TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 1,997
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
Marathon is a brilliant distillation of what makes an excellent extraction shooter, and a glimpse at where they could go next.
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The nice thing about letting a multiplayer shooter marinate for a few weeks before putting a score on it is that I've learned what being high and low on Marathon is like.
What is it An extraction shooter revival of Bungie's first FPS series.Release date March 5, 2026Expect to pay $40/£30Publisher SonyDeveloper BungieReviewed on RTX 5090, Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz, 64GB RAMMultiplayer Up to 16 playersSteam Deck UnsupportedLink Official site
I've had triumphant nights of tens of thousands in valuables plundered, pried rare guns off the blue-stained corpses of rival squads, and enjoyed a vault resplendent with expensive attachments. I've also visited Marathon rock bottom: a cold, unyielding cycle of squad wipes that will almost convince you that Bungie is conspiring against your successful extraction. I've scraped together loadouts with my last 3,000 credits just to lose it all, and debased myself with Rook runs into hot zones to take home whatever scraps of Biomass were passed over by richer players.
Marathon is brutal. It's also a marvel.
After respecting Destiny from a distance and gritting my teeth over storied FPS makers leaving old school multiplayer behind, I didn't anticipate that an extraction shooter would be the perfect container for the things Bungie has always done well. Where other competitive shooters squeeze storytelling into the margins, Marathon is drenched in lore.
I approach Marathon like most likely will: completely oblivious to the beloved '90s FPSes where Bungie honed its craft and established a mythology around AI, aliens, and cosmic mysticism that'd later inform the worlds of Halo and Destiny. The very first being in this game is an AI who breaks the news that I've left my mortal coil behind. Like other freelancers I've, uh, "evolved" into a digital consciousness uploaded to a server in a spaceship—unbound from a physical body and free to embody disposable "shells" in contracted runs on the planet Tau Ceti IV, the site of a human colony that vanished without explanation.
The work is hard, the pay is often crap, I've experienced death a hundred times, and I'm in debt—but hey, at least I make my own hours.
Marathon is right up there with Hunt: Showdown in its ability to distill the intensity of extraction shooter fights into repeatable, delectable chunks. And yet it also excels at an Escape From Tarkov brand of loot lust: compounding anxiety and adrenaline as my backpack fills up with stuff I'd sure like not to lose. The way it achieves that PvP focus while still emphasizing loot tells me that Bungie has thought a lot about extraction shooters: Instead of drawing players together with a singular target the whole lobby competes for, Marathon shrinks the average map size for this sort of game.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
With just a handful of compounds on Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and Outpost (the endgame raid map, Cryo Archive, is its own beast), you're always bound to run into somebody even though nobody shares the same exact goals. The result is, as I wrote after launch, an extraction format where PvP gets to the star, but itemized loot establishes the stakes:
"So now I see the vision. Because most contracts can be completed in just a few minutes, Marathon matches have this bouncy quality where a three-person squad hits up a handful of compounds so everyone can check off their task—and share in the XP—while having a very good chance of scrapping with other teams along the way. You can have a complete Marathon experience in like 15 minutes and then matchmake into another one in seconds."
It's really great, ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
The nice thing about letting a multiplayer shooter marinate for a few weeks before putting a score on it is that I've learned what being high and low on Marathon is like.
What is it An extraction shooter revival of Bungie's first FPS series.Release date March 5, 2026Expect to pay $40/£30Publisher SonyDeveloper BungieReviewed on RTX 5090, Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz, 64GB RAMMultiplayer Up to 16 playersSteam Deck UnsupportedLink Official site
I've had triumphant nights of tens of thousands in valuables plundered, pried rare guns off the blue-stained corpses of rival squads, and enjoyed a vault resplendent with expensive attachments. I've also visited Marathon rock bottom: a cold, unyielding cycle of squad wipes that will almost convince you that Bungie is conspiring against your successful extraction. I've scraped together loadouts with my last 3,000 credits just to lose it all, and debased myself with Rook runs into hot zones to take home whatever scraps of Biomass were passed over by richer players.
Marathon is brutal. It's also a marvel.
After respecting Destiny from a distance and gritting my teeth over storied FPS makers leaving old school multiplayer behind, I didn't anticipate that an extraction shooter would be the perfect container for the things Bungie has always done well. Where other competitive shooters squeeze storytelling into the margins, Marathon is drenched in lore.
I approach Marathon like most likely will: completely oblivious to the beloved '90s FPSes where Bungie honed its craft and established a mythology around AI, aliens, and cosmic mysticism that'd later inform the worlds of Halo and Destiny. The very first being in this game is an AI who breaks the news that I've left my mortal coil behind. Like other freelancers I've, uh, "evolved" into a digital consciousness uploaded to a server in a spaceship—unbound from a physical body and free to embody disposable "shells" in contracted runs on the planet Tau Ceti IV, the site of a human colony that vanished without explanation.
The work is hard, the pay is often crap, I've experienced death a hundred times, and I'm in debt—but hey, at least I make my own hours.
Marathon is right up there with Hunt: Showdown in its ability to distill the intensity of extraction shooter fights into repeatable, delectable chunks. And yet it also excels at an Escape From Tarkov brand of loot lust: compounding anxiety and adrenaline as my backpack fills up with stuff I'd sure like not to lose. The way it achieves that PvP focus while still emphasizing loot tells me that Bungie has thought a lot about extraction shooters: Instead of drawing players together with a singular target the whole lobby competes for, Marathon shrinks the average map size for this sort of game.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
With just a handful of compounds on Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and Outpost (the endgame raid map, Cryo Archive, is its own beast), you're always bound to run into somebody even though nobody shares the same exact goals. The result is, as I wrote after launch, an extraction format where PvP gets to the star, but itemized loot establishes the stakes:
"So now I see the vision. Because most contracts can be completed in just a few minutes, Marathon matches have this bouncy quality where a three-person squad hits up a handful of compounds so everyone can check off their task—and share in the XP—while having a very good chance of scrapping with other teams along the way. You can have a complete Marathon experience in like 15 minutes and then matchmake into another one in seconds."
It's really great, ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?