Review: THE FINALS
by William Hernandez
Who doesn't love free-to-play shooters? There's absolutely no barrier of entry, no money out of your pocket required, and they generally make for a fun time with friends. THE FINALS checks all these boxes and on top of that stands out for having crossplay support. Additionally, the game's destrucible environments and customizable loadouts actually give THE FINALS its own niche within the first-person shooter genre. There's nothing revolutionary on its own, but when you put everything together you get a very fun gameplay experience. But as fun as the game can be, everything surrounding the gameplay just feels unremarkable. Soulless, you could say. There's not a single thing that would leave an impression on you. Everything from the UI to the battle pass just lacks any semblance of personality which is honestly very strange given that the Hunger Games-like world they have going on should be very easy to lean into. It's still early days for the game, of course, but so far it feels emptier than it should. I don't necessarily think this will impact players in the short-term, but it makes me question what THE FINALS will look like in the long-term.
Enjoyability: 14/16
Being able to destroy things is pretty damn fun. Even just throwing explosive cannisters around brings a level of simplistic joy that's difficult to properly express. THE FINALS gives you plenty of unique ways to entertain yourself on the battlefield and that's honestly what makes it pretty addicting to come back to. It's also the main reason as for why it makes for such a great team game to play with your friends. You can all play the game in your own way, but still bring your talents together to work for wins. There's a lot of dynamic action involved and it keeps you on your toes. It's easy to laugh at all the ridiculous situations that you can find yourself in because things can get completely absurd and unravel so quickly. While losses will certainly sting, especially after a really bad streak, the absolute chaos that can surround you makes for funny moments. Heck, you can be the chaos bringer yourself if you really want to be. Now, I will say that your level of enjoyment will be in inverse proportion to how sweaty some players can get. When you get thrown into lobbies with experienced and overly serious players, it can get real hard to see the light of things. But that's just standard for most shooters so it comes with the territory. The casual experience is stellar and that's what counts the most.
Gameplay: 13/16
For a game that's just come out, there's more options than you would expect in terms of gameplay. While it takes a decent amount of playing to fully personalize your kit to your exact liking (you need to earn enough in-game currency to purchase new things), there's a lot you can play around with for all the classes. The light class, for example, can use a sniper rifle by default, but players can buy a sword or a dagger if they want to switch things up. And in doing so, they might realize that vanishing pairs really well with a melee approach so their loadout might further evolve to incorporate that. Heavies can reflect on whether or not they want to play defensively around objectives which may lead them to acquire the dome shield. Their 1v1 ability is second to none, though, so prioritizing an offensive approach isn't a bad thing either. There are very effective ways to play THE FINALS, but there is no exact correct way. Even when building the team, a balance of light, medium, and heavy isn't exactly a necessity. To that end, the gameplay feels very nice. Having that kind of autonomy will allow you to find a style that suits you the best. The gunplay is fairly responsive and your skills from other similar games will generally translate over seamlessly. The game's objectives will usually force team fights, but it's also totally possible to avoid conflicts sometimes and it's not exactly a bad thing to run away from time to time. If you want to win, you don't need to frag out. But if you do want to frag out, well, it doesn't hurt your chances at winning. There's lots of different strategies you can employ and they all feel fulfilling in their own way.
Atmosphere: 5/6
Describing the game's atmosphere is a bit complicated. Because on one hand, if you go solely by the presentation of the maps and matches, THE FINALS does a great job of presenting the game as some kind of dystopian spectacle for people to watch. The main gameplay loop of looting and depositing money does a lot of heavy lifting for that concept. The cash-heavy, arcade-like theme works really well because it genuinely feels like a good mashup of ideas that hasn't really been explored before. Outside of all that, the visuals are really nice (which comes with the price of being not so friendly to older hardware). The maps don't exactly do much to stand out, but everything looks really good. The music isn't all that plentiful, but all you really need it for is to fill out the loading times which it does well. Do I think the game is void of personality? Yeah, a good deal. Do I think it affects the atmosphere? Not so much, no. The emptiness makes itself clear elsewhere such as in the design and the direction...which we'll get to now.
Design: 3/6
If you're looking for variety, you will not get that here. If you don't like either of the three main gamemodes, there is nothing for you here and I mean that sincerely. If you don't see the appeal, there isn't anything that will change your mind aside from playing some more matches. And I have to say, the Quick Cash gamemode is interesting for about one match and then no more. There's just nothing really captivating about it. You're way too heavily forced into action despite the stakes being fairly low for a majority of the time playing. Nothing about it feels good. It's just an inferior version of Cashout which is only mildly more engaging given the tournament aspect of it and the fact that it just straight up has more content. Bank It is easily the best gamemode as it actually gives you the freedom to explore your surroundings with objectives that are much easier and quicker to accomplish. Again, if this one isn't to your liking than THE FINALS is just not for you. The game is barren elsewhere. I'd say the map design is also a point of frustration as well. This doesn't come into play all the time, but objective spawnings can get really annoying on certain maps. It's not too big of an issue until it repeatedly pops up in a play session. Not a great thing to leave players soured by your maps when your gamemodes are so barebones.
Direction: 9/16
Do I feel all that inclined to complete the free battle pass? To an extent, maybe. There is some interesting stuff in the early levels that don't require too big of an effort to acquire, but nothing there is really all that notable. There isn't really much of a drive to do anything in THE FINALS other than to just play with friends or hope that solo matches go well. There just isn't anything of value within the game to incentivize regular playing. Playing a lot has value in the sense that greater map knowledge will prove useful, but you're not magically going to become a better player just from running hours upon hours of matches. Your reward is pretty much just going to be the ability to buy more equipment. But there comes a point where you don't really need any new weapons or gadgets and so earning in-game currency loses its value quickly. It's honestly disappointing how unfriendly THE FINALS is to free-to-play players because you can't even purchase clothing options with that earnable currency. The ability to change your style just taunts you if you don't pay up. These problems are fixable, but they're impossible to not note at the moment. A game with THE FINALS' level of popularity should not feel so underdeveloped and it has a ways to go if it wants to keep this playerbase active going into the next year.
