'Marathon fucking rules' is not a review, Kotaku. It's a bumper sticker.

Zack Zwiezen has done it again — he's written a review so breathlessly enthusiastic that you'd think Bungie personally delivered the game to his house on a velvet pillow carried by Master Chief himself. 'Marathon fucking rules' is not a critical assessment. It's something you yell at a frat party while shotgunning a Monster Energy.

The review reads like a man who got Stockholm syndrome from dying too many times. 'The deaths are painful but the victories are satisfying' — congratulations, Zack, you've just described every slot machine in Las Vegas. The extraction shooter genre has been strip-mining wallets since Escape from Tarkov, but apparently if Bungie does it, we're supposed to call it 'special.'

There's a phenomenon in games journalism I call 'Big Studio Gravity' — the bigger the developer, the more critics bend toward praise. Marathon got seven years of development and what appears to be an infinite marketing budget. Zack got a free copy and an embargo date. The review mentions exactly zero concerns about monetization, live-service sustainability, or the fact that Bungie has abandoned more games than I've finished. But sure, Marathon 'fucking rules.' Pulitzer-worthy criticism right there.