Marathon Review: Am I a Casual Now?

For the first time in half a decade, I’ve hit 100 hours of playtime with a new video game. 128 hours to be precise. That’s 42 hours a month, or to put it another way, an additional work week tacked on to an already hectic life. 

Of all the games I have played this year, it’s Marathon, the newest live service Extraction Shooter from Bungie, a studio I have adored ever since the Halo days, that has hoovered up my free time.  

Now that Season 1 is over and we’re well into Season 2, I think I’ve finally played enough to have some coherent thoughts on this creative yet frustrating live service video game.

Despite recent popularity, the Extraction Shooter is not a new genre. Players familiar with them date the origin back to Escape from Tarkov which began its journey in closed beta back in 2017. If I was putting on my nerd history hat, which in my case would of course be fashioned into a murloc, I’d date the origin five years before that, when DayZ released as an Arma 2 mod in 2012. 

The reason I’m being so nitpicky about the origin story is to make it clear that this was a niche that flew under the radar of many gamers. DayZ had a moment in the spotlight, but I’d argue more gamers watched people play DayZ than actually played the game. Even so, it inspired developers and spawned two new genres: the Extraction Shooter and the Battle Royale. 

These two genres may seem similar on the surface. You have a gun and you run around looting your environment for upgrades, health kits, and ammo. Despite the same DNA, the extraction shooter remained relatively niche, while the battle royal became, arguably, the biggest video game innovation since the MMO. Ever heard of Apex Legends? Or, a better example, Fortnite? There’s your battle royal mega-hit.  

The extraction shooter has been in the corner, awaiting the same mega-hit success. Marathon is an evolution of that core extraction experience, with enough of the sharp edges smoothed over to entice players with dwindling interest in battle royales, spending less time (and money) in Fortnite and its many clones. 

All this being said, I think Bungie, the studio behind Marathon, tapped into an addictive premise. Every match, I find myself running into tense gunfights that are over faster than it takes to flip a coin, followed by long, eerie stretches looting empty laboratories, factories, and warehouses. 

The secret sauce? Marathon adds exceptional worldbuilding to the game loop. When I drop onto the surface of Tau Ceti IV, I’m here for a purpose: to find out what happened to the colony. Each map, of which there are four, adds a new layer to that mystery. 

On Perimeter, I’m exploring the very edges of the planet’s colonization. On Outpost, I’m scavenging across the original mobile fortress set up by the AI military enemy, known as the UAEC. 

Along with the layers of information the player extracts over their dozens or hundreds of runs, they are also banking more and more valuable loot into their vault. You can find various weapons and mods, known as player enhancements, while exploring. When your vault is full, it’s time to equip the good loot you’ve squirrelled away and head to Cryo Archive. 

End-game was the biggest complaint I ended up having with Arc Raiders, which was last year’s big extraction shooter. You can read my review here. End game is not a weak spot with Marathon. This video game has an end game, and it’s juicy. 

Cryo Archive is an icy blue maze stuffed with secret passages and brutal choke points. After a harrowing escape from Cryo, I praise it for being one of the best multiplayer maps ever made. And on a devastating loss, I groan knowing there wasn’t much I could do to get out alive. Which is to say, reaching the extraction point in Cryo feels like a true test of skill peppered with a generous helping of old fashioned luck. 

To top it all off, the end game boss, known as the Compiler, rests at the very top. By the end of Season 1, most of the teammates I matched with had never seen the alien. Heck, a healthy portion of the community hasn’t even summoned the courage to try Cry Archive. 

Personally, at the aforementioned 128 hours, I’ve only reached the Compiler twice. In an age where companies make content to be consumed by as many people as possible, I found the challenge rare and intoxicating. 

I’m lavishing praise (glazing, as the kids would say) on this game. Does Marathon have any other negatives? 

Oh yeah. Of course. 

You can probably tell by now that the skill ceiling is very high. Map awareness is a huge boon. The best players can swiftly destroy a team filled with “Dad/Moms with two kids” runners out for a casual, light-hearted romp to finish some quests.

I have had some rounds end in less than three minutes due to some combination of opponent skill and gear, and my lack of understanding of team spawning locations. It doesn’t feel great, and I have walked away from the game more than once because of a punishing loss. 

Bungie has implemented a level-based matchmaking system, which has come under scrutiny from the community. Rather than the game matching you with players at a similar skill level, determined by say your Kill/Death ratio, Marathon bases it on your general player level. 

At the beginning of the season, the system mostly works a intended. At the end of the season, however, this dad, husband, full time employee and board game enthusiast, may hit level 100 or 150. This puts yours truly in the same lobbies as the hardcore players, also known as The Sweats. 

The skill gap between me and The Sweats made me realise that I have no interest in competing with them. Marathon is the first game that has shown me that I am, for lack of a better word, a casual gamer. 

One hundred hours is a lot of time to me, and even with this achievement, I just don’t have the capacity to memorize spawn locations or gun metas. I’m here to have an hour or two of fun before I pass out on the couch, not add another layer of complexity into my life. 

The Sweats do not care. They are ruthless. I have been crushed, hunted, toyed with like a kid poking a stick at an undulating worm. My frustration was strong enough that by the last few weeks of the season, I stopped dedicating all my limited gaming time to Marathon.

Despite this painfully accepted life lesson and despite being a casual gamer tossed so carelessly into a pit of wolves, I have loved my time on Tau Ceti IV. 

Do I love it enough to keep playing? Well, the best answer I have at the moment is… maybe.

At the very least, the three-month seasonal model brings a sense of hopefulness. For a limited time, a casual like myself will have the same equipment and the same perks as the player who will, over the course of the next few months, accumulate ten times more hours in the game than me. 

I’ll hop in again, certainly. I didn’t dedicate 100+ hours to this game to not see what it has in store for its second season. Bungie has always been a studio that lures its players into a simple premise, only to ask more and more of them over the years. Marathon is no different. 

Maybe I’m older. Maybe I’m just too busy with whatever else I have going on in my life, but as a newly admitted casual gamer, I am less willing to dump all my time into Bungie’s expertly crafted play space. That has less to do with the game in front of me than my own limited free time. For now, I’m still having fun on Tau Ceti IV.