After playing Escape from Tarkov for many years, I never thought I would inflict another hardcore extraction shooter upon myself. Yet Marathon – though not quite as hardcore – has wormed its way into my wrung brain, and when I'm not skulking around Dire Marsh, I'm thinking about the next time I will. Currently, I'm cringing over how much gear I lost during Cryo Archive's debut, and how many tense Outpost runs it will take to replenish my vault before the weekend-only zone re-opens.
I've been so caught up in Marathon that, having sunk 80 hours into it since launch, I've only just remembered my initial skepticism. I wasn't sure if a studio of Bungie's size would stay true to the inherent niche of a genre that asks players to put their gear on the line every match – and even if it did, what could it bring to the medium that the likes of Escape from Tarkov or Hunt Showdown didn't already offer? Bungie's answer is a hyper-stylish gig economy sim with a lifetime of history packed within its codex. Marathon's world encouraged me to engage with its more conventional extraction elements and adapt to its divergences – namely its lightning-fast time-to-kill (TTK) – which, as a slow-and-steady Tarkov player, has often made me feel like a tortoise being flashbanged.
