4) very tight maps, 6 generally interesting classes (+Rook which we'll get to), all drenched in the most gorgeous aesthetics I've seen out of a sci-fi game in a while. Its developer, Bungie, is most famous for the Halo pedigree and more recently the rocky history of the Destiny franchise (a franchise I was intimately familiar with for 10 years). Marathon itself is a return to the world of Bungie's 1990s shooter trilogy of the same name... Something that makes the lack of a proper campaign mode all the more disappointing. You play as a Runner: Mercenaries diving into synthetic shells to pick the bones of an abandoned colony clean. Between last week's Sever Slam and this weekend's launch I've clocked in around 16 hours - Long enough to have beaten the original Halo trilogy if you know what you're doing.

Now this review is going to be colored by three very important things: Firstly, I've only played the game solo - I'm not going to ask my friends to pay 40 bucks to play with me nor am I interested in randomly queuing with strangers when dealing with hundreds of strangers is literally what I do for work (in fact, the game's offering of a "solo" mode is what initially drew me to the game and encouraged me to buy it!) By and large I really don't think the game should've had a solo mode and we'll get to why later. Secondly, I played on console. The game's control layout and vibration functions are serviceable but not ideal - I could critique how bad Smart Heal is or the ways in which the PS5 controller could be better utilized, but earnestly I think this game was meant for PC so I'll stay focused on the broader design strokes (just avoid the console version if you can). Thirdly, there's only one other extraction shooter I've sunken serious time into (eg more than a few hours) and that's Synduality: Echoes of Ada - A game that (despite its mixed reviews) was a contender for my game of the year last year. My opinions of Marathon have been heavily influenced by my enjoyment of that (also very imperfect) PvE focused game. I haven't played ARC Raiders and nothing that I've seen in its gameplay has really interested me, so Marathon isn't living in that shadow for me - Rather it's living in the far grander shadow of the megalithic shooters of its studio's past.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE DRIP

The game's non-gameplay elements feel like the best place to start as it's what's drawn a lot of folks in and is easily the most polished and sublime part of this game. If you haven't already, treat yourself to this short film of a trailer they put out to promote it. This game is a never-ending visual feast - From maximalist menus, to in-your-face bold designs for each Faction intro, guns that all at once are easily readable and incredibly distinct. Ooo so so so damn good. Even when building interiors feel repetitive it's all just so pretty, and each of the three maps still sports its own unique charms and feel, making learning them and having these locales take up your precious brain cells a legitimate treat. It's a style that in its whole I can only define as "Neo Cassette Futurism" and I absolutely love it.

The audio offers an equally bold and memorable vision of Marthon's world. Each menu a delight to the ears, each sound queue distinct and emotionally resonant. I unironically gave Marathon one more run than intended before this review simply because I wanted to hear all the blips and bloops of going through a match. The score, however, is unsurprisingly sparse with only a few tracks that are heard on loop. This, despite its truly masterful beauty, gets unfortunately repetitive after a few hours. I'm sure you're sensing a theme here...

What's sorely disappointing given all of this are your cosmetic options. Each of the 6 shells has a number of costumes (most of which are simple, if bold, palette swaps) that can be attained through the shop or completing achievements. Coming off the heels of Destiny, a game with costume customization so deep that Bungie ran weekly highlights about player content, I was crestfallen to realize this fresh and visually stunning game has abandoned that. I'm sure someone, somewhere was worried that customizing colors would allow players to make improvised camo, but (a) the environments are refreshingly varied in color and lighting so no one palette blends in for any majority of the map and (b) even if people figure out optimal colors that's still cool in its own way. The gun customization is somehow worse, sporting a "sticker" feature that's frankly insultingly ugly and poorly implemented. Another unfortunate trend of things to come.

Emotes would have been a VERY welcome addition as well, as the game's only means of communication is proximity chat and pings. Their absence feels like a very intentional move to make Marathon feel more hostile, to ensure that every encounter with another player is likely to be a sour, if not at least, tense one. Where some extraction shooters (like Synduality) favor cooperation so much that it becomes predictable, Marathon is equally predictable in its hostility, robbing player encounters of most of their nuance - Now other players are simply more deadly NPCs, rather than dangerous wild-cards.

