Its not a sprint...
What's new on Savvy Gaming Network for the Month of May 2026
Its been a little all over the place this month. I started the month getting really into visual novels again but then I also started playing the new Marathon game with friends and now I’m slowly working my way through the original Marathon series because I became obsessed with it. Oh and I also finished that Horizon Lego game and the Sea of Thieves cookbook. We got a lot to cover so lets get going.
Marathon Season 1 Review
I am not an extraction shooter kinda girl. I have only played Escape from Tarkov a few times and mainly the arena version of it. I decided, because my friends were raving about the new Marathon, to check it out and it is unfriendly.
The new wipe is coming up in a few day so I will only be talking about my time with season 1 here. This is a soft reboot (?) of the original marathon trilogy. In this one you play as biosynthetic brain controlling “runners” looting the remains of an abandoned space colony for big corporations. You are owned by one of these corps, CyberAcme who has the server where your brain is stored on (?). You talk to these companies via their AIs and these AIs will give you contracts of things they want on the colony. They all have an interest in the lost colony on Tau Ceti IV since they help with the development to get there in the first place.
You are able to look around and loot this far away colony via “runners” which are bioprinted shells of people with different playstyles. It’s like a hero shooter. The gameplay consists of picking which hero you want to shoot with and jumping into a match. You will be paired based on your level and amount of people in your squad. Currently you can only have up to three. However if you are a team of two you get matched with teams of three which is a major disadvantage and hopefully this will be fixed later. If you are playing solo you get matched with other solos which is nice. When you start you get access to a beginner map that goes away after you reach level 15. After that you get a harder, crueler map called Outpost. Once you reach level 25 and have done at least the first contract with each of the factions you get a special message from Marathons main man Durandal who tells you that you are allowed to go to the Cryo Archive section of the UESC Marathon ship orbiting the planet.
The cryo map is a weekend only map. You can only get the Durandal cutscene if the map is open and the map changes availability. Which sucks because I honest to god think it should always be open. Nothing deflated me more than getting to level 25 and finishing all the faction quests just waiting for Durandal to talk to me, but then to find out it’s Tuesday and it’s not open for business. It’s not like the Marathon is going anywhere; it’s kinda, abandoned and stuck in orbit. I just want to do the boss fight but I can’t because there is no way I can get past the sweaty hostile players to even get a glimpse at the S’pht Compiler.
Most rounds are 25 minutes except cryo which is 30. After 5 minutes in a normal round exfils begin to appear. Everyone can see them and interact with them. The exfils that have a skull instead of an arrow are guarded exfils meaning that when a player activates it the UESC will send a drop ship with at least one commander to defend the spot. Typically you have to defeat them but you can hide in smoke or block shots with Destroyer’s shield. Everyone also sees the big laser that shoots out of it in the sky and you can hear the sound of an exfil going up from across the entire map.
In cryo it’s different. If you have level 3 security clearance you can interact with an exfil computer to trigger one whenever you want. If you trigger an exfil on cryo it is only visible to you and you have a limited time to go get to it. Only one player triggered exfil can be live at a time and it is nearly guaranteed that enemy teams won’t find yours before you do. If you don’t trigger one in time there are 4 more spots where final exfil can appear. Only one of those will go live so you have to quickly check all 4 spots which are North, East, South or West of the panopticon/control. Unless you have triggered it yourself no exfils are visible on cryo at any time. So it’s confusing as hell to try to leave compared to the other mode of play which is completely different and there is no tutorial or codex entry explaining any of this to you.
Bungie wanted this to be a survival extraction shooter. It is an extraction shooter and the thing that is the biggest threat is not the cool alien planet or the UESC robots, it’s the other runners. This game can be so unfun and it’s all the other players’ fault. It’s a hostile game, there are no friends to be made. Shoot on sight, there are no friendlies here. Losing raid after raid can really take a toll on you. It sucks that I really like this universe and the aesthetic grew on me but this is by far my least favorite game in the whole Marathon series. Dying is the theme. Death is only the beginning. It fits the theme of Marathon, death, escape, and god but it all starts to feel pointless in the end. Why do I even bother, it’s just going to get wiped, my progress doesn’t matter, nothing lasts.
