Marathon was provided by Bungie for review. Thank you!
There’s something almost confrontational about Marathon. In a landscape where most shooters are desperate to be instantly readable and endlessly accommodating, Bungie has built something that feels deliberately resistant. It doesn’t ease you in, it doesn’t simplify itself for the sake of approachability, and it certainly doesn’t care if you bounce off it in the first few hours. Instead, it commits fully to a high-stakes, systems-driven experience that demands your attention and punishes your complacency.
Set on the hostile, unravelling world of Tau Ceti IV, you step into the role of a Runner, a consciousness transferred between synthetic bodies and sent into dangerous zones to scavenge, fight, and, if you’re lucky, escape. That core loop defines everything. Every match is a risk calculation, every encounter a potential loss of time, gear, and progress. It creates a constant tension that sits just beneath the surface, turning even quiet moments into something uneasy. You’re never comfortable here, and that’s very much the point.
When things click, it’s exceptional. Bungie’s pedigree with gunplay is immediately obvious; weapons feel sharp, responsive, and incredibly deliberate. There’s a weight to every shot, a precision to movement, and a lethality to encounters that keep everything fast and unforgiving. Fights rarely drag on. You either outthink your opponent or you don’t, and the margin for error is razor-thin. It makes victories feel earned in a way few modern shooters manage.
What really elevates Marathon is how that mechanical excellence feeds into its wider structure. Deciding whether to push further into a map or cut your losses and extract becomes a genuinely stressful decision. Greed is often punished. Caution can feel like cowardice, until it saves your run. It’s a loop that gets under your skin quickly, encouraging that familiar “one more run” mentality, not out of habit, but out of a desire to do better, to be smarter, to outplay the game itself as much as its players.
Visually, it’s striking in a way that won’t land for everyone. Bungie leans into a clean, almost clinical sci-fi aesthetic with bold colours, sharp geometry, and environments that feel more synthetic than lived-in. It’s a far cry from the grimy, industrial tone you might expect, and while it gives the game a distinct identity, it can occasionally feel at odds with the underlying sense of danger and decay. Character designs, in particular, skew a little too stylised, sometimes undercutting the harsher tone the game is otherwise aiming for.
That slight disconnect mirrors a broader issue: Marathon tends to create friction where it doesn’t necessarily need to. The onboarding is rough, systems aren’t always clearly communicated, and the UI can feel cluttered and unintuitive. Early hours are less about learning through play and more about wrestling with information that the game doesn’t always present well. There’s a fine line between depth and opacity, and Marathon doesn’t always stay on the right side of it.
Progression, too, can feel slow and occasionally punishing. Losses hit hard, not just emotionally, but mechanically. And while that risk is part of the appeal, it can also make the game feel exhausting in longer sessions. There’s very little in the way of a safety net. No easy mode, no casual playlist to fall back on. It’s a game that expects you to meet it on its terms, and if you can’t, it’s perfectly content to leave you behind.
On PS5 Pro, though, the experience holds up impressively well. Performance is consistently smooth, even in the most chaotic moments, and that stability goes a long way in a game where responsiveness is everything. Gunfights feel clean and immediate, with no noticeable hitching or slowdown to get in the way. Load times are quick, keeping the pace of repeated runs snappy, and the overall visual clarity, despite the sometimes busy art direction, remains sharp throughout. It’s not a showcase in the traditional sense, but it is a version of the game that feels reliably solid from start to finish.
What’s most interesting about Marathon is how unapologetic it is. It doesn’t chase trends, it doesn’t dilute its identity, and it doesn’t bend to accommodate a wider audience. That confidence is admirable, even if it comes at the cost of accessibility. For those willing to invest the time and push through its rougher edges, there’s something genuinely special here - a tense, rewarding shooter that feels meaningfully different from its peers.
For everyone else, though, it may simply feel like hard work.
It’s worth noting that Marathon does not support the Steam Deck, continuing a stance Bungie has already taken with Destiny 2. There’s no official compatibility here, and attempts to run the game through workarounds are, at best, unreliable and, at worst, potentially risky given Bungie’s history with anti-cheat enforcement on unsupported platforms. It’s a disappointing omission, especially given how well this kind of pick-up-and-play, run-based structure could suit handheld sessions, but as it stands, Marathon firmly sits outside of the Steam Deck ecosystem.
Marathon is a game of extremes. When it’s firing on all cylinders, it’s gripping, punishing, and deeply satisfying. When it falters, it can feel overly rigid and unnecessarily obtuse. It’s not an easy recommendation, but it is a fascinating one - and in a genre that often plays it safe, that alone counts for a lot.
このレビューはPC版に基づいています。
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Marathon is a game of extremes. It's gripping, punishing, and deeply satisfying when it works, but it's a fascinating experience nonetheless.
