Early 'Marathon' Server Slam Impressions From Bungie's Demo

Ahead of its full launch on March 5, Marathon held a "Server Slam" over the weekend, allowing gamers to experience a taste of Bungie’s upcoming extraction shooter for free. I sank a little more than a half-dozen hours into it, and I have some thoughts. Before getting into that, it’s worth noting that this was not the full experience. It was designed to test the servers and look for any last-minute problems, so this is purely my initial read on what I experienced.

I Love the Look

It took a while in the lead-up to Marathon’s arrival for me to warm up to the look, but recent trailers have gotten me more into the neon-soaked aesthetic. Seeing it in action, I’m sold. Its surrealism stands out in the crowded shooter market, and Bungie’s signature font is always good for a nostalgic kick in my book. We’ll see how well the maps and world design hold up as the hours pile up, but for the moment I’m considering presentation to be one of the game’s biggest strengths.

Movement and Gunplay Are Tight

Given Bungie’s track record, I had little doubt that the game would handle well. It does. The various guns feel snappy and different, movement feels crisp, though it did feel a bit on the slow side at times. I only really messed around with one of the frames and a handful of the weapons that will be available, but the basics are in place. Whether Marathon ultimately sinks or swims as a game, the framework exists to build something sustainable through its gunplay.

Looting Needs to Be Tweaked

When I refer to looting, I’m using the term as a catch-all for interacting with the environment. It’s counterintuitive to have the same button that picks stuff up directly in the world to then drop items to the ground when in loot boxes, and it feels clunky to have to navigate the items using a pseudo-mouse function with a controller. I also had a moment when I’d begun to run a scan related to a contract only to see an enemy wander into view a second later. I couldn’t cancel the scanning process and had to watch helplessly as the enemy shot me dead. Maybe there’s a way, and I just missed it, but I don’t think so. You cannot lock players into a situation like that when death literally ruins the entire run. It’s unfair.

Working One Contract at a Time Is Frustrating

Given that progression doesn’t carry forward to the full release, it didn’t matter here, but limiting players to working on one contract per run feels like a way to artificially inflate the amount of time needed to advance. While it’s not quite apples to apples, you can work on multiple objectives simultaneously in ARC Raiders, and I’m not sure why that wouldn’t be the case here. At a minimum, either divide contracts into major and minor ones, and allow players to have one of each active, or allow one location-specific and one objective-based—such as defeating a certain number of enemies or runners—to be tackled simultaneously.

The Community is Ultra-Aggressive, but Will That Last?

To me, this is the most critical element, and it’s one we honestly learned nothing about. In the Server Slam, almost every interaction I had with another runner or team went immediately into a firefight. As a result of that, along with some tough AI adversaries, most of my runs ended in failure. Will that continue in the full game? That’s impossible to say, primarily for two reasons: first, many people who played over the weekend won’t play the full game, and second, nothing was at risk in the Server Slam. I’m certainly hopeful we’ll see a healthier mix of collaboration and competitiveness—it doesn’t need to match ARC Raiders, where the player base seems to trend about 80-20 (or higher) of being supportive of one another, but if you’re constantly getting killed by other players while trying to accomplish contract goals it could get frustrating in short order.