I knew absolutely nothing about The Finals until it was announced a few days ago that the beta would be going live. After watching the trailer and seeing it was clearly designed to be ‘esports’ I thought I’d give it a go to see what it was all about. Games like this come around surprisingly often, and most of the time last all of about 12 months before shutting down, but The Finals is different, and after a few hours I can safely say this is the most fun FPS game I’ve played in years.
The concept of The Finals is nothing new, teams of three jump onto a map to battle it out for an objective. In The Finals the objective is to grab some cash from the map, which can either be done from locations on the map or, depending on the game mode, by killing other players. You then have to take that cash to a cash-out point to bank it. The team with the most cash banked at the end of the match, or the first to reach a certain total wins.
Really this objective-based mode is nothing special, and I’m sure there are better solutions. A standard king of the hill style game mode would probably serve the incredible moment-to-moment gameplay slightly better, but I understand it needs some kind of mode to differentiate itself.
The Finals Has Chaotic Combat
However, where The Finals excels is that moment-to-moment gameplay. With Battlefield-style building destruction, some unusual grenades and lots of explosive canisters across the map chaos is around every corner and it is great fun. Most of the time your best bet is to move with your team, and try to catch others off guard, and often the best way to do this is to throw explosives at them.
You can grab canisters of explosives, toxic gas, or expanding foam and just launch them in a direction where most of the time they will go off on impact. This isn’t just a gimmick that you might try every now and again, the canisters are all over the place and you can easily find at least one to use in every fight, even if you can’t find ones you have grenades capable of doing the same thing, just on a smaller scale.
This totally changes the map and how you can take fights. An explosive can destroy cover enemies are using, while expanding foam can rebuild them and toxic gas can force them to leave the area they are in. Add that on top of the hail of bullets you will be sending their way and you can see where the chaos comes from. It is almost non-stop action, until you die where respawn timers feel a tad long, and it really makes you think about how best to take a fight.
When playing as a lightweight character you can also use a grappling hook, which so far feels like the most satisfying way to play. Being able to zip around and keep the chaos going rather than having to stand and try to take a normal fight feels like the best way to play and is great fun. However, for me, the other two body types feel a little boring and could do with some more interesting gadgets.
When does The Finals beta end?
But generally speaking, when you find a way of playing that clicks for you, you will always have a smile on your face. Some of the coolest kills I’ve ever done in any game have come in The Finals over the last couple of days, and it feels like I’m only scratching the surface of what is possible. As soon as this article goes live I’m going back to play some more and likely will be until The Finals beta ends on November 5!
The only problem I can envisage with The Finals is that when players start to get good, they will get really good, and if you can’t keep up with them there will need to be some impressive matchmaking or a large enough player base to constantly have a wide range of skill levels searching for a game. It feels like a game you can get very good at and pull off things that normal players couldn’t even imagine.
Fortunately, the beta has proven to be a massive success, rising up the Steam charts and being so popular the dev team even had to implement a log-in queue. With how fun the game is you can expect a lot of players to keep returning to The Finals, so hopefully there will be an active player base for years to come meaning you can keep playing what genuinely seems like one of the best competitive shooters in years.
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