We're not far away from the launch of Marathon, Bungie's first new shooter in nearly a decade. It's arriving 32 years after the debut of the series, moving away from linear FPS beginnings to grandiose voyages on Tau Ceti IV. Ahead of release, the Marathon Server Slam is our chance to see what the former Halo developer is cooking, and whether it can steal ARC Raiders' thunder. While there's a lot to get into, one thing is clear: handheld PC performance needs work.
What's Marathon? If you need a quick refresher, this is a brand-new extraction shooter from Bungie. Players drop into an ill-fated colony, looking for signs of life, supplies, and maybe a small fortune. Favoring a more hardcore approach to action, on paper, it should be sweatier than most offerings in the genre. You might get your Marathon thrills on PlayStation 5, Xbox, or high-end desktop PCs. Some of you, though, might be using your Asus ROG Ally or Steam Deck docked.
I like to alternate between handheld mode and docked, depending on my mood, and for the majority of my Server Slam matches, I've been locking in on the couch. Bungie is working on an overhauled version of Destiny's Tiger engine, which itself is an upgrade over the blam! engine used for the developer's stint with the Halo series. On that basis, there's a lot of DNA in how Marathon feels as a shooter.
If you're a huge Destiny fan, then you're going to be pleased here. From the bat, Marathon has similar pacing and combat behaviour, whether you're wielding an unruly SMG or a precise assault rifle. There's no denying that firefights feel good; it's Bungie's bread and butter after all. But before you can get even a sense of that and the game's handheld PC performance, there's one major obstacle impeding Marathon's potential. The dreaded UI experience.
Look, I dig what Bungie is going for with Marathon aesthetically. It's riffing on everything from Mirror's Edge to The Fifth Element to vaporwave imagery. Bungie itself, according to art director Joseph Cross, calls the game's style "graphic realism." Yet, for all of its glitchy goodness, Marathon presents itself as both an eyesore and a chore to navigate menu-wise. It's one of the biggest reasons Destiny 2 fails to fully pull me in, with endless tabs, icons, and an overload of information to consume, with little guidance. Those shortfalls are very present in Marathon.
It's a shame, because underneath it all, there are some genuinely fun mechanics at work. Contracts get their own space, offering you and your squad tasks while you're out there exploring, adding a sense of purpose to your expeditions. It adds a certain layer of player psychology, too, as I already have friends telling me to stop messing around and bring a contract in with me. If we're not giving ourselves a goal to pursue, why should they carry me through Tau Ceti IV's dangers?
Other menus store your loot, loadout choices, and more. You can opt to take a Sponsored Kit, which is essentially a free collection of items to help you get back on your feet if you lose everything on a run. I'm a sucker for this feature in ARC Raiders, and I'm glad to have a familiar safety blanket here. You can even borrow gear from your mates if they bring it into a match, with those items returning to their inventory upon exfiltration. That's just one of the handy features Marathon contains, but the game's whip-fast tutorial doesn't bother to let you know this.
So, playing Marathon itself on ROG Ally? My predictions based on Marathon's system requirements earlier this year weren't too far from what we're getting here. At full 30W TDP at 1080p resolution on low-ish settings, you'll be mostly lingering just over 30fps, but it can drastically drop on the fly. You'll want to play at 720p to keep things steady. That's not a terrible compromise, especially if you're relying on upscaling. On the ROG Ally Z1E's 1080p LCD screen, it still looks decent, and it isn't a major hindrance to spotting threats. The game's art direction isn't ruined, either.
At 720p, 15W TDP, and AMD FSR set to Performance Mode, you can set yourself a pretty dependable 40fps framerate. For some of the best Steam Deck games, a 40fps foundation is perfectly fine, and in some cases, extraordinary depending on the game. Marathon is a hefty triple-A FPS game, so I reckon this is alright if you don't mind sacrificing quality to a degree. Marathon is heavily CPU-oriented, though, so I reckon utilizing CPU Boost in the ROG Ally's Command Center or the equivalent on your chosen Windows-handheld.
I put Marathon to the test with Lossless Scaling, too. At 2X settings on a standard LSFG 3.1 preset, the game's framerate shot up to land between 70 and 80fps. It's a far more promising area to be in, but I wouldn't try to push it much further with this enabled. You'll get some heavy ghosting that way, which looks downright horrible in any game, let alone a shooter. While Marathon's ROG Ally performance isn't incredible or explicably awful, I do have some hope for it going forward.
Bungie hasn't completely ruled out a Marathon Nintendo Switch 2 port, and it isn't uncommon for developers to release updates that cater to handheld performance. Embark Studios, the creator of ARC Raiders, continues to do this for The Finals Steam Deck updates, ensuring it runs on Valve's handheld without any massive hitches. Sadly, you won't be playing Marathon on the Steam Deck anytime soon. It uses Battleye anti-cheat, so it's completely out of the question, despite it having Linux support. One look at ProtonDB calls its "borked."
I did investigate it using ROG Ally Bazzite, a third-party fork of Linux that offers a SteamOS experience on Windows handhelds. Sure, Marathon downloads to my library, but it doesn't bother booting up. Outside of dual-booting your Steam Deck with Windows 11, you won't be able to get hands-on with it. And that's if performance can be improved, because Valve's console is struggling with the game through this method.
Jumping back to the game's core, I'm not sure where I sit with Marathon currently. It's full of cool design quirks that make looting easier than genre rivals, wicked art-direction, and a world that could be exciting to get absorbed by. I'm all in on the Runner Shells, a chooseable form that gives you certain buffs and abilities before you deploy. I love these kinds of choices, forcing friends and me to decide what formation is ideal for the type of run we're executing.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the punishing PvE elements. Enemy forces can fake proximity chat, luring you to fights that you likely won't survive with decent gear. Battling each sentient force is genuinely challenging, and I'm not afraid to say I'm happy to retreat if the situation calls for it. All of these elements should set Marathon up for greatness, but I'm not left with a burning itch to keep diving back in right now.
For a game that promises glory through death and conquest, PVP battles are highly infrequent. Bungie's suggestions to increase those odds aren't exactly brilliant either, so some fine tuning in regards to matchmaking is definitely needed. I'll be diving back in at launch on Thursday, March 5, 2026, to bring you our Marathon review, so let's hope Bungie can make some meaningful changes. And fix that bloody UI.