“It’s just not for me!”

How many times have you said something to that effect to write off an entire genre of games? I know I have. I’m still haunted by the experience of trying to play Dota 2 for the first time, only to be yelled at by my team for not immediately understanding its multitude of nuances. My hasty takeaway at the time was that MOBAs, as a whole, probably weren’t my thing. I’ve had similar instincts about the extraction shooter for the past few years. The careful and cutthroat nature of games like Escape from Tarkov felt inherently at odds with the kind of fast and fun shooters I tend to enjoy. They just weren’t for me.

And yet, here I am impatiently waiting for my work day to end so I can load up Marathon.

Bungie’s new extraction shooter got its hooks in me in a way that no game like it has before. I’m in multiple Discords dedicated to finding squadmates. I’m watching its ARG components unfold like a hawk. I’m even obsessing over in-game lore when that kind of storytelling usually puts me to sleep. After two weeks, Marathon is instilling a valuable lesson in me. There’s no such thing as a game genre I don’t like; all it takes is a game that puts what I’m doing in the right context to win me over.

Marathon works the same as many of its genre peers. Players take on the role of Runners, undying mercenaries who are dispatched to the planet Tau Ceti IV to retrieve valuable materials on behalf of warring factions. In practice, that means dropping into a hostile environment, picking up as much loot as possible, and successfully escaping without getting killed by computer-controlled robots or other players who are out to steal your stuff. It’s tense, competitive, and often ends in runs where you lose everything.

On paper, it sounds identical to last year’s hit Arc Raiders. It is in some ways, but there’s a........

© Polygon