These types of games always feel like early access. You paying 40$ to test out this game and tell them what works and what doesn’t. I think this game can be fun. I enjoyed playing it with my friends but it’s hostile and unfriendly to those not willing to sweat it out. I was lucky and had sweats on my team to defend me when I just wanted to complete a quest because I was actually interested in the lore of Marathon. I hope one day they have PvE servers for those who just want to chill. The world is so interesting, I would like to see more of it without getting shotgunned by another Vandal. I will have to see what Season 2 brings. Even after everything I’m coming back for more. Although, maybe the real escape is just not playing the game in the first place?
A Look Back at Marathon (Classic)
I’ve been enjoying the new Marathon extraction shooter, so I decided to check out the original trilogy. As luck would have it, remasters of all three Marathon games are free on Steam. These are remasters on the Aleph One engine, which is an open source continuation of Bungie’s Marathon 2 engine. It runs incredibly smooth and makes it accessible on modern hardware.
The game takes place in 2794 where you are a security officer that must defend a ship “The Marathon” from an alien invasion. The Marathon was sent to the Tau Ceti system to establish a colony but early on in the colony’s development an alien race known as the Pfhor, attacked. They are just assholes who enslave other species, making them work or selling them off as soldiers to more technologically advanced aliens. You must save the ship from getting taken over with the help of the ship’s three AI, Leela, Tycho and Durandal.
As a “boomer shooter” you can guess how the gameplay is going to be. Lots of running and gunning, solving switch puzzles and reading maps. Be sure to look at your map! It will let you know areas you haven’t gone to and some of the AIs require you to explore before teleporting you to the next mission. The missions are fairly short if you book it to the terminal but sometimes it’s hard to tell which terminal (or window) will lead toward your escape. I love how loud, fast and jarring it is to be teleported around the ship by these AI’s. I know that I will most likely be teleported once I’m done reading the terminal or even on the jump pads but at one point in the story you get teleported if you stand too close to windows and that jump scares me every time.
This game has a tight story. It is extremely engaging and I wanted to know more. That’s kind of the whole reason I started playing. The more I learned about it while playing Marathon 2026 the more and more I wanted to know what happened in the original trilogy. But I didn’t want to just read about it or watch videos, I wanted to live it. This game almost feels like an immersive sim, it has no mission markers you actually have to wander around the ship remembering where you have been and where the computers told you to go. It can be frustrating but the maps are not very big and sometimes you just have to experiment. That can be scary since the save points are so far apart. I was extremely stressed anytime I was teleported into the next level and the save point was not nearby. Which was often. It can also be hard to get a barring on your environment since the textures are similar and lack detail. It can feel clunky to play, especially if you are not used to first person shooters, it can make you a little motion sick.
A lot of the puzzles are movement based, you can’t jump but you will need to get across gaps. So you will run and glide/slide over to the next platform. Sometimes they will require you to use your grenade launcher to launch yourself across large gaps and this is tricky since it can damage you if you aren’t skilled at it. If you want to get the good secrets you’re going to need to master the movement of this game, and I think that’s pretty fair. It is a demanding game but it can be very rewarding.
A Look Back at (Classic) Marathon 2: Durandal
Continuing on with the trilogy I got through Marathon 2: Durandal. It takes place seventeen years after the events of the first Marathon, but for your Cyborg protagonist it’s only been a couple seconds. At the end of Marathon 1, the rampant AI, Durandal stole a ship from the invading alien force the Pfhor and on his way out he teleported you right into his ship’s cryo. Durandal takes you to the homeworld of the S’pht, one of the species enslaved by the Pfhor to find the eleventh S’pht clan who left before the species became enslaved. They have ancient knowledge Durandal needs to stop the Pfhor’s invasion of Earth (Sol), although this might not be his only motive.
This game primarily takes place on the S’pht homeworld of Lh’owon. You will be learning a lot about their history. Specifically, what happened to them during the Pfhor’s invasion and their creation “myth”. You don’t really learn anything more about the Pfhor leaving them still an interesting mystery. The way the information is slowly fed to you over the course of the game is honestly pretty impressive storytelling.
