Marathon

One of the most curious clashes between adventurous and derivative. The aesthetic of Marathon is genuinely amazing. When I first saw the teaser trailer I thought it looked almost cheesy (in a kind of "it's a videogame the videogame1!" kind-of way), but upon seeing the final product it is actually cool. Marathon contrasts overtly digital and cold to organic and fallible and then exposes how uncomfortable the middleground between those two worlds is. It contains a lot of imagery that is surprisingly "offensive": like maggots weaving the automaton you play as. It also plays with overloading the senses a lot, which of course fits the artistic premise here. I'm completely convinced it was toned down massively during production, but the vision itself is really striking. Then there is the game. It plays like a competent shooter. That's all I can give it really. It's another "hit all the corporate bulletpoints"-type extraction shooter. Designed for retention. Designed to waste your time. Daily missions here daily missions there. Seasonal resets. Hero shooter on top of it. It's just so unbelievably derivative and boring. When Marathon does eventually shut down (which I strongly suspect will be earlier than later) I will be very confused whether I should mourn it or not. Artistically it's a brilliant game. As an actual game it's corporate slop.

Just shy of 200 hrs played. I usually play about a week until i'm beaten, bloodied, and bruised by the sweats just walking on casuals. Then I take a break, and come back in a couple weeks hoping they have left the game. Honestly skill based matchmaking would do a lot for this game, or even give us a little more time before death. TTK is insane especially when you're in the starter zone with white shields against a 4k hr no life full gold. Most of my friends have refunded or just gave up because of the no lifes. Casuals are the ones spending money on your game, you gotta give them something to work with. This game has hands down the best game design/artwork of literally any game. Just go pve or get the sweats into their own lobbies so we can at least play a bit. I am rooting for you guys. Other than the mostly negative review, I recommend this game to anyone with the hope that one day we will be able to play. Right now expect to die 9/10 raids to someone who hasnt taken his hand off the mouse for 6-8 months. But if you like pain like me.... its one of the most spectacular game designs you will ever see.

Polished game, excellent graphics, sound and gunplay. Tough learning curve but when it clicks it is amazing. Dad gamer recommended.

Such a boring extraction shooter

game is fun but i just dont understand why make it a extraction shooter they're already so niche. also replay ability sucks

The problem for me is the matchmaking, it takes forever to matchmakes anything. Just not enough people, and then sometimes, when you finally get a match, and you have the littlebit of fun, finding what your contract needs, and getting some upgrade materials, you get killed and wiped out. Now, you have to wait again, to hopefully not be wiped out again. It really feels like im wasting time trying to even learn the game at this point and adding a pve mode is nice but not so much when its attached to the endgame level when as a new player you barely have any gear to use for that. You get like 2 guns for login and free sponsored kits, but as a new player when you dont know what youre really doing, if you go pve and you lose , its for sure skill issue but its also such a waste because now you get forced to play the other maps where youre waiting for matchmaking again.

Invasive anti-cheat that cannot function reliably on Proton, online cheating is still a major issue anyway. It effectively locks players out who don't play on Windows/consoles. BattlEye has native Linux support, this is entirely a Bungie development decision.