And for the right player, with the right crew, it may be one of the best shooters of the year!
There is a version of Marathon that I want to love unreservedly. The one where every firefight crackles with purpose, where the derelict colony of Tau Ceti IV breathes with a mythology dense enough to get lost in, where Bungie’s peerless feel for first-person shooting elevates an already tense genre into something transcendent. That version is absolutely in here — flickering, brilliant, unmistakably Bungie. But it is buried under a layer of friction that the studio has not yet fully sanded down, and that tension defines the launch experience of one of 2026’s most anticipated and most complicated games.
Disclosure: I was given a complimentary review key to facilitate this review. Receiving it did not impact my assessment.A Legacy Resurrected — and Reimagined
For the uninitiated, Marathon is not a remake. It is not a sequel in the traditional sense either. Bungie is reviving the name of their legendary 1994 Macintosh trilogy — the series that quietly established foundational principles modern shooters still borrow from — and transplanting it into 2026’s gaming landscape as a PvPvE extraction shooter. The original games were ahead of their time in every conceivable way: the first FPS with mouse controls, dual-wielding, deep environmental storytelling. This new Marathon inherits that reverence for world-building and attempts to carry it into a genre defined by tension, loss, and reward.
The setting is haunting. Tau Ceti IV, a derelict colony world in the year 2893, is every bit as atmospheric as the team promised. You play as a Runner — a cybernetic mercenary whose consciousness can be bio-printed into expendable body shells called Runner Shells. The colony ship Marathon, constructed from the Martian moon Deimos, hangs ominously in low orbit, a ghost ship full of secrets, frozen vaults, and escalating danger. The environmental storytelling scattered across its ruined research facilities, foggy marshlands, and crumbling security outposts is quietly exceptional. There is a weight here — a sense that something terrible happened a hundred years ago, and that I am picking through the bones of a civilization that deserved better.
The Gunplay Is, Unsurprisingly, Exceptional
Let me be direct about the single biggest thing Marathon gets right: it shoots like a dream. Bungie’s legendary “sandbox feel” — that intangible quality that makes their bullets feel like thunder, their weapons feel alive in your hands — is fully intact and arguably evolved. Assault rifles tear through the air with percussive authority. Laser-based sidearms carry a sharp, digital menace that makes them terrifying at close range. Every weapon in the 28-strong launch arsenal has been crafted with tactile intention. The combination of responsive recoil, layered audio design, and DualSense haptic feedback on PS5 makes each gunfight feel grounded and consequential. Getting into a firefight in Marathon and surviving it feels like an accomplishment in a way that very few shooters manage.
The six Runner Shells each bring genuine tactical flavor. Destroyer is the blunt-force tank with a riot barricade and thrusters to close the distance. Recon is the spider-bot-deploying intel operator who can track footsteps post-engagement. Thief’s grappling hook and loot-vacuuming butterfly drone define the fast, scavenger archetype. Vandal’s double-jump and kinetic arm cannon suit the chaos player. Triage anchors squad longevity with healing. Each class can then be customized through an interconnected web of Cores, Implants, and weapon mods — a buildcrafting system that rewards investment and reveals surprising depth over time. The heat gauge stamina system is a deliberate break from Bungie’s power-fantasy past: overheat mid-sprint, and you become a slow-moving target. It creates a kind of tactical breathing rhythm that suits the extraction format well once you calibrate to it.
Where It Loses Me — The UI and the Learning Wall
Here is where I must be honest about what Marathon does not yet get right, and it is a significant conversation. The user interface is genuinely hostile to new players. Menu layers stack on top of each other in ways that feel obtuse, mid-fight information overlays can turn the screen into an incomprehensible data cascade, and the onboarding does not hold hands long enough to get casual players over the initial hump. During the pre-launch Server Slam, this was the single loudest community complaint — and it is legitimate. Bungie has acknowledged it and committed to iterating post-launch, which is both reassuring and slightly concerning that it shipped this way.
The steep learning curve amplifies this friction. Solo play is technically supported, but the matchmaking reality is that a solo Runner in Rook mode — spawning with no gear — frequently walks into coordinated trios who have already cleared a sector. The tension is authentic and thrilling once you understand the systems, but the window between “confused newcomer” and “engaged player” is wide enough to lose a substantial audience. A lot of players will bounce before Marathon has the chance to click. And it does click — but it takes hours, not minutes.
Visual Ambition Meets Technical Execution
Visually, Marathon is one of the most striking FPS games of this generation. The aesthetic draws from constructivist design, retro-futurist industrial decay, and cyberpunk biomechanics — bold lines, vibrant neon contrasted against grim architecture, surfaces layered with micro-detail that rewards slower exploration. On PS5, the game targets 60fps and holds it with admirable stability. On PS5 Pro, the implementation of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) elevates the image to a clean, stable 4K presentation that makes water reflections and metallic surfaces appear almost indistinguishable from reality. The rendering pipeline, on Pro hardware especially, Marathon is a showcase title. The 3D audio implementation on PS5 is excellent — proximity to enemy footsteps and distant gunfire becomes survival-critical information delivered through headphones with exceptional spatial precision.
A Seasonal Promise
Marathon launches with three zones (Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and Outpost), six factions with contract systems that gate long-term progression, and the Cryo Archive endgame map arriving in Season 1. The roadmap is ambitious: ranked play, a new Shell (Sentinel), nighttime map variants, and the Cradle system for deeper stat customization all in the pipeline. Bungie has committed to free seasonal updates, and the $40 entry price reflects a more accessible positioning than typical live-service launches.
The question of longevity is the one I cannot yet answer. Whether this community sustains — whether Bungie can feed it fast enough, balance it fairly enough, and fix the friction points thoroughly enough — will define Marathon’s legacy. The bones here are extraordinary. The execution is uneven. This is a game that already shows flashes of being something special, but one that asks for patience that not every player will extend.
Is it worth it?
Marathon is simultaneously Bungie’s most ambitious and most frustrating game in years. When it works — when a tense extraction dissolves into a desperate three-way firefight near the exfil zone, when the gunplay does what only Bungie gunplay can do, when the world whispers its mysteries through a room you almost didn’t survive — it is extraordinary.
But getting there requires pushing past UI confusion, a brutal learning curve, and content that feels measured at launch. It is a grower, not a shower. And for the right player, with the right crew, it may be one of the best shooters of the year. For everyone else, it may require a few seasons to become what it clearly wants to be.
