I want to love Marathon but can already see why players are falling off its miserable grind

With its incredibly expressive and vibrant art direction, there’s a lot to like about extraction shooter Marathon from an aesthetic standpoint. Its own brand of brightly colored science fiction is a sight to behold, and there’s a real sense of wonder in the first few hours as you explore each of the three early maps, soaking it all in.

Developed by Bungie, the original creators of Halo, it should come as no surprise that the gunplay is well-crafted and compelling, with a strong variety of meaningfully distinct weapon types to try out. They're great-looking, like the rest of the world, too, with striking, blocky, 3D printed designs that really help sell the distant future setting.

These strong fundamentals mean that Marathon is plenty of fun when you’re joined by two friends in a full team, where the intense player-versus-player (PvP) encounters really shine. Unfortunately, the unremittingly grindy missions and lack of compelling cosmetic rewards, not to mention the current rather threadbare content offering, seriously limit the game’s long term potential.

With a Steam player count that’s been gradually declining for weeks since the game’s initial launch, some big changes are needed if Marathon is going to be more than a sprint.

Starting line

I am optimistic, as many of my biggest problems with Marathon have been addressed in the time since launch. The thoroughly miserable inventory, for example, has been overhauled completely. Why did tiny stacks of three med kits and 60 ammo (items needed in bulk for practically every run) originally take up most of your highly limited slots?

I’m not entirely sure, as this would have presumably been immediately highlighted as a problem by play testers, but with their stacks increased to nine and 800, respectively, you're no longer spending minutes staring at the screen and selling your recently obtained gear in order to ensure that you have enough space to start another match.

The difficulty of computer-controlled enemies has been rebalanced, too, with the generic hostile robots that litter each map now not needing you to pump multiple magazines into them if you’re unlucky enough to get spotted. The game still doesn’t do a great job of communicating whether a hostile bot is carrying a super-powerful shield (you seem to need to manually ping them every time in order to see that), but being able to reliably take on these threats head-on makes it much easier to move around in each game.

The latest major update also introduced Cryo Archive (which went live on March 20, 2026), a stellar, massive map filled with challenging combat gauntlets and countless hidden secrets to uncover.

Set in a crumbling spacecraft, it’s a delight to explore and is bursting with high-end loot. It’s only available to jump into on weekends, though, which feels like Bungie artificially gating off content for no real reason other than to prevent players from finding everything that it has to offer too quickly and then simply leaving to play something else.

It’s a massive shame, especially when the three launch maps don’t have much going for them. Perimeter, the starting map, is tiny and segmented with multiple chokepoints that make running into other teams practically a guarantee. As with other extraction shooters, bullets are lethal here, and the threat of stumbling upon others is thrilling at first, but you’ll quickly learn the layout like the back of your hand. The map is so small that more experienced players like to beeline straight for the locations of key items for the earliest quests, too, forcing newcomers to contend with frustrating campers.

It wouldn’t be such a big issue if you could progress more than one quest at a time, but you can’t. They’re mostly boring fetch quests too, and dropping into a map only to discover what you need is long gone, just leaves entire matches feeling like a total waste of time.

Faltering pace

The other two readily available maps, Dire Marsh and Outpost, are both much better thanks to their larger sizes and more complex layouts, not to mention the fact that later missions are slightly less repetitive than the early ones. Don’t be fooled by the increased scale, though, as you’ll still encounter other teams near constantly. Marathon might be one of the most combat-heavy extraction shooters that I’ve ever played, which is fun when you’re able to coordinate with a team of friends, but invariably miserable if you choose to matchmake with randoms.

You can embody one of six Runner shells (synthetic bodies with their own distinct personalities) plus the blank-slate, solo-play-only Rook. None of the shell’s hero-like abilities are particularly imaginative (with your usual suite of movement, stealth, recon, healing, and tank powers), but they do all work well and lead to some interesting combat scenarios.

I particularly love dropping in as Vandal, the movement hero, and using her super-sprint ability to flank entire teams. It‘s incredibly effective with a meaty shotgun in hand, plus a longer-range homing energy weapon for locking on to any foes that might try to flee.

When it all comes together, the moment-to-moment action can be incredibly fun, but after almost forty hours grinding through quests, I can’t help but sit back and wonder what I’m actually doing it all for.

Bungie has already confirmed that your progress is going to be wiped every few months, with only cosmetic unlocks carrying over. Unfortunately, the skins are completely bland and not really worth the time investment. This is doubly true of the ones in the paid battle pass (which is stuffed with basic weapon recolors and just one simplistic Runner skin) and the measly assortment offered in the in-game store.

Even with the addition of Cryo Archive, it’s not like there are anywhere near enough maps or modes (the game launched with just one) to keep me coming back for more, and I can’t help but think other players will inevitably feel the same with time.

There’s very little here compared to even free-to-play alternatives like Arena Breakout: Infinite, which looks much less impressive but boasts significantly more to do and, importantly, doesn't actually cost any money to get into. Hopefully, future updates will build out this beautiful-looking game with some much-needed substance before it’s too late.

Should I play Marathon?

Play it if...

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Accessibility features

Marathon doesn’t have a dedicated accessibility menu, but there are a few useful options in its settings menus. On PC, the game can be played with either keyboard and mouse or a controller, with the ability to rebind inputs fully on either control method.

There are four colorblind modes to choose from, which affect item rarity colors and the appearance of the HUD. Subtitles are enabled by default and can be customized in size, color, and background style.

How I reviewed Marathon

I played almost 40 hours of Marathon on my PC, which is a 5070 Ti-powered model from retailer Scan.

It has a compact Corsair 2000d RGB Airflow case, Asus ROG Strix B860-I motherboard, Intel Core Ultra 7 265K processor, a 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD, 32GB of DDR5 Corsair Vengeance RAM, and an Asus Nvidia 5070 Ti graphics card, which allowed me to play the game at 75 frames per second (fps) on the Highest pre-set graphics mode at native resolution on my 1080p monitor. I trust an Astro A20 X wireless gaming headset for my audio needs, including the use of its microphone when playing with friends.

I played the game exclusively with my usual gaming mouse and keyboard: a Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro and Cherry XTRFY K5V2.

Throughout my time with the game, I compared my experience with my hands-on testing of other extraction shooters, namely Escape from Tarkov and Arena Breakout: Infinite, in addition to the wider first-person shooter genre.

First reviewed March 2026