While Marathon 1 was about getting good at the movement, Marathon 2 is about getting good at swimming. You are going to deal with a lot of water levels in this game and sometimes that water harms you. Once the game thinks you can handle swimming in normal water it has you swimming in lava or goo. The lava and goo will harm the player quite a bit as you swim through it. So make sure your shields are topped off before taking a dip. In the water you can’t use your weapons so if you get cornered by enemies you will have to punch them, which is slow and tedious. Or you could just swim up over them. You will have to keep an eye on your air meter quite a bit in this game. The meter may feel like it’s ticking down really slowly but it will creep up on you. Marathon 2 will have long stretches of swimming and air machines are hard to come by. You might get lucky and find an area where they teleport in air canisters, shields and ammo.
They added a shotgun that is incredibly useful, and like the pistols you can even dual wield it. They made small changes to weapons like the pistol which was given an extra round. They also gave the NPCs or B.O.Bs guns so if you shoot them because they are in your way they will shoot you back. This also happens with the S’pht that are on your side so watch out. The terminals no longer pause the game in Marathon 2, leaving you open to attack. Many times I was trying to read and got shot which snapped you out of the terminal.
Another change they made from the first Marathon game is the lack of music. This game doesn’t have a soundtrack, unless you count the banger on the main menu screen. Apparently this was because they chose to emphasize the soundscapes instead. It does lead this game to have an eerie feeling immersing you in the sounds of an alien planet. While I don’t hate the idea of focusing on environmental sounds, I do miss the soundtrack. I really liked the soundtrack from the first Marathon, and after opening the second Marathon and hearing the gnarly Durandal theme by Psykosonik (or power of seven) I wanted more.
Overall this is a pretty solid sequel game. While I do think it does a good job of informing the player of the events of the first game I wouldn’t jump into this one first. I think it would be confusing storywise. Durandal is much more lackadaisical in the way he is written, compared to the previous Marathon game. He is not really manic or silly; he is more pensive, almost bland . He will go off on tangents or get lost in thought just to catch himself monologuing and go “nevermind”. Those seventeen years must have made him a little less rampant. But the events of this game will definitely go to his head.
Lego Horizon Adventures Review
Lego Horizon Adventures is a retelling of Horizon Zero Dawn done in a wacky Lego style. It completely changes the personality of the characters and simplifies the plot. I have no idea why this was made, maybe the lego sets sold well so they thought people wanted more of this. It is interesting to see the plot & characters of Zero Dawn so flanderized but, in all honesty, it made me like the world even more.
This might be a hot take but I think the Horizon games plots are unnecessary obtuse. So it was a nice change of pace to try and make the plot easier to understand, of course to do this they changed a lot of the story. It has the basic idea of what happened but with less rigmarole. I think the thing that took the biggest hit was the characters. These are not the same characters. Aloy is peppy and loves having her friends help you out on her journey. Varl is obsessed with comic books and being the hero like in those comic books. Erend is dumb loves cooking and donuts especially. Teresa is the last playable character and she loves fighting and referencing her age and grandkids. Honestly she is the least bastardized character, but that’s probably because we didn’t hang out with her as much in Zero Dawn so there wasn’t much to change in the first place. Oh and Sylens is a DJ.
Lego Horizon Adventures is a co-op adventure where you can play as all the characters listed above as you unlock them in the story. You can swap characters in the hub world of Mother’s Heart or at the start of each level. You can’t change them once in the level. Aloy and Varl are ranged throwing arrows and spears at enemies, these can be thrown through fire to light enemies and vines on fire to find secret chests. Playing as Terssa really grinds my gears because she is a bomb thrower, throwing chickens, carrots, whatever is in her basket and they explode. These bombs cannot be used like environmental bombs to burn through vines which are messed up and to me she was the worst to play as but she was also the least annoying to listen to so it was a complicated realtionship. Ered is a heavy melee build bashing enemies with his hammer. He caused me to dish out the most friendly fire.
