by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
… aesthetically bold, thematically rich and uncompromisingly challenging experience that won’t be for everyone, but will absolutely thrill the cybernetic trousers off those attuned to its prickly rhythms.
When you think about it, the extraction shooter is a weird bloody genre. For the uninitiated, extraction shooters dump players into a hostile environment where they need to scavenge for loot. Hindering their progress will be AI enemies of some variety (be they soldiers, monsters, robots or zombies) and other players who can gank them without warning and flog the very goodies they’ve so carefully gathered. The ultimate goal is to escape the environment with as much loot as possible. If you die? You lose everything. Not just the things you found in that session, mind you, but all the weapons, mods and shields you’ve assembled over time and brought in with you. Brutal, frustrating and, at times, elating, extraction shooters have really hit the zeitgeist thanks to the unexpected success of Arc Raiders. Now, courtesy of the good people at Bungie (Halo, Destiny), there’s a new extraction shooter in town. Marathon is its name and for those willing to embrace its candy-coloured sci-fi nihilism, a damn good, tense time lies within. But much like the activity from whence its name comes, it also can leave you sweaty, exhausted and steaming with regret.
Set in the year 2893, Marathon takes place on and around the planet Tau Ceti IV. Some 30,000 colonists from the colony ship UESC Marathon set out to make the planet their new home, however since then, both the ship and the people have gone silent. A distress call has finally come from the Marathon and now there’s a resource race by the UESC and the various factions and mega-corporations from Earth to flog whatever goodies they can from both the planet and the ship and maybe find out what happened to the poor bastards who just wanted a new home. Players inhabit the role of a Runner Shell, a synthetic body animated by a human consciousness, and will need to use every scrap of cunning and ruthlessness to survive in one of four maps brimming with dangers, loot and – most importantly – other players.
Gameplay-wise, Marathon will feel semi-familiar to anyone who played Destiny and Destiny 2’s PvP mode Crucible. Oh, there are some differences to be sure – faster time-to-kill, different abilities, more emphasis on stealth and positioning – but it has that same slick, tactile Bungie gunplay that has yet to be beaten. Every Shell feels unique and while the difficulty curve is almost absurdly steep, and the various systems explained astonishingly poorly, the rewards for persevering are many.
That said, Marathon absolutely will not be for everyone. Whereas a title like Arc Raiders successfully made an extraction shooter that can appeal to casuals, Marathon feels very much like it was designed for sweats. No one’s shouting “Friendly” in this game and forming peaceful alliances; Marathon is shoot-on-sight and loot the corpses quickly. It is, at times, brutal and unforgiving, a chaotic bullet ballet drenched in the blue blood of fallen Runners.
However, over time and with patience, it reveals itself to be a game with plenty of nuance and satisfying progression. You’ll unlock permanent upgrades via the various corporations and factions you run contracts for, you’ll improve your combat skills over time as you learn the maps and combat basics and you’ll be able to restock your dwindling resources using the Rook Shell, a brilliant innovation that makes solo runs brief, dangerous but potentially high reward scenarios where you’re not actually risking any of your own gear.
Not everything works, mind you. The faction contracts vary wildly in terms of quality and far too many are rather basic fetch quests. It’s also a game that really isn’t designed for long term solo play, so if you don’t have at least one mate with whom to put in some hours, your enjoyment will probably be limited. Also, as with all live service games, there are major question marks about the longevity of the thing. Will the servers still be around in six months, a year, five years? Who knows, but the grim shadow of live service failures like Concord and Highguard looms large in most gamers’ psyches.
Still and all, it can’t be denied: Marathon is an aesthetically bold, thematically rich and uncompromisingly challenging experience that won’t be for everyone, but will absolutely thrill the cybernetic trousers off those attuned to its prickly rhythms. Fast-paced, tense and gripping, it’s the kind of singular, niche experience we don’t get very often, particularly from a large AAA studio. If you can take the heat and tension, Marathon is well worth a run.