Beyond that the actual lore and dialogue for Marathon is immaculate - It's a return to the Tau Ceti system in a way we never could've imagined, is perfect for newcomers and fits perfectly all the same. Each corporation is memorable and evocatively rendered, while the voice acting has been honed and mixed to perfection. Meanwhile the larger meta story that's beginning to unfold (with Ben Starr bringing Durandal to life in a performance that I truly hope wins an award) has been as cryptic as it is compelling. All this is to say Bungie absolutely knows what it's doing going back to the Marathon franchise, and it's endlessly disappointing that this level of polish and detail wasn't brought in with any meaningful campaign content. Instead it's just the endless loop of the extraction shooter... Though, that too may have been a very intentional choice.

RUN

So how does Marathon play? It plays... OK? I wish there was a flashlight button, but we haven't gotten one of those since Halo. Those familiar with Bungie's shooters will find it notably slower and more grounded than Destiny and even Halo. An overheat meter keeps sprinting and shmoovement to a minimum and while positioning still matters, darting around a room is no longer your best option over cover. There's also no going prone and only two of the 7 playable classes have access to any kind of double-jump (kit that earnestly would've made Marathon stand out more, had it been universal). It's all pretty stiff in my experience, a far cry from the promotional cinematics. Meanwhile most people familiar with the modern extraction shooter's plodding movement pace will likely find Marathon to be breakneck in its swiftness. It's a compromise that feels like it appeases no one, but maybe Bungie was trying to find a pace unique to Marathon (for better or worse).

This especially applies to the TTK (time to kill) of the average player; Unless runners are rocking purple shields (the second highest of a 5 tier shield system), I've noticed that runners go down fast - Runner vs Runner engagements are all about who gets the drop on who (and if you both start shooting at the same time you often can both down each other simultaneously - an albeit funny but bad feeling) and solo runs are cut short in the blink of an eye. I actually don't totally dislike this in isolation! I think it helps reinforce the game's themes (which we'll get into later) and keeps the game snappy and deadly in PvP. How this blends with the game's grindier elements however, can make you very quickly feel like you're wasting your time. I will also admit this unfortunately makes camping the game's many mission objectives (required for vital meta-progression and story access) incredibly viable and remarkably frustrating, but I think that's more of an issue with the mission structure and playing solo than the TTK. Where this doesn't gel with me at all is how it feels in the PvE.

Here's where I remind you of the big "I didn't play this in squads" caveat and level probably my biggest critique at Marathon: If they weren't going to rebalance the PvE density in solo lobbies they simply shouldn't have had a solo mode. NPCs can rip through Runner armor and heals remarkably quickly, while sporting health bars that require multiple clips of ammo to chew through and squads that greatly outnumber the player. While this feels cool when you take the gamble and lose because you got greedy for some loot, this feels awful when you're just trying to get somewhere on the map and a sniper NPC you can't see 3-shots you or you're trying to loot a building only to realize there are 14 enemies with turrets in there. Again, much of this feels purpose-built designed for squads, where getting downed is a normal (and easily remedied) occurrence; But in solo it's a death sentence, especially considering how rare self-revives are. I can't even in good conscience say they should change this, I just earnestly think there shouldn't have been a solo lobby; just keep the game balanced around trios and if someone wants to be a sole operator in a lobby of groups let them (it can lead to cool emergent moments! And with proximity chat the sole operator has the advantage of silence~).

Solo mode in general feels like a tacked on compromise to everyone (rightfully) disappointed that Marathon wouldn't have any meaningful single player content. However in a game this deadly whose objectives (in solo mode) are this demanding, you still can't really play the game solo without a lot of grinding and a lot of luck. Rook could've been a remedy to this, but simply falls on its face. When you play as Rook you have to queue solo and have to drop into a lobby of trios that's already in progress. This can act like a catch-up mechanic where you go grab the best loot from dead teams and maybe ruin a team's day before they're about to extract. It's cool, it's neat, it's meant to help you quickly recoup losses and it's remarkably under-developed. Your abilities take too long to recover from when you drop in, your starting gear is a bit too limited (until you do meta-progression) and also can't make progress in any of the Faction Missions which... Alright let's address this part of the gordian knot.

GHOSTS OF THE PAST

The meta progression absolutely saps the life out of this game. If the game didn't have it I'd probably be playing more and harassing my friends to get on this game. It's the thing that makes me go from "y'know as hostile as this game is, I think it's perfect" to "actually this game is pretty trashy and has no respect for the player's time or its own game feel and I really don't want to recommend it." (The same grind-heavy time-eating design ethos that completely soured me to Destiny over 10 years - See also my recent reflections on whether or not a game uses your time wisely and the slow decay of the gaming industry).

Each faction has a number of upgrades that boost your base shell's stats, give you access to free daily gear in the shop, let you buy critical essentials, etc, etc. These don't make your shell better, they make your shell viable. They let Rook spawn with real guns  instead of pistols. They let you sprint and slide to a point where the game feels faster. They let you buy shields before dropping in. All of this meta-progress gets wiped every 3 months (an event that I'm eager to see if they loop into Marathon: Infinity's time shenanigans) and it just... it's awful. It requires a reasonable grind to get the materials needed for these upgrades, but more importantly you need to do a LOT of grind with faction quests just to unlock the privilege of buying them. And perhaps this'd be tolerable if multiple faction quests could be worked on at once, but instead Marathon forces you to grind these out one run at a time. It's miserable and time-consuming for the sake of being time-consuming, to eventually get to a point where the game really opens up... before closing again in three months. Inevitably you'll start to hear people say that "Marathon gets better once you get through the meta-progression" however what they won't tell you is that meta-progression can (and likely will) take many, many hours of your time. If a game doesn't feel good from go, it doesn't feel good, players shouldn't have to invest hours in a game this ruthless and unpredictable for the chance to enjoy the "real game."

This is one of the many ways in which Marathon feels like it learned the wrong lessons from Destiny. That MMO-FPS-Looter-Shooter would often make the game as time consuming and grindy as possible to meet the demands of an audience who was literally doing this as a full time job streaming. If players could reasonably do everything and run out of content? Well that was a knock against Destiny, and the player pool would dry up. You've got to keep 'em on the hamster wheel for as long as possible. And good lordy Marathon seems eager to keep you on its hamster wheel.

Another example of this is a change I'm frustrated they made from the Sever Slam; In that test you could exfiltrate with the lowest tier of healing items, these items being cheap, plentiful and excellent for when you want to do a run with just-OK equipment. Now these items "expire" on extract, a clear drain on your resources if you want to buy/bring your own heals, a drain designed for the purposes of ??? (The real purpose seems to be to encourage you to grind for more currency to spend on more items and ammo - eg to waste your time)

Granted, Marathon allows you to drop with a "sponsored kit" (a fairly mandatory addition given how rare weapons are on-site). These kits each pack a weapon, some low-level heals and an ammo pack, each themed after a different faction. If you use a sponsored kit you can't bring in anything else (lame) but if you extract successfully then you get a cool cosmetic for your shell based on the faction that sponsored you (neat). It's also helpful for when you're running a risky mission or exploring a zone and don't want to put your gear on the line, ostensibly allowing for "low-pressure" (if albeit very fragile) runs. Frankly (while I think there's room for improvement) the sponsored kit are the biggest buffer that kept me from quitting the game. 

Back to lessons Bungie learned, Marathon (down to its class structure) feels purpose built for the Destiny polycules who were running Dungeons 3 years ago. While I haven't played squads myself it's not difficult to see how NPC crews could be surgically dissected by a well coordinated trio, or how certain optional objectives borderline require a full crew. It's a handcrafted focus on 3-player content that is utterly Bungie and yet another reason Marathon shouldn't have solo lobbies.