Throughout the level you can pick up special weapons with elemental powers like fire, shock or ice. Halfway through the level you also get three random boxes from a merchant that have these special weapons in them but which character they are for is random, so if they didn’t have anything for Varl and you were playing as him you’re just out of luck. There is also special gear with limited use, like rocket boots so you can jump higher or a hot dog cart that throws bombs all around the battlefield. This game is obsessed with hot dogs during the first half and I have no idea why. Just wacky Lego tomfoolery, I guess.
It’s honestly the worst Lego game I have played yet. Its super short the levels are samey with little replay value. They add extra mini-bosses you can fight if you do wanna go back, but other than that there isn’t any reason or alternative routes to explore. There is a community board at Mother’s Heart that will ask you to do special challenges like beat a level dressed as Kai from Ninjago. That’s how you can get extra gold bricks to help re-build Mother’s Heart. This game has a settlement system, kinda. You can use your gold bricks to build silly little buildings around the hub world, you can change them and their aesthetic whenever you want. Your choices are Horizon theme, Ninjago, Lego City, Amusement park and Village. This theming is also implemented into the costumes, so you can dress Aloy up as Hot Dog if you really want to, this is reflected in the cutscenes and the main menu screens.
Overall, I can’t really recommend this unless you really want a kid to get into the world of Horizon. Then this is perfect, that’s what this feels like it was made for. It’s overpriced for what it is and if you are a fan of this universe you may be disappointed by the way they handle the plot and characters. I wouldn’t even recommend this to a fan of Lego style games, it doesn’t have the same charm. The environments are beautiful but the gameplay is repetitive, there are not a lot of destructible environments or hidden collectables, the areas are small and the view is locked to isometric. Fun to play with a child, but buy it on sale.
Mushroom Oasis First Impression
Oh man for the first half of this month I was playing so many visual novels on itch.io. This is one of them that stood out to me. Mushroom Oasis is a short visual novel about getting lost in woods trying to find your missing cat only to be saved by a mysterious stranger. This was originally an entry into a Yandere themed game jam back in 2023, so the stranger has some possessive tendencies. Currently the game is only up to day 3 with 5-6 days planned, but for an unfinished game it has some decent endings. Three bad endings and one neutral ending that will be the continuation of the story.
Mushroom Oasis deals themes of mind manipulation in a really cool way. When you are being mind hacked the words change colors depending on who is giving you those thoughts. One is purple the other is pink and which one you listen to will lead you down different routes. The art is amazing, cheea is an amazing artist and the reason I found this game in the first place was scrolling on Pinterest seeing a bunch of official and fan art from it. Love the aesthetic and even the cursor is a little shroom. I will be following the development and look forward to the full release. I highly recommend checking this one out if you are a dating sim girlie like myself.
Sea of Thieves Cookbook Review
The Sea of Thieves Cookbook is an official cookbook that’s made by a real fan of the game, but made me sick of coconut. The presentation of the book is unique, opting to be “written” by an actual character in the game instead of one made up. Larinna, the lady in front of all the taverns is the one who collected all these recipes and put them in this book. The book is divided into Outpost Taverns and the dishes they specialize in. An example of this is The Charred Parrot tavern at The Devils Roar has all the charbroiled and fire themed recipes. With over 80 recipes there are a lot to choose from, I went over all that we made here. Im starting to run out of room on this newsletter so If you want our thoughts and feelings on each dish I would recommend checking out the article, linked above or the Cookbook Book Club episode on it linked below.
Overall I love the theming of the cookbook and all the pictures. Being a collection of all the recipes based on a specific tavern was awesome and each region of the map has its own theme that was implemented into the recipes. It also has the whole map at the beginning and end of the book which is a nice touch. There were a lot of recipes I wanted to try but was intimidated by the ingredients, or the need for special equipment that I just don’t have. Making a couple bad recipes in a row will make you not want to put in the effort to make anymore. I was surprised that I couldn’t find hard tack in this, but there is one on Bakers website. I think the author’s blog has better recipes than the ones in this book so I would recommend checking out their website.
If you enjoyed the storytelling in OG Marathon, consider trying out Supplice. The gameplay is more like classic Doom on steroids, but the story is heavily inspired by Marathon and features some great writing for such an obscure indie title.