Marathon Is A Thrilling Shooter With A Big Onboarding Problem

Marathon is brutal by design. You play a futuristic gig-economy worker paid by cyberpunk corpos who keeps getting killed while scavenging an abandoned space colony for gear, tech, and data. Those vibes could be tuned in a single-player game, but multiplayer—where levels can include up to 18 unpredictable humans—makes that calibration far harder.

Play a couple of rounds and you will not be shocked to see that the game’s free beta weekend has a massive bounce rate on Steam as people try it and seemingly don’t return. Bungie’s extraction shooter asks a lot from players. You are at a disadvantage if you’re alone and not on the mic; characters begin weak and easily impaired.

Sprinting quickly overheats your body, sliding at the wrong time can leave you hopelessly vulnerable, and many of the game’s nuances aren’t obvious at first. Learning to move and cycle through a map changes everything, but without guidance that learning curve is punishing.

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