The Finals (2023)

First Impressions / Background

I first started playing The Finals with my cousins shortly after launch. We actually won quite a lot of matches, and during its peak, the game felt incredibly fresh. The combination of fast-paced movement, destructible environments, and the game show presentation immediately made it stand out from every other FPS on the market.

Unfortunately, despite having a great time with it, it never fully clicked with me. After around 10–20 hours, I slowly stopped coming back.

Gameplay / Combat

The gameplay is easily the strongest part of the game. The combat feels satisfying, movement is smooth, and every class has its own identity. I played all three classes, but I always preferred the Light build because of its mobility. Flying around the map and outplaying slower opponents was simply the most fun.

The real star of The Finals, though, is the destruction. Entire buildings collapsing during fights never gets old. Unlike many shooters where destruction is just a gimmick, here it's at the core of the gameplay. Every match can play out differently because the arena constantly changes around you.

Performance / Balance

Performance was decent enough for me to enjoy the game, although I remember optimization being a little rough at times.

My biggest issue was the competitive side. As time went on, players optimized everything, and the meta became much sweatier. Heavy builds in particular were incredibly annoying to deal with back then, and matches slowly became less about creativity and more about abusing whatever was strongest.

Atmosphere / Presentation

This is another area where The Finals shines.

The entire futuristic game show theme is fantastic. The commentators reacting to the match make every game feel like a live sports broadcast. I remember hearing that many of their voice lines were dynamic, which made the experience even cooler. Eventually you stop consciously noticing them, but they're always there in the background, adding personality without becoming annoying.

Replayability

Even though the gameplay is genuinely fun, I eventually lost the motivation to keep playing. There wasn't a particular reason—I simply found myself moving on to other games. I still think it's a unique shooter, but nowadays I don't really have an urge to boot it up again.

Conclusion / Personal Take

The Finals is one of the most original multiplayer shooters released in recent years. The destructible environments, fast-paced gameplay, and incredible presentation make it feel unlike Call of Duty, Battlefield, or most other arena shooters.

It may not have held my attention for hundreds of hours, but I'm glad I experienced it during its peak. If you're looking for a dynamic FPS where every match feels different thanks to environmental destruction, it's absolutely worth trying.

Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)

A unique shooter with amazing destruction and presentation that, unfortunately, couldn't keep me hooked in the long run.

This game requires teamwork, and currently matchmaking is full of players with almost no tactical awareness, so I highly recommend to find a friend or two to play this with. Solo experience can be miserable.

Other than that, I love this one. It has lots of gadgets that counter eachother: fire counters gas and goo, smoke counters fire, motion sensors counter smoke, etc.

Also, dematerializer is a gamechanger. You can ambush and enemy through a wall, ceiling, floor or use it to defibrillate someone on another floor.

Parkour, speed and freedom of movement are top notch, with jumppads, ziplines and the ability to demolish almost everything.

Free-to-play competitive arena shooter with cool gadgets and beautiful destructive levels. I enjoyed "Power Shift" the most where two teams battle it out to attack or defend a moving platform that advances through the arena as you try to hold it for the majority of the match. I might have mained this game back in the day but today there's just too much competition and too many games to play to invest any substantial time into The Finals. Looks great, and fun while it lasted, but fundamentally another premium battle pass cash-grab.

[3.2] / [5]

The Finals is a free to play game and it comes with a lot of what you would expect from that. It is a work in progress that doesn’t have enough content. It has a battle pass and overpriced, mostly cringey cosmetic items that often clash with the rest of the games look. It’s slow to progress and expects too much of your time. Despite all that I like this and think it has the potential to do really well.

Normally I’m not a big fan of these games and often don’t even try them. So I almost passed on The Finals but I’m glad I didn’t. The Finals nails the core basic stuff. Moving and shooting just feels good. The movement is quick and fluid with slides and conveniently placed jump pads, ladders and zip lines. It’s so important to the gameplay especially because of how vertical this game is, which I really enjoy. But it’s not completely perfect and you will have the occasional bit of awkwardness. Gunplay works really well with quality animations and sounds. They found a really good spot with shooting. It’s fast and arcade-y but you still need to have decent aim and deal with recoil. There’s also a decent variety of guns and gadgets and some melee weapons too. Changing your loadout and class really impacts how you play. The time to kill feels spot on and allows time for quick thinking and strategy instead of just reflexes and/or who spotted who first. The developers clearly know fun and first person shooters.

Then there’s the destruction. Not only is it just cool but it is an essential part of the gameplay. Being able to just blow holes in floors, roofs, walls or just bring down the whole structure, in an objective based game, just changes everything with how it opens up options for attacking and defending. I will never get tired of blowing a hole in the ceiling and having the objective drop down in front of me, suddenly rendering most of the defences set up by the other team almost useless. Added to all of this is the ability to make goo walls and set things like mines, sentry guns and barriers. There are also different things in the environment you can throw, like goo canisters, explosives and flower pots that are handily located. It’s important to play as a team too. Working together when attacking or defending is vital and so is reviving and healing if possible. All the different elements of The Finals just feel well thought out and work really well together. It makes for such dynamic, emergent gameplay.

I don’t like the presentation as much as the gameplay unfortunately. The maps, weapons and gadgets are mostly fine and of course the destruction is excellent but I’m not a fan of everything else. I don’t like the TV show, virtual combat style they have gone with. The announcers are horribly annoying. But if you turn them off the game feels weirdly quiet, so I settled on just turning them down a bit. The music doesn’t help here either. There is a lot of cringey, over the top cosmetic stuff that has become common now. But for the most part the game looks kind of bland.

The Finals works really well despite the chaos and destruction taking place but I’ve still encountered some issues. It’s crashed on me and gotten stuck on the joining game screen multiple times. Sometimes destruction will look awkward and I’ve spotted floating debris every now and then. There have been times when I haven’t been able to revive a team mate without moving them first. The spawns can be awful, like spawning right near enemies and getting shot straight away and spawning on the other side of the map to where the action and objective is. There needs to be more maps and modes ASAP. More weapons and gadgets will need to come too. Being able to unlock new weapons, gadgets and cosmetic options is way too slow. Everything just needs more time and work and they will need to do some balancing as well. At least monetization is okay I guess, for now. The cosmetics are way overpriced but at least they are only bought with real money while the weapons and gadgets are earned through playing. It also doesn’t take up an enormous amount of space like some other games.

The Finals has a great recipe for a game and a solid foundation. If only it wasn’t a free to play, work in progress. But I guess this is where we are now. The market is over saturated and already has well established games so the only way you can get people to try your game is if you give it to them for free. It is a shame because by the time this game reaches its peak potential I will already be gone. The game hasn’t been around long and I’m already losing interest. That’s if it even manages to survive and doesn’t get ruined along the way as well. Maybe I’ll give this one a break and then come back. The Finals would have been so much better as a full priced, highly polished, content rich, finished game though. I’m stuck between ‘I can’t complain too much as I am getting some pretty fun, good quality online first person shooter gameplay for nothing except my time and data’ and ‘this free to play, always online, digital only, microtransaction riddled, second job level of investment, games as a service bullshit is ruining videogames.’ I’m definitely leaning more towards the second one but I can’t deny the quality here or the fun I’ve been having. If you like multiplayer first person shooters then this is an easy recommendation, give it a try but expect what comes with a game like this.

6.8/10 (for now)