Jay Burkholder 📸

Get into the Marathon headspace with the official release of Code Race, composed by Ryan Lott of Son Lux. Marathon drops March 5, 2026.

HighGuard honest review after ~12h of play ⬇️ 🟢 After understanding the game flow, maps, and buildings, the game is… incredibly fun. 🟢 Gunplay was meh at the start, but becomes excellent once mastered. Not Apex, but same feeling. 🟢 If matched against a team that knows how to play, it’s almost constant action. 🟢 Innovative, super fresh, and super competitive. 🟢 3v3 felt like a mistake at first, but once real matches start, it’s the right number. 🟡 Not a fan of bases taking damage when you fail an attack, but I get why: avoiding 1h+ games (balanced match ~45 min atm). 🟡 Some guns are meh and not enjoyable, others are super cool. 🟡 Shotguns are overpowered (one-shot in elite quality). 🔴 Performance is meh, with some questionable technical choices (Nanite tessellation?). 🔴 DLSS without DLAA is a mistake. DLSS is good tech, but without DLAA-quality it hurts sharpness. 🔴 Gun crosshairs are blurry (DLSS/TSR) 🔴 Mining mini-game isn’t very enjoyable, would be better without the QTE imo. 🟢 The comeback potential of the game mode is excellent. 🔴 Visibility is bad with heavy VFX, sometimes it’s hard to understand what’s going on. 🟡 Sound is weird: you hear far away very well (cool), but your own character making almost no sound in FPP makes it hard to judge your footprint. 🟡 More guns, loot variety, and tools would be awesome. 🟡 Character abilities can be cool but lack depth imo. 🔴 Character design is atrocious. 🟢 Level art is excellent. 🟢 Each map having a unique fortress design is a huge win. 🟢 Level design is well handled. 🔴 Massive lack of QoL features and customization options. 🔴 Performance is still meh for a competitive shooter. Note : The game clearly suffers from hate because some people decided *before release* that it would be bad. Without that bias, I’m convinced the Steam score would be much higher. I’m honestly angry at influencers who start the game, play one match, and put zero effort into giving it a fair chance. Your job is not to surf trends, but to actually test the game so people can trust your judgment. Objectively, and yes I’m targeting content creators: you’ve done an insanely bad job reviewing this game. Yes, it’s not perfect (like most releases). But it’s VERY far from the disaster some reviews describe. You have the right to not like a game. You do NOT have the right to publish a “full review” without actually reviewing it. That’s unfair. That’s sad. And that’s concerning for the future of gaming. Shame.