Marathon - Jank

05 May 2026 By Jeremy Peel Bits

Marathon’s med drone is for emotional support and, to a lesser extent, healing

A perma-smiling comfort on the cold surface of Tau Ceti IV

Marathon is frightening. Especially in solo mode, where the silence of rival players is so acute you can hear the blood pumping in your ears, Bungie’s extraction shooter slips into a form of unscripted survival horror. One that makes you entirely responsible for your own safety, on a world that would be awful enough without all the murderers. Have you seen the wildlife? The bugs splatter you with ichor and the birds tell on you, giving up your position to any rivals who might listen. "Caw! He’s here, lads! Grease your elbows for a knifing!"

It’s a terror that turns even the sensible visitor superstitious. Leaves you hankering, on some level beneath active thought, for a good-luck charm or totem. That’s what I realised the first time a teammate hurled a med drone in my direction. The little blocky bot made a gleeful parabola across the crags of Perimeter and settled comfortingly over my left shoulder. Some enterprising robotics engineer had tuned its digital display to show a reassuring smile - much like the face of Minecraft’s iconic creeper, but with the frown turned upside down.

The magic of the med drone is that it

01 Apr 2026 By Graham Smith Marathon

What we talk about when we talk about running (in Marathon, while playing Marathon)

Let's try to convince Brendy that Bungie's shooter isn't all about dopamine

Last week, Brendy explained his feelings about Marathon, Bungie's new extraction shooter. He didn't like it, arguing it was merely "going double-or-nothing on the simple psychological and adrenal hacks that define [the] genre".

Sounds like something we should all play together, thought Jonty and Graham. So we did. Will we be able to convince Brendy that there's more to Marathon than gambling and barcodes, or will we all repeatedly die in a prefab outbuilding while pathologically refusing to watch the lore videos? The following chat has been edited for length and clarity and to remove roughly nine of the times we died.

[Graham and Brendy are on a run in Perimeter, Marathon's starting map. Brendy needs to smash a lot of windows. Graham needs to destroy an antenna.]

Graham: I don't necessarily disagree with anything you said specific to Marathon.

Brendy: You just disagree with something I said that was probably a big generalisation.

Graham: I think you were generalising about maybe multiplayer games quite a lot. I mean, you conceded yourself that you play games for distraction, but a lot of the time it sounded as if you were saying that repetitive multiplayer experiences are fundamentally less valuable

23 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

What are you running for?

One cannot survive on The Aesthetic alone

There is a loop of behaviour I get into when I see a game being highly praised by my peers. I try the game, I don't like it, I stew with annoyance, I see more praise, I decide I must be doing something wrong, I try it again, I still don't like it. I write a blast of vaporous thoughts about why I don't like it, but I'm only half-convinced by my own screed, and I see more people enthusing about the game. I think: this can't be right, I am missing something, I am not giving this its fair shake, a proper evaluation, I am playing it wrong, I must commit to it somehow, I must roleplay, or I must get deeper, it will reveal itself soon, surely. I play again, and I still don't like it.

This annoys me because I feel locked out of enjoying, even with great effort, something that others enjoy with no effort at all. This is a silly emotion, but a persistent one. I want to like the videogame. Why can't I just like it? Yes, I am talking about Marathon.

Some praise it as a tense and fatal teamfight generator, while others