Marathon isn’t exactly fluent at explaining its many systems and mechanics. One such hurdle you’ll soon run into when completing some early quests is DCONs, which you’ll need to find and interact with before being formally introduced to them—often while racing the clock. Knowing the DCON locations ahead of time can save you a lot…

Working out how to expand your vault in Marathon will help you hold onto more weapons, backpacks, and implants for your Runner. Staying stocked is not only useful in terms of exchanging resources for items in the armory, but it’ll also give you a nice little cushion of gear in case you die on a…

Marathon has a handful of different events that can spawn across the map, each with a unique objective for you to complete. Most are pretty straightforward, often boiling down to shooting some UESC. The same can’t be said for Tox Clear gas rooms. As the name suggests, Tox Clear events are basically just a loot…

Completing the Survival Directive contract comes immediately after you finish Introducing: NuCaloric and unlock the foodie faction in Marathon. This is the first contract that you actually do for them and it’ll give you a decent chunk of faction rep so you can start unlocking some of their best upgrades—I recommend the ones that give…

Cutthroat Competition is Traxus’ first priority contract in Marathon after signing up with them in Introducing: Traxus. While it sounds simple on paper—grabbing two rod salvage items from a specific location—the area in question is a hot zone for PvP and PvE shootouts. In other words, it’s hard to find a second to actually hunt…

It seems like the present chunk of our mildly dystopian timeline is in part dedicated to figuring out exactly what is to become of our digital future alongside AI. “Agentic” AI is one lens through which many an AI boffin is considering this future, and it looks like that’s to the extent that our human…

Kate Moss once said “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” which tells me that Kate Moss must have an extremely bland, uninteresting diet—and I say that as a small-town white guy in Canada, which should really tell you something. Still, it’s sometimes not a bad idea to slim things down a little—such as in…

There are a lot of compact gaming keyboards out there but none, so far, has been quite so organic. It’s aluminium, you know it is from the way it feels, but that doesn’t stop it having the look of Cronenbergian moulded flesh about it, one step away from being plugged into an unmentionable part of…