Marathon review – Ghost in the shell

The extraction shooter feels like the go-to genre for video games lately, thanks in part to the pioneering work done by Escape from Tarkov and last year’s sleeper hit Arc Raiders. High-risk and high-reward gameplay that emphasizes lean-and-mean gameplay, where everything is on the line, makes for an adrenaline rush whenever you log in, and now Bungie is throwing its hat into the ring with Marathon. The studio has been defined by its work on the Destiny franchise for over a decade, but Marathon is a return to the developer’s classic genre-defining IP, which dates all the way back to 1994, long before Bungie’s celebrated Halo era.

On the surface, Marathon hits all those beats from the shoot-and-loot genre, but dig deeper, and you’ll find a game with a strong identity all its own, some of the best gunplay in the industry, and a storyline that pushes the gig economy to its dystopian limits. Welcome to Tau Ceti IV.

Marathon’s setup is simple enough: as a new Runner on the block, your consciousness has been uploaded to a synthetic shell and thrown into the warzone of an alien planet. Your employers once bankrolled a doomed expedition to Tau Ceti IV, something went wrong, and all contact was lost. Hundreds of years later, corporate empires are looking to balance the budget and have sent contractors to salvage for lost technology and answers. The only problem? The heavy-handed United Earth Space Council (UESC) has staked its own claim, and it has armies of lethal robot soldiers to protect its interests.

That’s where you enter the fray, as a plunderer of lost technologies who has everything to gain and lose whenever you touch down on Tau Ceti IV. The core gameplay loop is all about enriching yourself and extracting before you’re noticed, but between UESC forces and your fellow Runners, every trip has the potential to go sideways. UESC robots have pinpoint accuracy, and Runner shells are equipped with a time-to-kill health bar that makes you feel like you’re taking on a Dark Souls DLC boss when you first start playing Marathon. However, cunning and luck can help you power up for the trials that lie ahead.

Better gear will obviously improve your odds, albeit at the risk of you losing that gear should another Runner get the drop on you. There are also several Runner shells to choose from and upgrade, ranging from the tanky Destroyer to the sneaky Assassin, while other shells like the Recon and Triage classes add a team-based utility that makes them indispensable in the right scenario.

Action in Marathon is–as you’d imagine–outstanding. Bungie adds to its legacy with hard-hitting weapons that harken back to the original Marathon games, and an extensive arsenal of death-dealers means that you’ll always have something fun to fight with as you pilfer ancient colonies. What makes each weapon even better is a modular design that can be improved upon with mods that you find during your expeditions, or purchase from corporations, and if you’d prefer to hoard your gear, free sponsored kits will give you everything you need to stand a fighting chance without you needing to fret about losing the color-coded items you’ve painstakingly collected.

Of course, the sting of several losses can become infuriating over time, but that’s par for the course with an extraction shooter. When you do start to rack up victories and successful extractions? Marathon’s magic begins to shine like a diamond.

Not that hoarding is even necessary, because Marathon encourages you to run wild with the best pieces in your arsenal, as every three months the game will reset your inventory, and you’ll start from square one. Progress in any of the game’s maps will earn you experience, and with each of the game’s corporate factions, which are represented by an AI assistant. Progress also earns you a reputation that can be used to increase your power through faction skill-trees, unlocking exclusive gear and abilities.

A couple of weeks in, and Marathon’s loop has become a new daily habit for me. Each run is capped to around 20 minutes, and the community has been generally friendly–many players don’t want to fight you, and impromptu alliances aren’t uncommon–but I’ve been holding off on a review until Marathon’s first endgame event launched. Similar to Destiny’s raids, Cryo Archive is the game at its very best – a brutal dive into beautifully complex waters that takes no prisoners.

Teams face off in Cryo Archive to solve puzzles and take down threats as they explore seven vaults, with unique modifiers ensuring that no two runs are the same. It’s Marathon at its purest, lethal level where you need to risk your best gear to earn even better hardware while you unravel more of the ongoing mystery in a high-stakes showdown. Nothing else compares to the armpit-moistening challenge that it represents.

All of this action is wrapped up inside of what is the best-looking and sounding game of the year. Marathon’s art direction is nothing short of phenomenal, as the bright retro-future aesthetic collides with alien worlds and oppressive government killbots hellbent on stopping your latest thieving spree. The in-your-face graphic design, old-school imagery that harkens back to the original ’90s games, and imaginative worldbuilding help to elevate the look and feel of Marathon, setting it leagues apart from contemporaries in this field.

On the opposite end, Ryan Lott’s soundtrack captures that sensation of being a phantom for hire, plugged into an artificial body and set loose on a lost world to scavenge for riches. There’s an ethereal quality to the score. It’s soul music that resonates with you, and it has quickly become my contender for the best video game soundtrack of the year.

It’s safe to say that Marathon is off to a flying start, for now. There’s no denying that the live-service video game market is one of the toughest nuts to crack, and there’s a graveyard full of games that failed to find an audience, including the infamous Concord and the recent release of Highguard. Even with momentum from the Game Awards behind it, Highguard lasted a few weeks before it ran out of runway, and the lights were turned off.

Marathon might face an uphill battle in the weeks to come, because the extraction shooter market is a niche one. At the same time, fans of this category are some of the most diehard supporters out there, and if there’s one studio that knows how to keep people engaged, it’s Bungie. If post-launch content like Cryo Archive shows what the studio is truly capable of on top of an already strong foundation, DLC plans, and a growing community of players who are creating unique stories in this space, then Marathon could be worth lacing your shoes up for so that you can enjoy its long run.

Marathon is playable now on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. It officially launched on 5 March.