The Finals

Review game The Finals, Just getting started.

Online shooters are one genre that is particularly prone to boom or bust. There seem to be at least a dozen games that have come and gone with hardly a spark before they fizzle out for every hit, like Call of Duty, Halo, or Apex Legends. How does one stand out when there are so many talented competitive shooters on the field? Why is it worthwhile to spend more time on this instead of that? I believe I’m beginning to see how The Finals addresses those questions after my first night of matches.

The Running Man would have looked like The Finals if it had been about 3v3v3 gunfights. It has that extravagant, American Gladiators vibe that people in the 1980s believed would be the future of sports thanks to the vivid color scheme and two play-by-play commentators in the style of live sports. It manages to avoid being overly serious without turning into a joke or being irritating in the process.

To begin, there are two main “modes.” In Quick Cash, teams compete to gather a vault of coins and place them at specific locations on the map. Usually, all three-person squads congregate at these locations. Because taking over the deposit doesn’t reset its progress, rounds proceed steadily and completely avoid stalemates that kill momentum. This is a really effective way to keep the action moving.

This works incredibly well to maintain the flow of the action.

Bank Although they are typically more dispersed, they concentrate a little more on direct PvP combat. In this game, players acquire virtual pockets full of coins by either defeating enemies or opening vaults located throughout the map. It’s exciting to strategize on the fly to go for kills in the blink of an eye and deposit everything before it all goes to waste. It’s also kind of fun to take out a bank employee and deposit all of their coins yourself.

For your character, you have three weight classes to choose from, and they all play very differently. For instance, the Light build prioritizes mobility by exchanging stopping power for a grappling hook that allows it to reach high or distant locations rapidly. The Heavy, on the other hand, is a character that seems to have been lifted directly out of Rainbow Six: Siege. It switches between using heavy weapons to dominate the battlefield and breaking through walls like the Juggernaut.

The true star of The Finals is its destructibility.

From what I’ve played so far, The Finals’ true star is that destructibility. Yes, you can go in through a window or through a door. You haven’t really played The Finals until you’ve stolen the vault by blowing a hole in the ceiling and having it drop right in front of you. However, taking the less obvious route and smashing straight through the ceiling is an exhilarating way to get the upper hand on unwary teams. At the conclusion of intense matches, the field of play is covered in wreckage as whole buildings start to fall apart.

While matching as a lone player is quick and simple, it does have one obvious flaw. We never had anyone added to our team to make up for lost players or matches where I didn’t match into a full three-person team. Being in a match by yourself and knowing you have no chance of winning or reason to hope for assistance to come is incredibly depressing.

After one evening, I’m curious. I find the game’s show-meets-squad shooter vibe to be quite appealing, and the action moves at an exciting clip. It feels new to combine the rigid goal-based gameplay with the action of flying over the battlefield on a grappling hook or hulk-smashing through buildings, but it’s unclear how long that will last with only two game types. All I can ask for this early on is that I’m eager to keep playing; that much is clear.

When I’ve put in a few more hours, stay tuned for the full review. If you’re playing, please share your thoughts in the comments section.