The Finals Review

"Tear It All Down"

Multiplayer

December 10, 2023 at 9:12pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a fast paced multiplayer shooter with a broadcasting to the crowd type angle. It’s supposed to be competitive, and offer objective focused modes for players to battle within. Being free to play it’s just about visual elements for microtransactions, at least from the launching point.

The game itself came out of almost nowhere not too long ago and surprisingly fully released not too far away from a beta event. It’s split between a few modes and overall feels generally solid. I wasn’t necessarily blown away by the experience but it had moments of being fun. The two core modes split with one being about coin collection through battles and the other being the collection of a small box to then deposit that.

It’s all team based for groups of three, and this plays into the tournament mode. This area uses the latter of the two modes in the game as the focus and to me is the most interesting element of the experience. It’s an elimination based structuring where you get to know a team for a bit and it works very well.

It’s got last minute clutches, shocking twists and just feels more competitive than the quick battles the regular rotation offers. To me, that’s become a gripping element of the setup whereas the other modes felt too casual. I’m still not entirely sure how long this one will hold my interest, but the tournament mode has held me slightly better than that regular selection of options.

Gameplay

It’s your fairly standard shooting game but they do have some neat variations in how classes are handled. You pick from default body type classes or make your own. There are light bits of customization but the idea is that the size of your character impacts what tools or weapons you have. The smaller characters are faster with weapons that compliment that.

The larger ones can smash the world slightly harder and then there’s one in the middle. You get varying levels of weaponry and tools to use. Things such as standard grenades, or turrets and even mines that can help a lot for protecting a cash out station. I do find console wise that the weapon aiming is a bit odd for some guns and that may be due to the level of auto-aim that is present.

Movement is fairly free and open with easy climbing elements. The world leans into that allowing you to gain access to heights swiftly using jump pads or quick grapples and the character class you setup may also have elements to help you traverse. What really changes how you move about is the world itself. A place that you can essentially destroy all of.

Seriously, the towering apartments can entirely crumble through every single level. Offices and get smashed to pieces. It goes beyond that too, it’s really all rather fascinating though for objective based modes I feel it’s almost not fully utilized almost. Sure, if there’s something you need to can knock it down levels to you. The frantic fun of the destruction is however fighting someone or a team and having the world around you crumble changing up the battle entirely.

I do ponder what a more traditional shooter mode might feel like in this system of chaos, but I do love the objective focus of play. Visually this is a great looking world. There are a few maps but they are large and feature multiple areas that keep them fresh after even a number of plays. The Vegas area is by far my favorite as it’s so shiny and filled with the glitz of slot machines.

Though past that they make things even fresher by having weather variants. It could be a sandstorm, or be played at night and sometimes even be raining depending on the level. I’ve been noting for years that multiplayer can feel fresher by having something simple like that. For the Xbox Series X it’s certainly a very dynamic 4k resolution here at 60fps which is smooth. There’s also ray tracing support which looks like it’s illumination based.

The Conclusion

The Finals is action packed, filled with epic destruction and the tournament mode provides a nice competitive edge. I don’t know if I’m necessarily blown away by the game itself but I can see where it can be fun for others. I like the competitive elements featured in the tournament but know of many having fun just battling against one another in the casual options.

It definitely has a number of mechanics that keep things varied and it should be interesting to see how this one evolves. The destructive elements are a lot of fun to witness, and be in the middle of. It has a good core selection of ways to play against one another and the objective focus is good. I certainly can see this one being wildly successful, fun to play and generally just provide chaotic bliss for its audience.

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The Finals Review on Xbox Series X

Rating Overall: 7.0