After about three years of development and one significant delay, Bungie’s 2026 Marathon extraction shooter reboot has finally been fully released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X platforms.
While Marathon shares the same title and elements of lore as Bungie’s original Mac-based Marathon trilogy, 2026’s Marathon is a far different beast than its 1990s counterparts as it’s primarily an intense, PvPvE multiplayer game instead of a rather slow-paced, Doom-like exploratory game.
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Thousands of players got to try the new Marathon out for free during the game’s Beta-like Server Slam, and that has already got thousands of players hooked on Marathon‘s addictive gunplay, loot cycle, and enigmatic story relating to the history of the Tau Ceti IV colony and the state of humanity in the 29th century.
With Marathon being Bungie’s first new game in nearly nine years and being one of the latest extraction shooter games to launch in recent years, here’s a list of 10 games fans of the Runner-focused FPS will love to play based on their similarity to Marathon‘s gameplay and world.
10
Lethal Company
Looting Alien Worlds
At the core of Marathon‘s premise is that multiple Earth-based factions are competing against each other and hiring runners to loot the Tau Ceti IV colony for valuable data and resources the factions once invested the colony in.
One game that is all about looting from alien worlds, albeit in a far less serious manner, is Lethal Company, a first-person survival horror game centered around employees from The Company who are sent out in small ships to recover scrap from abandoned planetary stations.
This “scarp” is often useless but rather comedic items, such as large screws, empty bottles, boomboxes, and clown horns, which can be found scattered about the dark, industrial, labyrinth-like stations with monstrous creatures such as the jack-in-the-box Jester often waiting nearby to pounce on unsuspecting explorers.
Lethal Company may not feature any of the intense FPS gameplay of Marathon, but it’s still an incredibly fun, loot-focused sci-fi game that’s best played with large groups of friends and mods installed to make retrieving scrap all the more hilarious.
9
Halo: Combat Evolved
The Game That Made Bungie a Household Name
For many young, up-and-coming gamers, Marathon may be the first Bungie game they’ve ever played, and if they enjoy the gunplay and world of Marathon, they should try out Halo: Combat Evolved, as that was the game that truly made Bungie a household name in the gaming landscape.
Originally released in 2001 as the FPS launch title for the original Xbox, Combat Evolved was the game that defined and forever shaped the Xbox brand as it played a major role in the original Xbox becoming a financial success thanks to the game’s story, gameplay, and multiplayer.
Set in the year 2552, Combat Evolved has players embody the Spartan supersoldier Master Chief as he and the crew of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn struggle to fight the alien conglomerate known as the Covenant on a mysterious ringworld designated Alpha Halo, only to find ancient horrors awaiting deep below the ring’s surface.
While Combat Evolved‘s visuals don’t exactly hold up exceptionally well 25 years later, its gameplay, characters, and story are still fantastic today and any fan of 2026’s Marathon should give Combat Evolved a try, as Marathon wouldn’t exist without the success of Halo.
8
Marathon
Bungie’s First Major Franchise
Halo may be the franchise Bungie is best known for, but it wasn’t their first successful video game series, with that honor going to the original Marathon trilogy, first released on Mac computers in 1994.
An FPS game similar in gameplay and visual design to Doom, Marathon is set in the late 28th century aboard the UESC colony ship Marathon after one of its shipboard AIs Durandal went rampant and allowed hostile aliens known as the S’pht and Pfhor to board the ship and kill its crew.
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Here, people play as the cyborg Security Officer tasked with repelling the aliens and deactivating Durandal, only to inadvertently work with the rogue AI in order to survive and save the nearby Tau Ceti colony.
Marathon may not be as visually impressive or have the easiest to digest story of most Bungie games, with Marathon’s narrative only being told through terminals, but it remains a fun piece of history that every Bungie fan should play at least once, especially since Marathon‘s lore and designs laid the groundwork for Halo, Destiny, and even 2026’s Marathon reboot.
7
Marauders
Tarkov in Space
2026’s Marathon is a sci-fi extraction shooter set in a far away solar system, but despite this setting, players aren’t able to pilot vehicles or even go into space and if players want to experience an extraction shooter with those mechanics, they’ve got to check out Small Impact Games’ Marauders.
Unlike Marathon, Marauders is set in a retro-dystopian dieselpunk future where The Great War never ended, and warring countries colonized space only for governments to become spread too thin and for space pirates to become a dominant threat across all of space.
Players embody these space pirates as they use their ships to cripple rival pirate spaceships and board them or nearby space stations alike for loot and salvageable gear.
While space combat may be a bit desolate in Marauders, its tactical FPS encounters against rival pirate squads or deadly AI combatants make for intense and visceral shootouts that any fan of Marathon would love.
6
Hunt: Showdown 1986
Hunting Monsters in the Wild West
Extraction shooters can be set in practically any time period or possible future, with 2026’s Marathon being in a cyberpunk-esque future and Marauders being in a dieselpunk future, but if extraction fans ever wanted to play in a past setting, they should check out Hunt: Showdown 1896.
Originally known as Hunt: Showdown back in 2018, 1896 has become one of the most popular extraction shooters in recent years, with the game receiving constant updates and enticing events such as the upcoming Devil’s Trail event scheduled to debut on Wednesday, March 18th.
