Marathon

冲着美术来的 击杀反馈很舒服 排队时间略久 最后 搞图形现实主义的偏锋美术搭配的玩法竟然是搜打撤 有点遗憾。

watching marathon die is akin to watching a fire slowly go out deep in the arctic. marathon, beyond anything, firmly marks the end of the unique multiplayer-focused experience. due to one of the most fascinating case studies for organized online hate campaigns and the repeated tripping over ones own shoelaces, the shooter genre (and online landscape as a whole), becomes remarkably dim. the death of marathon will no doubt lead to the death of bungie, a vast paragon of video gaming history, at the hands of sony. it is the end of any hope for destiny, and it is the end of any hope for a proper golden age halo revival. but this ripples much further than bungie. further than just shooters. its not difficult to see the en-♥♥♥♥-ification of multiplayer games as a whole. the established ips get away with (and make hundreds of millions off) pumping out the same soulless asset flips with different names, and new ips only make it through seeing who can make a hit with the lowest effort. cheap or free-to-play (stuffed with microtransactions), at levels of quality ive seen exceeded by 13 year olds on roblox studio, that only life off a month or two via farming for youtube shorts and tiktok clips. marathon was the last hurrah for effort. a final foray into the breach. a game full of soul and oozing with the sauce needed for any tangible staying power in this modern gaming landscape, where trends last a couple weeks, if youre lucky. before it even released, it was marked as "just another extraction shooter", already an uphill battle to fight against. more details came out, and the extraction shooter judgement faded, just to be replaced by "ermmmm, le wokisme!!!!" because, of course, if your characters arent gigachads or big tittied anime girls with epic upskirt shots, your game is woke dei slop worth less than the marker ink it was storyboarded on. it never got better. through the lifecycle of its first season, it was pitted against arc raiders, a game that is much easier to consume for a wide audience, and vastly different in both aesthetic and gameplay. the only similarity comes from both games being extraction shooters. and yet, for seemingly no reason, steamdb warriors decided they had nothing better to do outside of showing just how much """""better""""" arc raiders is. you couldnt exist on the internet without seeing player count comparisons, and how that was the be-all end-all to any conversation involving marathon. big number better than small number, and that was it. after the third pointless drivel to split what couldve been the next big game, finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. season 2 was supposed to be the stimulus shot marathon required. a free weekend and a fresh start, as well as an injection of the months of ideas bungie had sat on and refined throughout the turbulence of season 1. and then, like a nail in the coffin, destiny 2 shut down. the immediate blame was sent to marathon, the outcast bastard cousin now considered no more than an overly needy resource hog. a dedicated group of destiny holdouts made it their active mission to make the second season of marathon as vast of a failure as they could. if i cant have my favorite toys, i'll burn the toybox down. and of course, as destiny shut down, layoffs ensued, and it showed deeply in the health of marathon. persistent server issues, game altering bugs, balance issues, and the entire first attempt at a pve mode. the cleanest pr granted to marathon since its very first announcement was largely sabotaged by their own mistakes. by now, marathon struggles to scrape 7000 players at peak hours, and youre likely to fail at finding a lobby at all after the sun sets. an unceasing wave of hate followed by a comedy of errors has lead to one of the greatest multiplayer experiences of this decade to enter the throes of death far too soon. with the impending bombshell and following video game nuclear winter of gta6, i imagine this is the last truly soulful gaming experience on the market for quite some time. i love marathon with all my heart, and i hope in this moment, you can find space in your own for such a wonderful game. as doomer as the story of this game may sound, it is not too late. if you're considering picking up this game, please do! marathon, and to a degree, bungie as a whole, are still salvageable. after all, its never over until its over. #SaveMarathon and with it, #SaveBungie.