I LIVE - I DIE - I LIVE AGAIN

I keep crawling back to Marathon whenever I think I'm done with it. Partially because its gameplay is so novel, partially because I really have no shooters I'm playing right now and categorically refuse to play Destiny again, partially because the game is just gorgeous. Each time I return I find little new things that are neat (usually to do with the lored) and little new things that grind my gears (usually to do with the meta-progression). But overall (and most damningly) the game feels really repetitive; The type of repetitive that can be ignored when spending time with friends, but quickly becomes mind-numbing when playing solo. 

Bungie shooters have always thrived off of having a variety of modes of play all funneling into the same systems, giving you the chance to mix-up your game experience over long hours. For Halo and the original Marathon it was driven by its campaign and multiplayer, Destiny added to this nail-biting Raids, deeper mysteries, free-roam areas and the one-of-a-kind PvEvP that is Gambit. Marathon (2026) conversely forsakes all of this for a single extraction mode with its three spokes being the (primary) Trios and the secondary (tacked on) Solo and Rook. One could argue there's also a secondary game mode in the more niche intensive ARGs that Bungie has been running to unlock new content and lore for the game. However those feel so niche and so inaccessible in a game this deadly that the vast majority of players will only experience them in the form of a video essay explaining how people figured things out. It's a neat and welcome (and impressive) addition, but another pillar of play it is not. Instead the game is ultimately a high-investment, time instensive, repetitive and punishing live-service game whose loop is epitomized by the ability to simply mash the square button to get into another lobby when you die.

And unfortunately... I think this is almost completely intentional and maybe one of the greatest tricks the game plays. Marathon doesn't feel good to play solo. Marathon makes you feel fragile, twitchy, untrusting, at the mercy of grander forces than you truly understand as you scrounge for med-packs before dying to a turret and rushing into a lobby before doing it all again. And I think, paired with the skinner-box meta-progression, this'd make for a complete waste of time if it weren't for how thunderously lundo-narratively resonant this seems to be with the game's themes and story. Runners are ticks sucking the blood of a dead world, and that's exactly how it makes you feel. Heck, Arachne (Marathon's PvP faction) seems to exist explicitly to ensure players don't see this hyper-hostile world and cooperate, to ensure there's always incentive to kill and the worry that someone else is just waiting to get the drop on you to progress their faction quest, to (in Arachne's words) "balance the life-death equation." It's all so damn intentional that it's really hard to fault this game for feeling so hostile (and also why the pointlessly grindy meta-progression is so damning).

If I'm picking up what Marathon is putting down it's all about the looping, of runs, of oppressive systems, of time itself. It's about small people futilely flailing for survival and profit while they make the whole problem worse. In many ways, an extraction shooter was an excellent pick that may have been more informed by the story they were trying to tell than modern trends (although lord knows Sony may have pressured them to do this, so maybe they crafted a thoughtful story around a thoughtless loop).

Yes, I think there should be a flashlight button. Yes, I think if the faction missions were a bit more forgiving and less grindy I'd like this game more. Yes, smart heal is very dumb. Yes, it's silly you can't exfil with low level health items. Yes, sponsored kits should probably give you shields or let you bring in gear if the PvE is this deadly. Yes, this game either should've had rebalanced solo lobbies or no solo lobbies at all. Yes, this game's meta-progression gates a lot of the cool and fun behind needless grind with no respect for players who don't want to sink endless hours into the game. And most of all, yes, this game was no replacement for a full-fledged campaign game and I don't think I'll ever forgive Bungie for putting their best sauce in one of their worst games to play. So no, I don't think you should get Marathon, especially at the $40 price tag, especially if you don't have friends to play with. But this game is also too much of a masterpiece for me to not want to see it succeed.

Marathon (1994) is dead. Long live Marathon (2026).

[*1 : An extraction shooter is a game where you drop into a lobby with hostile NPC enemies, valuable loot and other players. You goal is to grab as much loot as possible and get out of the map at dedicated extraction spots without the other NPCs or players killing you. It's a genre with a LOT of theoretical potential that I don't actually think anyone's gotten right yet.]