Marathon (BETA)

I can’t say I’m particularly interested in ‘extraction shooters’ and I wasn’t expecting Marathon to change that. But when it had an open beta recently (or ‘Server Slam’ as they called it) I figured it was worth a punt. You play as a ‘Runner’ who travels to the world of Tau Ceti IV to scavenge from the ruins of a derelict colony.

You can play solo (how I played) or with two friends. You choose your ‘shell’ which is essentially your class, each of which has a distinct visual style and a couple of unique special abilities. You then equip your gear and load into the map. Your goal is to loot what you can, complete any contracts you can and then extract from the map alive. If you die, you lose everything you’re carrying.

It’s not a gameplay loop I find particularly exciting and as I said, I didn’t expect Marathon to change that. I played the beta for about an hour and a half, completing several ‘runs’ and successfully extracting alive all but once. I killed a couple of other players I encountered – more on that later – but only died on a single run when I ran out of ammo fighting several robots.

The colony isn’t deserted but full of ‘UESC’ security droids who happily shoot on sight. Engaging them is risky for two reasons – one, it might alert other players to your location and two, it consumes your resources (ammo, health and shields) that might be needed if you encounter said other players.

Although if you do, given that the ‘shells’ themselves kind of look like robots, the first time I killed a player I just thought it was another NPC! I actually felt a little bad about it because I’m not sure they were hostile! The same thing happened with the second, who shot at me first and I assumed it was another security bot. I killed them, took their stuff and extracted. I didn’t feel so bad about that one!

The stuff you collect ranges from gear (weapons, ammo, equipment) to materials needed to trade for items, to currency, to junk that you can sell for more currency. You’ll likely have to spend some time figuring out what each category of item is, how valuable it is, and if it’s worth picking up – because your inventory space is limited, so you won’t be able to keep everything you find.

You have an active inventory that you take into the map with you and a ‘vault’ where you can store whatever you want to keep / are too afraid to lose. Aside from the simple loop of enter, loot and extract, there are ‘contracts’ to accept from the different factions vying for power on Tau Ceti IV. These are somewhat randomised missions along the lines of ‘kill X amount of enemies’ or ‘scan X location’.

There is a ‘story’ of sorts, told via these contracts and within the world itself through item descriptions and the environment. Does it really matter though? Eh, probably not! Visually, I really like the way Marathon looks. I like the style and the architecture but I also feel like it’s a potential weakness for the the game going forward.

Even with my limited time with Marathon, every location on the map seemed to blur together. No area felt unique. It felt like I was traversing the same rooms, hallways and walkways no matter where I went and even though I like the way the game looked, I didn’t see the visual variety I’d need to keep me engaged. The enemies also all look very similar – at the least the ones I encountered did.

And the UI? The UI is an absolute nightmare. I got the hang of using it fairly quickly, but none of it felt intuitive. It always felt like I was fighting against it. It’s just so . . . busy and muddled. When you have a full backpack of items on a run it looks like a convoluted mess of different colours and weird icons, a lot of which all look the same. The menu system is also pretty terrible.

I don’t see Marathon flopping at release the way other live service games have recently but it’s also hard to see how the long term player engagement will pan out. Even though Marathon isn’t my thing, there’s clearly a solid enough game here for fans of the genre, but I’m not sure there’s enough variety or hook here to keep them coming back. Not yet, at least. I’m curious to see how this one does. I won’t be picking it up, but I never expected to.