With 1896 being set in the late 19th century, players have access to a wide array of weapons not seen in games like Marathon, such as bows, spears, lever-action rifles, and molotovs, as well as tarot cards that grant hunters unique abilities, like The Sun, which boosts regeneration for 60 seconds.
While there is a lot of PvP content in Hunt: Showdown 1896, it features a lot more PvE content compared to most other extraction shooters, with players often having to take out relatively weak monsters like the zombie-like grunts and later hunt down tough bosses such as the massive alligator Rotjaw or the fireball-throwing Hellborn.
5
Overwatch 2
Heroes of Multiple Classes
Extraction shooters and hero shooters may seem like totally different genres of games, but they actually share many similarities, such as a focus on pre-established playable characters, which can be seen with Marathon‘s Runner Shells.
Each Runner Shell features their own unique abilities and characteristics, and one game that’s full to the brim with enthralling characters and flashy moves is Overwatch 2, or as it’s recently been rebranded as simply Overwatch.
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Compared to Marathon‘s current roster of seven Runner Shells, Overwatch has 50 playable heroes ranging from the battle mech hamster pilot Wrecking Ball, to the new sword-wielding leader of the Talon terrorist organization, Vendetta.
Oftentimes, Marathon‘s PvP encounters can be slow and rather punishing, but Overwatch features fast-paced, objective-focused game modes that always make for fun PvP matches, especially with friends.
4
Escape From Tarkov
The extraction shooter genre of FPS games is relatively new in the gaming landscape, and while dozens of publishers and developers have released their own extraction shooter games in the past decade, most of them still haven’t been able to beat the innate allure and intense gameplay loop of Escape from Tarkov.
While not the first extraction shooter ever produced, Escape from Tarkov is largely credited for popularizing the extraction shooter genre when it was first released in beta form in 2017 before eventually fully releasing in late 2025 on PC.
Set in a fictional conflict in Northern Russia within the titular city of Tarkov, Tarkov has players embody mercenaries from either the UESC or BEAR factions as they strive to loot the city, eliminate hostile players and NPCs, customize weapons, and make it home with the best gear they can find.
However, Tarkov has mechanics very similar to survival games, with players having to scavenge for food and water, manually reload magazines, and attempt to heal damaged organs and other body parts in order to survive against enemy combatants and the environment of Tarkov itself.
3
Halo Infinite
A Halo Multiplayer Unlike Any Other
Bungie hasn’t released a Halo game since 2010’s Halo: Reach, but that doesn’t mean that was the end of the Halo franchise or even the last time Halo received a great new entry, with the series’ latest title, Halo Infinite, offering some of the best single and multiplayer experiences in the FPS genre.
Infinite is Halo‘s first proper open-world game, with its single-player and four-player co-op campaign seeing Master Chief struggle to survive on the mysterious Zeta Halo while attempting to save UNSC Infinity survivors and thwart the dominating, Brute-led Banished faction.
The campaign of Infinite is great, but what made Infinite really standout was its multiplayer, as it only featured traditional Halo game modes players love, like Slayer, Big Team Battle and Infection, but it also allows players to craft their very own PvP and PvE game modes through Forge mode.
For example, Forge not only allowed developers to recreate the much beloved Firefight game mode, but it additionally allowed fans to recreate Call of Duty Zombies, Halo Wars, Battle Royale, Helldivers 2, and other Halo campaign levels in Infinite, making the game truly have infinite possibilities.
2
ARC Raiders
Marathon’s Biggest Competition
When Marathon was first scheduled to launch in late 2025, many gamers knew that the new game would already face an uphill battle against one of the most popular multiplayer games in modern history, the extraction shooter ARC Raiders.
ARC Raiders is a third-person extraction shooter set in the year 2180, where humanity has been forced to survive underground after ARC robots wiped out most of civilization, forcing surviving underground communities to send small raiding parties to the surface to scavenge for supplies.
Of course, these raiding parties often come into conflict with not only hostile ARC robots but also other raiding parties striving to take gear and loot from unsuspecting players, leading to intense PvP encounters in either claustrophobic corridors or wide open surface ruins.
ARC Raiders properly launched in late 2025 to widespread critical and financial acclaim and has a consistent player base of about 200,000 players, giving Marathon a tough rival that only time will tell if it’s able to dethrone.
1
Destiny 2
Fighting Back the Darkness
Marathon and ARC Raiders both have interesting background lore that players have to go out of their way to properly uncover, but if Marathon players are looking for a game full to the brim with enthralling world-building and addictive PvP and PvE gameplay, they have to look no further than Bungie’s previous game, Destiny 2.
A sci-fi fantasy, first-person MMO, Destiny 2 is set in the 28th century after humanity colonized most of the solar system, only for a small pocket of humanity to survive thanks to the Traveler, a mysterious floating sphere that granted humanity and other races the ability to become powerful Guardians to defend beings from Darkness forces.
Destiny 2‘s core gameplay loop is centered around fireteams of three Guardians going out across the solar sytem completing PvE strikes and other missions, but there are also 3v3 and 6v6 PvP game modes, as well as complex, six-player PvE raids to complete, with every game mode offering the chance for players to acquire powerful legendary and exotic loot.
Marathon fans may especially enjoy playing the PvPvE game mode Gambit, which has two teams of four Guardians fight alien forces to collect motes and bank them, with players occasionally being able to jump into portals to attack opposing Guardian players.
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