Marathon Review: Bungie's Extraction Shooter Delivers Incredible Gunplay Feels Like "Just Another Tarkov"

Marathon, the latest Bungie extraction shooter, has been an absolute blast to play as someone who grew up on some of their greatest hits. Halo 3 was a staple of my childhood growing up, and I had an absolute blast on Destiny 1 and 2 during their peaks. I was nervously excited to see what Bungie could cook up with their first game since 2017.

Marathon takes place 99 years after the original game of the same name from Bungie. A PvEvP extraction shooter, as a Runner you must explore the Tau Ceti IV planet. The game features all the staples of the extraction shooter genre, and does them all quite well.

Gunplay First and Foremost

Any FPS game at its core lives or dies by how the guns handle, and Marathon is no different, and they absolutely nailed it. Every game feels like it has the strengths and weaknesses you come to expect. LMG’s provide amazing long range support with large ammo reserves, but can struggle to get the job done quickly in close quarters, while SMGs pack a punch at close range without having a long range for cross-map engagements, and the AR settles neatly in the middle.

It is a refreshing change from some recent titles where you suddenly feel like gun types have lost their meaning as you get headshot by SMGs cross-map or LMGs take you down in the blink of an eye in face-to-face combat. It's what I came to expect from Bungie after years of Halo 3, where it felt like most guns have their niches and that's exactly how I feel about Marathon. Every game I need several minutes just to decide what I want my loadout to be for the upcoming game instead of being pigeonholed into meta setups, which do exist, of course, but not to the extremes of other titles.

Time To Die

Of course, the secondary component of any FPS is the TTK or time to kill, how fast can a gun take you from full health to dead, and once again, Marathon hits the sweet spot. For this, I will clarify this is mostly focused on real enemies, as some of the AI seem to have insane amounts of health. More on that later. Enemy Runners do not feel like tanks with so much health that engagements take minutes at a time, while also just because someone else got the jump on you does not mean you flop in an instant.

When ammo is such a precious resource, as it is in any extraction shooter, I would argue the TTK is even more important. It sucks when you have to make 70% or more of your starting inventory of ammo, and Marathon does a great job avoiding this. It did take an update just a week into the game to give the free kits more ammo, which was nice for risk-free runs.

My only gripe is that the AI enemies, the UESC, do sort of throw a wrench in the TTK, with some of the more advanced enemies doing their best sponge impression. Even wasting a few dozen rounds on the starting AI feels bad when they do not drop nearly enough to make up for what you used, but it does challenge you to swap weapons and look for melee kills when possible.

Chasing Trends

My biggest complaint with Marathon, and it is a personal gripe mainly, is that, unfortunately, Bungie chose to chase trends, going for the extraction shooter genre, which has taken off in recent years with Tarkov and recently continued to bloom with Arc Raiders. Much like how it felt everyone was building a Battle Royale after Fortnite struck gold, Marathon feels like it's doing the same, and as someone who has always been on the outside looking in for the extraction shooter hype, the game struggles to convince me to come inside.

Simply put, nothing Marathon does makes it stand out from the competition, as someone hounded by my buddies to try the latest extraction shooter, Marathon feels no different. Yes, the environment is new, and the characters are not human, but at the end of the day, you run around, you kill some AI, maybe a squad or two of real players, and then you extract, if you survived.

This is where the game started to lose me. Nothing changed my opinion of the genre. In fact, every time I run a game where I encounter only AI before extracting it, I just wish the game had been a Battle Royale instead, my preferred FPS genre. Instead, it feels like Marathon and Bungie relied on their expertise in gameplay, over game types to draw players in, and while I think they put on a masterclass for what it does well, at the end of the day, it's still another extraction shooter with little added to the genre.

Story Mode Like RPGs

One thing that baffled me about Marathon, was the insistence on telling a story. I get it, some people do not like to mindlessly drop in round after round looking for that next piece of loot or looking to restock after a failed run. However, the number of cutscenes after each round is sometimes too much. The game contains six factions, which you unlock through different missions, and completely each contract feels like it unlocked a new cut scene of the faction talking to you about their goals and desires.

At times, I felt like I was playing a single-player RPG, with the amount of dialogue and backstory I had to get through between each game. Several times, the party would ready up only for the last person to say hold on. I am trying to set up my new contract. While the cutscenes are skippable, they are unfortunately set on the one button press that skips one slide of dialogue, not the entire thing. Spamming through the cut scenes just to ready up for my next drop became a drag. I dreaded being that guy who had to hold the party hostage as I spent my faction upgrades and picked up my next contract.

The Moth

No, get it off my screen, now. The moth is one of the looping animations you can get loading into a game, and it's just creepy. I do not like it, I do not want it on my screen get it off!

Final Thoughts

Wrapping up my thoughts on Marathon, the game looks visually amazing, the different environments perfectly encompass the zones, Perimeter feels nice and cozy with tons of space to explore, Dire Marsh gives off the hostile environment that you are not welcome here as you push deeper into the planet and Outpost is so full of UESC that you quickly get the message you are not welcome here. They look and play so fantastically they really did a great job setting up the mission as you push deeper into Tau Ceti IV.

Cryo Archive is the end-game zone release this weekend, and as you finally enter the Marathon ship, the surrounding noise outside the zone really distracts from what it could be. For those who missed out, Cryo Archive has a few requirements, many of which you can achieve naturally by playing the game; hitting level 25, unlocking all 6 factions, a load out worth 5,000 credits. The issue is the final two requirements; no dropping solo, and only available on weekends. The former is fine for me, I had a squad ready to go, the second is what ruined it.

Manufactured FOMO is not fun in video games and this is no different. Being forced to schedule your life around video games, to me, ruins what makes video games fun in the first place. Bungie has said they are taking player feedback on the weekend time-gate, it will be interesting to see what they decide to do, because as it stands, this is one of my biggest barriers to wanting to hop back in.