Posted 3rd January 2024
I've fallen out of love with the FPS genre over the years, for the most part. The only FPS game I've played consistently for years is Overwatch, if you can even call it a FPS title. Battlefield feels like a shadow of its former self, especially with the bad 2042 launch, and Call of Duty has just got more stale on every new release. Maybe a hot take but I think battle royales, which have become hugely popular in the last few years, are just a massive waste of time as well so that does nothing for me either. I used to play a lot of Rainbow Six: Siege for a while, but after briefly playing other games instead it feels overwhelming with the amount of new operators, not to mention all I hear about that game now is the amount of cheaters in ranked. So I've stuck with the trusty Overwatch waiting for a shiny new competitive shooter to come out.
Lo and behold a new playtest was announced towards the end of 2022 for a game called THE FINALS; a game that promised a unique experience with a focus on destruction... and boy did it deliver. I played around 70 hours in the few playtests Embark Studios ran and it was the most fun I've played in a competitive shooter for a good while.
The destruction to the environment is really well done, from small holes above an objective to taking out an entire 5 story building. You can do it with so many things as well: C4, explosive cannisters, sledgehammers and the super fun one the Charge 'N' Slam specialization ability for the Heavy build that lets you just run through a building demolishing everything in your path. On the playtests it could cause quite a heavy performance hit when a building just topples over but in the full release I don't really have those issues anymore.
Speaking of the Heavy build, there are 3 builds: Light, Medium and Heavy. Each of them have their own weapons, gadgets and playstyles. The Light is a glass cannon, with super high damage and clutch potential but very low health. Medium is a more balanced role with a decent amount of damage but can also be more supportive with a healing beam. Heavy is just broken. Large health pool with huge amount of damage as of the latest patch. There are definitely balancing issues, which is to be expected during the launch of a new multiplayer game, but as usual the player base can't make its mind up with what is overpowered and what is not. The Steam Discussions is 50% "Light is OP WTF" and 50% "Heavy is OP NERF OMG", jester awards being given to every participant that wants to pitch in with their braindead balancing ideas, it's great.
THE FINALS joins a long line of live service games with battlepasses. However, the premium battlepass this game has is actually pretty good value. On top of the awesome weapon skins and outfits you also get all the coins back that the battlepass costs as well as extra coins for buying things from the store. In theory, if you play the game enough and finish the battlepass you will have enough coins to buy the next battlepass for free, which is a pretty good deal.
The cheaters need to be addressed though. I'm more of a casual player, I only play Tournaments and Quick Play and don't touch the Ranked Tournaments so admittedly I haven't seen too many, but I have seen a few aimbotters. In Ranked Tournaments, apparently the issue is quite bad to the point people are dropping off the game as it is being completely ruined. Let's hope the cheaters are being dealt with soon!
The last thing I want to mention is the rather controversial decision to use AI voices for the in-game commentators, June and Scotty. The game is built around a virtual game show where the two commentate on the events that happen in the game, such as first eliminations, team wipes, objectives taken, etc. I think it could be interesting to be at a point with AI for it to be commentating as the match plays out in real time spitting out new unique dialogue each match but the game doesn't do that, so what's the justification of using AI over actual voice actors, in terms of gameplay? I don't think it's something we should be encouraging too much as there are voice actors that can single-handedly make or break a game based on the quality of their performance, but maybe it has its place in certain situations.
