Recent reviews by Mr Gnome

My favorite Darksouls game out of the trio. Bought the Deluxe Edition for $20 during a sale.
Elden ring then came out.
♥♥♥♥ Bandai's greedy ass.

By the 50th time you climb the mountain it is an extremely zen game.

Worth it for Nacht der Untoten

It's great, don't buy it (yet).

I originally wrote this review after spending a lot of time playing Marathon and genuinely loving it. I still stand by almost everything I wrote. The gunplay, art direction, sound design, world, lore, puzzles, NPCs, and UI are all fantastic, and I still think Marathon has one of the strongest foundations I have seen in an extraction shooter.

The problem is that I haven't played the game in months.

The biggest issue for me ended up being matchmaking. Only a few weeks into the game's life, I was sometimes waiting 20 minutes or more to find a match. On some occasions, I waited around 30 minutes. At that point, it became difficult to justify spending my limited free time waiting for a game rather than actually playing it.

That also created a difficult cycle for the game. A smaller player population meant longer queues, longer queues gave players another reason to stop playing, and the resulting population decline made the original problem worse.

The progression system and wipes made this even more difficult.

I do not have a problem with wipes in principle. Tarkov, ARC Raiders, and other extraction shooters have used them successfully. The difference is that those games have established reasons for their wipe systems. Tarkov originally used wipes heavily as part of its development and progression balancing. ARC Raiders uses its six-month cycle as an item drain. Hunt: Showdown does not have mandatory wipes and instead uses its economy and optional prestige system to provide long-term progression.

Marathon's wipes never felt like they had an equivalent purpose. There was no particularly strong gameplay or in-world justification for them, so losing your progression could feel less like part of the game and more like simply having your progress removed.

That is particularly difficult for players who only have a limited amount of time to play. If someone can only play on weekends and may only log into the game 8 to 12 times in a season, it becomes difficult to justify slowly working toward progression when that progress will soon be removed.

The limited-time maps and modes also created problems for players with inconsistent schedules. I really enjoyed the Cryo-Archives, but because I work weekends, there were periods when I had very few opportunities to actually play on the map while it was available. The various experiments with duos and other queues also made it feel like Bungie was constantly trying to balance matchmaking without splitting an already limited player population too far.

Taken individually, none of these issues would necessarily have been enough to make me stop playing. Together, they eventually did.

That is what is most frustrating about Marathon to me. I genuinely like this game. The gunplay, art, sound, world, lore, puzzles, NPCs, and overall presentation are all things I would like to experience more of. Everything feels unusually cohesive, and you can tell there was a lot of care put into the game.

I just wish the systems surrounding that foundation had received the same level of attention.

I have not played in months, but I am still hoping the upcoming overhaul addresses some of these problems. If it does, I would genuinely like to come back and play it again.

So yes, I still think Marathon is great.

Just don't buy it yet. I will update my review once I play the new update.

Old review, which I still kind of stand by: "Fantastic game. The combat and PvP are incredibly fleshed out, and I am addicted to the art style. My main gripe with Arc Raiders was that while fighting the machines was fun, the PvP was not, since players are massive bullet sponges and the weapons were not fun to use (except the Ferro).

Marathon's UI is also something incredibly unique and fun to interact with. While it did take me a little while to figure out how the different upgrade and shop systems work, it is still leagues better than Hunt: Showdown 1896's UI across any of their major updates. Not to mention the quest givers and NPCs actually feel alive, unlike a certain other game that relies on the most robotic, flat AI voices.

As far as gunplay and the core gameplay loop go: the different shells are all pretty fun, I just wish they had different base survivability and armor, because some shells that feel like they should be tanks share the same TTK as everyone else. The gunplay is amazing. It's Bungie, what would you expect.

The extraction loop feels closer to Hunt: Showdown than to more traditional extraction games like Tarkov, and the world-building takes it to another level I have not seen in extraction shooters before. The wildlife, being able to honk the horns on the mega-vehicles, and the immersive quest design all add up to a world that feels genuinely alive rather than just a backdrop for gunfights.

As a major fan of extraction shooters for almost ten years (since Hunt: Showdown launched), I really feel like Marathon's art style and gunplay carry it to the point where I can see it becoming one of my new favorites."

I sold a FN m4a1 Poseidon for $200 when I was 15.

It's peak

>Censors game
>Make excuse it's because small indie team and console port
>look inside
>60 man team
Say no to censorship in any art medium.

10/10, closest thing to a bloodborne sequel that we can currently get to with duchess.

Is it worth $40? Not unless you are a big fan of fromsoft games and are ok with being milked.
overall very fun, I enjoy the new movement system.

Hands down the best game I have ever played. The story and structure leaves me crying. The netcode is wonderfully built and the combat feels so fluid.

City maps are WILD