Marathon’s open-to-everyone server slam is a confident move by Bungie. I really hope it pays off

After last year’s disappointing closed beta test, Bungie’s extraction shooter Marathon seemed destined for failure.

The game’s visuals were bland, the gameplay itself left a lot to be desired, and players everywhere (myself included) came away from it underwhelmed and uninterested, leading to it being delayed out of its original launch in September. But in that time since, Bungie has hunkered down and gone to work in a big way on improving the product.

Even before the server slam begins in a couple weeks, I have to give Bungie credit for rehabilitating Marathon’s image over the past few months. The trailers and videos highlighting the game’s playable classes have been stellar, stylish, and eye-catching, and there have been numerous playtests to help bring it to a better place. The overall vibe around the game has done an about-face after last year’s closed beta test and subsequent plagiarism scandal.

Marathon is a live service title. And in 2026, those are in abundance, with only a small handful able to really grab hold of players and keep the revenue pumping in to justify the ongoing development costs. Rare massive successes like Fortnite, Call of Duty, Marvel Rivals, Overwatch, and ARC Raiders top the list.

Now, with the open server slam weekend from Feb. 26 to March 2, all players will be able to judge it for themselves for the first time. Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of skepticism and criticism on social media, so I fear the hate train and negativity online could derail what could be a great game from achieving the success it needs to continue.

Many complaints online are circulating about the game’s graphics and art style, which is interesting to me, because I find that to be one of Marathon’s biggest strengths. There’s really not quite anything like it, and I think that could be hurting the game just as much as it is helping it.

Opening the floodgates to prospective buyers is a confident move from Bungie. I hope it pays off, because I think that more games to play is a good thing. But the fact is that there’s an overall air of negativity in gaming discourse these days, and it continues to linger around Marathon despite all of the positive changes that have been made thus far.

Marathon has been in development for years and likely cost a lot of money to make, and that money needs to be recouped. That can’t happen if players aren’t hooked immediately and are compelled to sink money into it beyond the $40 launch price.

I think that the market for extraction shooters right now is as strong as it could be, especially piggy-backing off the success of ARC Raiders. Many players new to the genre may find some fun in Marathon that they would’ve never given it a chance before. I just hope they give it that chance.

But with some of the hivemind on social media already touting it as “the next Concord,” there’s a legitimate worry that players rooting for it to fail may prevent it from getting off to the start it needs to be sustainable.

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High on Life 2 is now out on PC and consoles, and the general performance on the former platform is below par at best.

There have been instances of several players encountering occasional lags and stutters early on their adventures. The main culprit, once again, appears to be Unreal Engine 5. Thankfully, there are a few tweaks you can make on your own to smooth the performance.

Best High on Life 2 graphics settings

Before I deep dive into my current settings, here are the specifications of my PC.

• AMD Ryzen 5600G
• 16 GB of DDR5 RAM
• NVIDIA RTX 3060 12 GB

Here’s the set of settings I have been using to get the best possible gameplay.

• Window Mode: Windowed Fullscreen (depends completely on your personal preferences)
• Resolution: 1920×1080 (depends on your setup)
• Framerate Limit: 60
• V Sync: Disabled
• Graphics Quality: Medium
• Upscaling: NVIDIA DLSS (FSR for AMD devices)
• Upscaling Method: Balanced
• Frame Generation Technologies: Off
• Latency Reduction Technologies: Off
• Motion Blur: Disabled
• Chromatic Aberration: Disabled
• FOV: 90
• View Distance Quality: Medium
• Global Illumination Quality: Medium
• Anti-Aliasing Quality: Medium
• Shadow Quality: Low
• Post Process Quality: Medium
• Texture Quality: Medium
• Effects Quality: Medium
• Foliage Quality: Reduce it to Low if you’re struggling with performance

Here are some key pointers to remember. I have tried with unlimited FPS and 120 FPS. Both seem to cause trouble in the form of stutter. It could be my system, but I believe 60 FPS is a good limit if you have a weak hardware setup. While High on Life 2 is a shooter, it’s not a competitive one. 60 FPS will be more than enough if you manage to keep the stutters away.

V Sync comes disabled by default, and it’s best to keep it that way. The extra feature doesn’t offer much, but consumes a lot more resources.

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