The Marathon bounceback has begun. Bungie’s new game has been through quite the reputational rollercoaster already. An exciting debut, tempered with a lack of enthusiasm for its demanding and highly specific genre, extraction shooter. A decent press preview, followed by brutal feedback from its first public playtests, followed by a rethink and a delay. A general sense that Bungie had wandered too far into a hardcore space, and that Halo and Destiny fans might be too scared to follow.
Then it came out. Initial reactions were cautiously optimistic, but many still found the game alienating. Bungie asked press to withhold full reviews until its endgame map Cryo Archive landed a few weeks after release, but a few went ahead anyway, and opinions were decidedly mixed: A week ago, Marathon’s Metacritic rating stood at 74.
Now it’s 82 and rising. Cryo Archive has dropped — only on weekends, mind — and is getting rave reviews, as well as some concern trolling about its forbidding difficulty and high barrier to entry. PC Gamer has published its full Marathon review and slapped it with a 9/10. So have GamesRadar and Game Informer. Now that they have got their heads around it, critics love this game.
They’re also playing it. Marathon is not a big hit, and its sales performance will no doubt be disappointing to Bungie’s paymasters at Sony. But one demographic is all in, and it’s games media. There are a lot of ex-Destiny players among us, and anecdotally, we are progressively giving in, trying it, and falling in love. There are a lot more critics playing Marathon than, say, Arc Raiders, drawn in by its bravura art direction, uncompromising design, intriguing lore, and trademark Bungie finesse.
None of this necessarily means Marathon is going to sell more copies. But it does mean that Bungie is in prime position for Best Multiplayer Game — and even a longshot for a Game of the Year nomination — at The Game Awards in December.
Members of the games and mainstream media vote on The Game Awards, so a game’s critical reception is crucial to success at the ceremony. When it comes to multiplayer games, it’s not just a matter of review scores. It’s a matter of the games that journalists actually continue to play in their own time.
It’s very rare for a pure multiplayer game to get nominated for Game of the Year. It’s only happened five times: Hearthstone in 2014, Overwatch (which won) in 2016, PUBG in 2017, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2019, and It Takes Two, which won in 2021. They were all very well reviewed, with the exception of PUBG, which was still in early access and not widely reviewed at the time of its nomination.
Just as importantly, these were all lunch-break classics in the offices of game publications — while game publications still had offices to work in, never mind play games in. I should know, I was there for all of them. (The exception is It Takes Two, the model of a pandemic game, which we all played at home with our partners and friends.)
Does Marathon have a chance of joining their number as a GOTY nominee? I won’t rule it out, but it’s a very long shot — especially in a year that’s looking to be quite competitive, Grand Theft Auto 6 notwithstanding. Unlike those previous nominees, Marathon is not very accessible, and the fragmented homeworking environment of the present day isn’t as conducive to virality in the games media community.
Considering those factors, though, it’s impressive that Marathon has as much traction with the games media as it does. That makes it the title to beat in the Best Multiplayer Game category.
This category is hard to predict early — nobody would have seen 2025 victor Arc Raiders coming in the spring. There’s also always a chance GTA 6 will ship with an online mode, although I doubt it. As potential contenders, I’d highlight DoubleFine’s Kiln, FromSoftware’s The Duskbloods, Shapefarm’s co-op game Orbitals, and House House’s Big Walk, an early entry in an emerging genre that I am calling “elevated friendslop.”
(Arc System Works’ Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls might as well take home its Best Fighting Game award now. The jury will probably be content to restrict its nomination to this nonsense category. In 2019, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate won Fighting and was nominated for GOTY, but somehow didn’t merit a Best Multiplayer Game nomination. The logic escapes me. The same goes for Forza Horizon 6 in racing.)
Who am I kidding? None of those games I mentioned is a shooter, The Game Awards’ favored multiplayer genre. Eight of the 11 Best Multiplayer Game winners have been shooters. That’s just another factor in Marathon’s favor. For now, it remains the favorite. Perhaps Valve’s Deadlock will actually be released in 2026? Now that would be a heavyweight match-up…