Upcoming Free-To-Play Shooter THE FINALS Seriously Impressed Me And I Have High Hopes

THE FINALS is an upcoming free-to-play FPS game that’s currently available to try out via its open beta on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S (until November 6). Your primary objective in-game is to collect cash, either by finding it at specific locations or by eliminating other players. Then you need to deposit that moolah at designated cash-out points. The team that accumulates the most cash or reaches a certain total first wins the match. Think like Kill Confirmed from Call of Duty with a Capture the Flag twist.

Your team is you and two other players. You guys are placed in a coliseum-style map that’s surrounded by an audience of spectators. (Also, there’s three other teams made up of three players, too.) The setting you play on is filled with buildings and structures that can be completely destroyed through gunfire and explosions. Players can use various explosive items, toxic gas, and expanding foam to change the map's landscape as well.

Now, at face value, this kind of game wouldn’t normally interest me, but for some reason I am really itching to kill time here and there playing a fun FPS game. Plus, THE FINALS is free, so I dove in, and I was pleasantly surprised.

Everything besides the respawn timer and character customization slapped. I don’t think the respawn timer is long per se, it’s just that I don’t want to wait 10-15 seconds to get back into the game because that’s more time I don’t get to have fun. The character customization is fine, I just think they need to add more variety as most of the cosmetic choices look lame (in my opinion).

Let’s talk about the good stuff though. The gunplay feels fantastic, and there’s loads of different weapons and tools to choose from. I especially like that there’s not just infinite ammo but infinite grenades too; there’s just a cooldown really when it comes to your equipment. Best of all, there’s a grappling hook. And on that note, I like the option to choose between a Light, Medium, or Heavy character loadout. Some builds feel objectively stronger than others, but the variety seems like a cool way to get players to test out which play style works best for them.

Besides how good the game plays, the graphics are nice too. Nothing revolutionary, but decent. It is so dang fun running and jumping around the map, destroying the environment in your path to look for enemies. And speaking of enemies, they do take awhile to kill…but I enjoy that aspect. I never liked FPS games where you die within a second of engaging in combat. It’s more exciting to have the chance to fight back, or even escape. Last but not least, the objective of finding money and having to deposit all of it without dying keeps intense (and not reliant on who gets the most kills).

So yeah, I think THE FINALS has the potential to be a popular FPS. It’s easy to get into, yet difficult to master. The game is already seeing success on Steam as evident by publicly available stats. As long as THE FINALS gets some more polishing and the monetization isn’t too predatory, I’m predicting a real banger of a game on the horizon for us casual folks who just want to kill an hour or two here and there in a not-so-sweaty FPS.