Steam Reviews Celebrate Marathon's Core Loop While Long-Time Players Question Update Direction

Steam reviews are telling two different stories about Marathon, and the split comes down to time invested. Players under 40 hours are calling it "peak" and comparing it favorably to Tarkov and Hunt Showdown. The 100+ hour crowd? They're getting restless.

"every update makes the game worse and cryo archive is basically the sewers from TMNT," writes one 345-hour veteran. That's not the voice of someone who hates the game — it's someone who's watched their favorite extraction shooter drift away from what hooked them originally.

Meanwhile, newer players are discovering what veterans fell for months ago. "the perfect mix of Hunt Showdown and Tarkov," says a 22-hour reviewer. "Guns are good, Graphics are good, Movement is good, Lore is good, Servers are good," reads another review from someone with 108 hours played. The fundamentals are solid enough to keep pulling people in.

With Reddit discussions notably absent this cycle, Steam reviews become the only community temperature check. And they're overwhelmingly positive — "Very Positive" overall rating with consistent praise for gunplay, visuals, and the core extraction loop.

But that silence on Reddit might be telling. The vocal community that usually dissects every patch note and balance change has gone quiet right when Bungie is experimenting with Dire Marsh crew sizes and rolling out med economy changes. Either players are too busy playing to complain, or they've moved their discussions elsewhere.

The Steam reviews suggest retention issues aren't about the core game. "It's highly addictive and I do love the competition," writes an 88-hour player who jumped from Apex to Arc Raiders to Marathon. The hook works. The question is what happens after the initial 40-hour honeymoon period.

Multiple Steam reviewers name-drop Tarkov as a comparison point, but they're not all saying the same thing. "The loot isn't anything too special so Tarkov fans could be disappointed by that, but it feels like it's by design," notes one reviewer who gets what Marathon is going for.

That's the key insight buried in these reviews. Marathon isn't trying to be Tarkov's loot complexity or Hunt's audio design. It's trying to be the extraction shooter that doesn't punish you for existing. The recent med economy buffs and Sponsored Kit changes support that philosophy — making the game more accessible, not more hardcore.

But accessibility versus depth is where the hour count divide gets interesting. New players love the approachable systems. Veterans with 300+ hours want something to keep them engaged beyond the basic loop. The challenge for Bungie is serving both audiences without alienating either.