Marathon is being bombarded due to nasty monetization and cheating bot difficulty
Bungie's new shooter, Marathon, is taking a beating on Metacritic. Players hit the scoreboards with a flood of low reviews after encountering gameplay that many call punishing and chaotic.
Gunfights move at a breakneck clip; death can come in a blink. PvP duels and the two-player mode feel skewed, with one side often snowballing while the other scraps for scraps. Then there are the bots — aggressive, relentless, and (players say) behaving in ways that look like cheating rather than AI mistakes.
Microtransactions add fuel to the fire. tbh, seeing paid items mixed into match progression rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. On top of that: no 120 Hz support for those with high-refresh monitors, and an interface that some testers describe as cluttered and hard to read.
Bungie also asked reviewers to delay their final verdicts until all content ships. That request landed badly; many in the community read it as an attempt to soften criticism of an unfinished release. Fans have reacted by trying to push back with positive scores, but the negative tide may well keep the aggregate rating depressed for a long time.
In short: gameplay frustrations + perceived monetization moves + an awkward PR ask = a messy public reaction.