Marathon already feels like the scariest game of 2026

Marathon’s atmosphere and brutal stakes make it feel like a glitchy futuristic nightmare. Even the loading screens — a moth chewing on a wire that likely powers the Runner shells — set a tense mood as you investigate how 30,000 colonists vanished from the New Cascada Colony on Tau Ceti IV.

One wrong moment, such as a ventilation shaft bursting open, and a robot can stab you to death, taking every gun and upgrade you’d collected on that run. That permanent loss is a core source of fear. Death costs everything you brought into a match and everything you looted, creating anxiety similar to losing Souls in Dark Souls or Rosaries in Hollow Knight.

In practice, rushing like you would in Destiny often ends badly; my clanmates and I wiped out bots in North Relay only to be overwhelmed minutes later by a flood of robots led by a seemingly unkillable, cape-wearing boss that siphoned our life force with cabling.

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