There is a new Bungie game upon us, and if its previously released Halo and Destiny games are any indication, it’d be quite silly to outright ignore it. I mention that because, unlike Halo and Destiny, understanding what Marathon is attempting to do in the shooter genre is tougher to parse (and easy to ignore as a result). It’s an extraction live-service shooter, a niche variant in a genre that a lot of people turn their noses up to by default. That’s all well and good (and understandable if you already know this isn’t for you), but if you’re interested in seeing what one of the industry’s best shooter-makers is doing in the extraction genre, which itself is on the rise thanks to games like Arc Raiders, I recommend checking out Marathon – for free! – via this weekend’s Server Slam.
Download the Marathon Server Slam Client and hop in. That’s what I did last night, and I’ll be honest, I really struggled to parse through its UI, menus, and in-game action, but the visual-audio experience of Marathon is worth checking out alone. It is a gorgeously mixed soundscape of alien sci-fi rumbles, instruments, and tech-based beeps and boops that sounds great in a headset. And visually, it’s one of the most distinct games I’ve played in some time. As for the gameplay itself, you drop into a map, collect as much valuable loot as possible, and exfil from the map to secure said loot and reap the rewards for doing so. Moment to moment, that means you’re going to be searching around cyberpunk-esque environments for things to scavenge while avoiding (or seeking out) enemy AI and other players for firefights that play out via Bungie’s best-in-class first-person shooting.
I’m not so sure that Marathon is shaping up to be Bungie’s next Halo or Destiny, but it is, at the very least, something unique, and I’m excited to see if this extraction shooter clicks into place as I play more over the weekend. If it doesn’t, well, at least the Server Slam is free.