Feast your eyes on the latest free-to-play extravaganza, THE FINALS.
It’s never easy to tweak a genre that has been overly tweaked already. Call of Duty, Battlefield 2042, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and some other well-known series have pushed this genre to its limit, and with all honesty, creativity has long been absent. It has only been a medium for these developers and publishers cashing out from the fans. And considering how bland the latest AAA FPS games have been, I wondered how this genre’s new or other promising titles would stand firm.
Then THE FINALS was announced by NEXON, a South Korean publisher who also showed promise with their latest game, The First Descendant. Only one week passed until THE FINALS yielded its potential and quickly became popular among those searching for a fun first-person shooter. I, too, had doubts about a free-to-play game, but after spending a good number of hours playing it, the game had me speechless.
Free-to-play games are among the most popular in gaming nowadays across all platforms, and it’s not such a bad idea for THE FINALS, developed by Embark Studios using the Unreal Engine 5 to make its way into the scene. But one would wonder if the game was worth your time, and you’ll be happy to know it is. It’s incredibly exciting and immersive; you’ll learn why this is the case by sticking around.
If you haven’t heard of THE FINALS, look no further, as you’ll get to know as much of the game as possible and understand the game’s mechanics and current features. If you’ve got a glimpse of the game, then some of you may feel like it’s a typical free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter where you might be worried that you’ll encounter plenty of cliché mechanics, features and much more.
However, THE FINALS is a little different from any other game you’re probably used to playing to be able to garner your interest. Think about this, some professional gamers and content creators are getting involved with this and loving it. A game that places great emphasis on very fast-paced, team-based matches that contain destructible environments that players should be using to gain an advantage over their opponents and achieve victory. Literally, nothing stand can stand in a player’s way.
Partially inspired by the year 2000’s Gladiator and The Hunger Games, players will participate in a virtual televised game show and get to play as one of three available contestant divisions: Light Build, Medium Build, and Heavy Build. All of which have their own unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses to suit your play style. Although this is a team game, you should also be aiming for individual glory.
Players also have the freedom to destroy anything and everything they set their eyes on. As well as trap and shock your enemies with a variety of features to send a statement to your opponents. And while they’re doing that, they can construct barricades and bridges as they play high-intensity teams of three modes THE FINALS has to offer.
You’re better off starting in the quickplay exhibition mode, where you simply jump into a casual single-match rush to achieve a cash goal as a team of three. This has two modes for you. Quick Cash is a triple threat 3v3 contest where you have to be the first to reach a cash goal. And Bank it – a fatal four-way contest where the first team to reach 40,000 or the team with the most Cash when time runs out becomes victorious.
If you’re more on the competitive vibe, there’s a tournament mode containing two challenging and exciting tournament contests with different sets of rules for you to go in on. Keep in mind that you’ll have to keep playing to unlock most of these game modes. Although it would’ve been better to have more game modes to choose from, the current selection will still manage to keep you busy, at least until the next season, when they hopefully add more game modes.
THE FINALS’s gameplay mechanics aren’t much different than you’d normally see in a free-to-play FPS. There is a great, but unfortunately, limited selection of primary light, medium, and heavy weapons and there are no customization options for them either. Plus, you aren’t able to have secondary weapons to bail you out of certain gunfighting situations. However, there are a few gadgets and specializations that aid you in getting one over your opponents, as well as helping yourself and your teammates that you need to know about. You’ll find these in your equipment menu.
Let’s start with a few of the specializations you will love. There’s the healing beam that is pretty self-explanatory. Using this, you’ll effectively recharge your teammates’ health and have them ready to go back and finish what they started. Or the cloaking device that supplies a temporary cloak to make you incredibly difficult to see whilst moving and completely invisible when you’re staying still.
But my personal favorite is the guardian turret that’ll send out an AI-controlled assault rifle to unleash devastating damage to any opponent it sees. Best believe, you’ll love this one in particular. Keep in mind that you need VR currency to unlock some of them, and you need to play more to earn them, and you can only select one specialization in each weapon division (Light, Medium, Heavy). So, you be the judge of which you prefer.
As for the gadgets, there are many, but there are some great ones, such as the Pyro Grenade that throws a projectile, which will start a fire in the chosen area where it explodes. Also, players who are in that area will take some damage. Or the thermal vision that reveals heat signatures, exposing your opponent’s whereabouts. Or the jump pad that gives a trampoline-type deployable to allow you to jump much higher. There are loads for you to choose from and you’ll enjoy.
Again, just like the specialisations, you need VR currency to unlock some of them. But the icing on the cake is being able to use the likes of zip lines, moving platforms, and many more around the arena to orchestrate many memorable moments where you feel the need to scream, “Clip that!”.
Like other free-to-play games, THE FINALS also comes with Battle Passes each season. With season 1, players would need to earn some of the rewards themselves, or they could buy the Premium Battle Pass pack, which allows them to obtain all rewards. And with the season 1 Battle Pass, there are 96 levels, meaning 96 rewards to unlock. So, it really depends on the player as to whether they feel it’s worth buying or grinding.
Personally, with this Battle Pass, they don’t have much to offer. There are, of course, likes of costumes, weapons, and multipacks, but unfortunately, there’s not much else that tickled my fancy. Sometimes, I was better off purchasing content from the game’s store, as it contains much more attractive things to buy, such as weapon skins, attire bundles, and more. Players must remember that the store refreshes with other attractive new items every few days.
If the Battle Pass isn’t enough, there are immersive contracts that contain a number of daily, weekly, and seasonal challenges for players to complete. Opening vaults, detecting a certain number of opponents, eliminating a certain number of enemies in a round, deal a number of damages to enemies, and so on, players will be rewarded handsomely for their hard work, which is usually an additional XP that goes towards their progress.
If you need more incentive to play in THE FINALS, just think about a competition you watch and how pumped you get with great commentary and announcements supporting it. That’s certainly the case with THE FINALS, as AI-voiced commentators are used to produce an impressively authentic play-by-play male and female duo voiceover commentary. Apparently, a combination of the likes of recorded voice audio and audio generated via TTS tools was used in order to make this happen.
That is pretty incredible if you ask me. Moreover, this kind of commentary will hype any player up and give matches the increased excitement they deserve. Especially as the match is a tight contest, and when it is coming to a close, it can pose a morale booster. Additionally, other sound effects and soundtracks are the icing on the cake. It feels like you’re constantly playing in a bonanza.
If you’re looking for a brand-new first-person shooter where you can let your imagination run wild and win in the process, then look no further, as THE FINALS becomes another free-to-play video game where there’s no harm in downloading and trying it out for yourself because, well, it’s free-to-play.
Embark Studios has given us a game with massive potential, and one would be confident that enough will be done to meet it eventually. THE FINALS is an extremely exciting, immersive, creative, and fast-paced first-person shooter. Moreover, with its impressive gameplay mechanics, game modes, features, completely destructible environments, and more, it’s no wonder it’s growing and will surely continue to do so in the future. Again, it has to be reiterated that it’s free to play, and I strongly recommend any FPS gamer to install this game.
