The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

I have many thoughts after playing the Marathon server slam this weekend. Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter launches this Thursday, March 5, which seems too soon given what I played.

I have complicated feelings about the game, and some wishful thinking about what the game is and is not. There is always something of a balance to find between “these are the game’s problems” and “this game is just not my cup of tea.” This is especially true when it comes to genres I haven’t historically played much, like extraction shooters (though I have hundreds of hours in ARC Raiders).

Alright, let’s start with . . . .

The Good

I do really love the music and some of the trippy visuals when the game is loading a match. A lot of the game’s aesthetic is quite striking. The volumetric fog, while making it a bit hard to see, is impressive. The neon-industrial color scheme works. Visually, sonically, this is a very impressive game with a very distinct style.

Combat and gunplay also feel pretty good, though I think stamina (or “Heat”) drains too quickly and the time-to-kill (TTK) is too fast, at least with starting gear. I don’t mind a fast TTK in a game where I respawn, but in a game where you have to start all over – not to mention, lose all your loot – it’s a bit frustrating, especially in solos.

Still, this is an issue that could be fixed pretty easily and with a variety of solutions. Overall, it feels pretty good to shoot the game’s various guns at both bots and monsters and enemy players.

The Bad

While Marathon has very cool visuals and music and a distinct style, the actual maps feel kind of humdrum to me, a bit empty and not quite as dynamic as I’d hoped. Very samey from one place to the other, with lots of squarish buildings and boxes piled up here and there. Maybe the maps will grow on me, but as of now they feel a bit directionless.

I’m also not sold on the blending of hero shooter and extraction shooter genres. Comparisons to Apex Legends are apt, though this game is much slower. Then again, I’m not a huge fan of Apex Legends, either, and part of that is the hero shooter element, which I never liked mixed with the Battle Royale genre. (I don’t hate hero shooters, and really enjoy both Valorant and Overwatch, but I don’t think special powers work in all genres).

The biggest issue, however, is the game’s UI and menus, which has been disucssed at length all weekend across the fandom. Many players rightly point out that the menus are cluttered and that icons for the items you pick up are hard to tell apart and are far, far too small. Defenders of the game have clapped back with such genius statements as “The real problem is the people just don’t like to read.”

I don’t mind reading, but good UI design makes it possible to sort and prioritize at a glance, since you might be in the middle of a fight a moment later. I don’t need to know every single thing about an item in my inventory, but I’d like to have a good idea of at least a few important details just by glancing at the item. It shouldn’t be so hard to tell heals apart from shield recharges. I shouldn’t have to squint to see what’s in these tiny boxes. And I shouldn’t have to read a paragraph while I’m begin shot at. I know that this will all come with time, but that assumes I keep playing the game long enough.

The Ugly

The reality is, I don’t think Marathon will be entering my gaming group’s rotation. I only managed to get a couple of my friends to join me in the server slam, and they were not impressed. The menus and UI were the biggest turn-off, but other issues came up as well. Movement felt clunky. Ammo ran out way too fast. Nobody knew what they were looting or why.

The “Beginner” map felt empty, but leaving that for regular mode was instant PvP which, while fun, was tricky with all the other issues we were having. I was the only one left playing, and playing with randoms is not very fun. Playing solos was just a campy, PvP-heavy frustration. At least in Arc Raiders, solos is often more peaceful. In Marathon, I kept getting in fights directly after using up my resources fighting bots. One time, I got the drop on a guy, started to loot him to get a shield and some more resources, was immediately killed by a third guy who, in turn, was gunned down by a fourth guy. That’s fine in a shooter, but in reality it just meant that I had to load back out and then load back in.

This is where we get to the balance I was speaking about earlier. I do think there are some objectively poor design choices in Marathon, mostly around the UI and menus (and font choices). There are some objectively good design elements as well, like the OST and the distinct artstyle. Then there are the subjective elements. I don’t really care for this blend of hero shooter and extraction shooter. I prefer a classless model. I don’t really like how this extraction shooter works, and find the factions and inventory quite clumsy and confusing at times.

Mostly, I think Marathon is just terrible at onboarding new players, which I think will be very bad for its player-base, at least at launch. I have a group of friends that should be all over this game. We play Call Of Duty and Arc Raiders and many of us have played Destiny in the past. But I doubt any of us will continue with Marathon. I would on my own if Solos was more fun, but it was not fun. It was grueling.

At the end of the day, that’s the big question. Is this game fun? If you’re enjoying it, I’m glad. I just wish it gave me the option to play PvE only, or had a normal multiplayer vs mode, or had an actual single-player campaign. The Extraction Shooter genre can be fun, as Arc Raiders has proved, but it can also just be brutally punishing and we don’t all have the time for that. We’re not all masochists.