Marathon Review

I’ve dipped in and out of extraction shooters before, and while I always appreciate the tension, they tend to feel a bit sterile after a while. You get the adrenaline, sure, but not always the personality or long-term pull. Marathon surprised me because it has both. After a good number of hours on PS5, I’m still jumping back in, not because I feel like I should, but because I actually want to.

Bungie has been shaping shooters for a long time. They defined console FPS controls with Halo, then built an entirely new kind of shared-world shooter with Destiny. Across both, one thing has always been consistent. They know how to make shooting feel good. That might sound like a simple taksk, but it’s not. Weight, recoil, audio feedback, responsiveness, all of it has to come together. Bungie has been refining that for decades.

Marathon feels like a natural extension of that experience, but it’s also a big shift. The original Marathon games from the 90s were story heavy sci-fi shooters. This new version keeps the setting and tone but drops the traditional campaign entirely. Instead, it leans fully into multiplayer and player-driven storytelling. That’s going to be a dealbreaker for some people. For me, it took a little while to adjust.

At its core, Marathon is an extraction shooter set on a hostile, abandoned colony called Tau Ceti IV. You play as a Runner, essentially a cybernetic mercenary, dropping into large maps to scavenge loot, complete contracts, and get out alive. That last part is the catch. If you die, you lose what you brought in. Each run becomes a balancing act. You’re constantly deciding whether to push your luck or play it safe. Do you chase better loot, or extract now and lock in what you’ve got? That tension sits at the heart of the game. You can go in solo or with a squad, and each approach has its own rhythm. Solo runs are slower and more cautious. Squads open up more aggressive play, but they also attract more attention.

When it comes to the story, if you’re expecting a traditional narrative, Marathon doesn’t really give you one. Instead, the story is scattered across the world. You piece things together through logs, faction missions, and environmental details. Something clearly went wrong on Tau Ceti IV, and there are hints of larger forces at play, but the game rarely spells anything out.

At first, I found this a bit frustrating. There’s no strong narrative thread pulling you forward. But over time, I started to appreciate the approach. The story becomes something you uncover between runs rather than something that interrupts them. Still, I do think Bungie could have done more here. Even a slightly stronger narrative hook early on would help ground the experience.

Most of your time in Marathon is spent in its core extraction mode, but there’s enough variation to keep things interesting. There are standard runs where you bring your own gear and risk losing it, and then there are more experimental modes that shake things up. Some runs give you a basic kit to start with, which shifts the focus away from gear hoarding and more toward in-match decision making.

There are also solo-friendly options, though I wouldn’t call them beginner-friendly. The game doesn’t really hold your hand, no matter which mode you pick. Everything feeds back into the same loop, though. No matter how you play, you’re always working toward better gear, stronger builds, and more influence with the game’s factions.

The main gameplay loop is where Marathon really earns its keep. A typical run starts quietly. You drop in, get your bearings, and start picking your way through the environment. You’ll deal with AI enemies, maybe hear distant gunfire, maybe spot another team moving through the area.

Then something changes. You find a valuable piece of loot, or complete a contract, and suddenly the stakes feel higher. You’re no longer just exploring, you’re protecting something. Every decision starts to carry weight. Do you head for extraction, or push deeper into the map? Do you avoid that squad, or try to ambush them? Even after a lot of runs, that tension doesn’t go away. And when things go wrong, which they will, it stings just enough to make the next run feel meaningful.

The gunplay feels excellent. Weapons have a real sense of weight, and there’s a clarity to how they handle that makes every encounter feel fair, even when you lose. You can usually tell what you did wrong, and that matters in a game like this.

The sound design is just as important. You’re constantly listening for cues, footsteps, distant shots, environmental noise. It’s not just there for atmosphere, it’s part of how you survive. Together, these elements make the moment to moment gameplay incredibly satisfying. Even a short run can feel worthwhile because the core experience is so strong.

Progression in Marathon is layered, and not always in the most approachable way. On the surface, it’s simple. You extract loot, use it to improve your loadout, and go again. But there are multiple systems working underneath that. You’ve got different Runner builds, each with their own strengths. You can customise them with implants and gear to suit how you like to play. Then there are factions, which offer contracts and rewards that unlock over time.

It creates a nice mix of short term and long term goals. One run might be about surviving. The next might be about completing a specific contract or unlocking a new upgrade. The problem is that the game doesn’t do a great job of explaining all of this. Early on, it can feel like you’re just stumbling through menus and hoping things make sense later. Eventually, it does click, but it takes longer than it should.

There are a few areas where Marathon feels genuinely impressive. The gunplay is a big one. Bungie hasn’t lost its touch. Shooting feels precise, responsive, and satisfying in a way that few other studios consistently manage. The sound design is another standout. It adds tension, but it also gives you information. You learn to trust what you hear, and that becomes a core part of how you play. The overall atmosphere is strong too. The world feels hostile and unpredictable, and that feeds into the tension of each run. And then there’s the loop itself. Even when I lose everything, I usually find myself queuing up for another run. That’s probably the clearest sign that Bungie got something right.

For all its strengths, Marathon isn’t the easiest game to get into. The onboarding is probably its biggest issue. There’s a lot going on, and the game doesn’t explain it well. New players are likely to feel overwhelmed, especially in the first few hours. The map variety is another weak point. The environments are well designed, but there just aren’t enough of them at launch. After a while, you start to see the same routes and patterns over and over. The difficulty can also be a barrier. The high risk nature of the game is part of what makes it exciting, but it can also be discouraging, especially if you’re still learning.

None of these are dealbreakers, but they do hold the game back from being more widely accessible.

Final thoughts

Marathon isn’t trying to please everyone, and that’s probably for the best. It’s a tense, system heavy extraction shooter that expects you to learn by doing. It can be frustrating, especially early on, but it’s also incredibly rewarding once things start to click.

What keeps me coming back is the combination of strong fundamentals and meaningful risk. The gunplay feels great, the sound design pulls you into every encounter, and the constant push and pull between greed and survival never really gets old.

It’s not perfect. It needs better onboarding, more maps, and a smoother way for new players to find their footing. But the foundation is solid, and there’s a clear sense that this is a game built to grow over time. More importantly, it’s one of the few extraction shooters that’s managed to hold my attention. I keep thinking about my last run, what I could have done differently, and what I want to try next.

And that’s why I’m still playing. Not because I feel like I have to, but because I’m genuinely curious to see where Marathon goes from here.

A PS5 review code was provided for the purpose of this review.

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