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After several hours playing the Marathon alpha......I am very lukewarm on the game in its current state.
Gunplay, undeniably fun! Never doubted that Bungie was going to make combat feel good to play. Sound design is impeccable and a lot of the interiors of structures are really cool to look at. That's unfortunately where my positives stop.
Gameplay itself can feel very clunky and slow, even the reload speed is slow (although that may be by design since Extraction Shooters are meant to be more tactical) the map is very empty with no variety in enemy types (Helldivers 2 had more enemy variety) in-game menus are not intuitive and cluttered when it comes to loot management, along with just the general design of the in-game menus has to be the flattest and most generic looking menus I've ever seen. The actual amount of objectives gets repetitive really fast after a few matches. The abilities of the runners (heroes) themselves are pretty run of the mill, nothing special or something you haven't already played before. They also tied melees to your stamina bar for some reason which runs out very quickly since you're constantly running. Your vault space runs out VERY quickly which, considering the biggest point of the game is you getting loot, you shouldn't so quickly run out of storage space. There were a couple matches where we didn't run into a single other player either (when Bungie claimed this game was to be PvP focused lol)
Then the biggest sin of all, someone at Bungie thought it was a good idea to put WALL HACKS in the game as ultimate abilities!!! Extraction Shooters allow you to keep all the loot you found if you extract successfully. You lose all your loot when you die. Imagine dying and losing all your stuff just because someone used an ability that, unless your ultimate is built up as well, have no way to counter. In a match that only has 15 other players at the most and stakes being you losing everything you've gained if you die. Having wall hacks should've been an immediate left on the cutting room floor feature.
And seeing there's only one other map and 2 other runners that will be available at launch, Bungie is going to need to do some major overhauls if they want this game to succeed. Especially if they're trying to sell at $40. There's currently nothing here that makes Marathon stand out from the crowd. Especially releasing alongside Borderlands 4.
And something that's really disappointing is, I understand this game is Marathon only by name, but after playing the original trilogy, you would think Bungie would've taken advantage of the original games enemy variety and creepy atmosphere. Even the Cinematic short had some of that creepy atmosphere. But none of that is present in the game itself.
I'm not sure how much Bungie can actually change in the next 5 months because several of the issues I mentioned can absolutely be fixed and tweaked, but I'm not sure what kind of longevity the game will have in its current state.
EDIT: Also, there's no narrative beats whatsoever. It honestly feels like Bungie is still trying to figure out what they want this game to be.
Last edited by G2ThaUNiT - on 24 April 2025
You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind
