You like fun? I like fun, It's been a while since I played an FPS this crazy since Dirty Bomb. And I think the guys who used to work on Battlefield got the same idea pretty much. Fast-paced arena heist games are few in-between in a market saturated by battle royales, and military shooters.
Also, ah, R.I.P. to Hyenas, I think they knew the writing was on the wall soon as they saw this coming before SEGA saw it right to cancel the game completely and cutting staff from one of their prestigious western developers (The guys who made Total War). But seriously, what is it that sets this one apart from the rest? Is it so good, it's easy to see past the flaws?
By flaws, I mean the odd performance issues, terrible UI shading, seemingly lack of balancing in few places, and slow progression? Kind of. Sort of. What I meant by this is that it's so fun, am more busy screwing around the map, trying new gadgets and causing inconveniences for all parties.
There's a Build system for picking 3 different types with different equipment available for each. About 70% of it needs to be unlocked, so earning points is part of the grind. The other is finding a way to use them in the destructive sandbox map.
Do note, this was developed by ex-DICE developers, people who worked on the recent Battlefield games. Everything from the visuals, physics, audio, weapons, and characters models are of their own handiwork. It is a giant BF mode, but the premise bring its own unique flair.
So it's a squad of 3, few modes has each team fighting to take cash and win by meeting objective first, different builds for squad member has various advantages, yet anybody can pick which build to go with. Nobody is constricting to picking specific ones in order to win. The first few matches I've played, people trolled this way, creating all kinds of anarchy by destroying almost everything.
Keep playing more, points are earned to unlock more gear and specializations. Continue leveling up Battle Pass to earn free items, and premium currency. P̶r̶o̶g̶r̶e̶s̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶g̶r̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶e̶g̶r̶e̶g̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶F̶2̶P̶ ̶l̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶r̶v̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶s̶ ̶e̶i̶t̶h̶e̶r̶.̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶p̶e̶r̶ ̶r̶e̶l̶e̶a̶s̶e̶.̶
Nope, I was wrong. Battle Pass is only good for people who pay for it. Most of the free stuff is in premium, which costs 10 USD to buy, cheap entry but provided someone creates dedication to the game for long term reasons, that's 10 USD each season. Doing the math, that's 40 USD annually.
Nothing about this game serious in nature, am in a game show, I have to work with my team to take cash boxes, and cash them in. Waiting till the cashing is complete. During that time, another team can heist the cash box, and defend it before it reaches completion.
This doesn't sound comprehensive, and from a realistic perspective, pretty silly. It gets even sillier in practice, when several teams are aggressively trying to steal my money. But in this game, anybody dies can be revived like pixelated back into battle. So, grounded logic is thrown out the window.
There's a lot to do when it comes to traversal, each maps are based off on real world areas like the Monaco town. There are ropes to use for climbing, if not, just use satchel or rocket launchers to destroy the buildings, levelling them down. Useful to change the situation to anybody's advantage. But it goes much further. And it's based on how the different build classes work.
Light builds can carry sniper rifles, good for picking off anybody in open areas or finding a way to defend their cash-in objective from afar. Mediums can use healing specializations, as well as use gadgets like goo grenades that create rectangular blocks to make obstructions.
Heavies, well they can deploy barricades, have rocket launchers with their main guns being HMGs, Shotguns, or large melee weapons. Best way to sum the balance is, it's kind of like Rainbow Six Siege, there's trade offs for all 3 builds because it's an FPS.
Only one weapon is equipped, but the fun comes from having 3 gadgets for use. Ranging from throwables, lethal and non-lethal to various items specifically available to each build class. How else are you going to do a showdown in Las Vegas map (or in Seoul), without blowing the concrete walls?
Other neat things like using a jump pad to flank a sniper on the roof, setting up traps, and instead of taking 10 seconds to revive a teammate, just defibrillate them back. It's a team shooter, that's the gist of it, every available inventory to fit anybody's playstyle and suitability. Of course, they're not all available at the start, so earning points to unlock them is also part of the experience.
If you want to talk about verticality, oh boy, this game goes to mad lengths to bring to crazy highs, and downtrodden lows. What I mean by that is deposit zones are also placed on moving locations of the map. Use the available zipline nearby or have the light build unit create one.
Unfortunately, not possible to change a build mid-game, so only way to change strategy is through changing the loadouts. Which is sad, considering how anybody can troll the game and pick a build to mess around with. I've seen people do that, it's obnoxious to look at.
This game has 2 different type of modes, there's the Quickplay modes, where one is a 3 team game, with the goal of cashing twice to win. The other is multiple cash boxes with 4 teams quickly trying to farm and deposit before reaching end goal. The latter has longer time limit.
The other is Tournament mode, I don't know about that one. I am still trying to fully familiarize with the game and unlock many equipment as possible. That's because it's ranked playlists, and I don't want to enter as a grifter. It is also the game's biggest mode with 24 teams in one map.
Now I've said all the good things I need to say, I have gripes. Quite a lot actually. First to start is the terrible matchmaking. Outside of the games I've played with friends, which is a lot of fun considering open mic comms with them is helpful, randos are absolutely useless most of the time. There's no coordination, no team tactics, or proper ways to play it. And the blame goes to the Tutorial mode.
Which is lazily tacked in, only teaching how the heist mechanics work, and puts me in a playground to practice game. This is silly, you have any idea just how badly my teammates and others were playing? It wasn't fun, because it didn't feel like I was playing this game.
And I guess this has to be an issue from my end, since I play from Asian servers. But nobody knew how to communicate, not even using the ping system which was well suited alternative. Thankfully the game uses dedicated servers from Amazon, but even with that, I've experienced lag and frame drops repeatedly. This game is very demanding (using RX 6700 XT), and I've enabled FSR 2.0.
And while playing the game is fun, and that progression tied to unlocking things help to keep it going. I am not a fan of the battle pass unlocks, nor the fact that the game is stringent on people playing this game solely for free. That's a given considering Embark Studios is owned by Nexon.
There's some small complaints to be made about the movement mechanics, and the god awful UI where the in-game HUD texts also gets mixed with the main menu texts as well. That is a gross oversight. My first encounter with that was very annoying.
Right now, The Finals has Fallout Guys hype fever. With so many people jumping in to take part of the mayhem. I mean, I played 8hrs of this, and I can't wait to go back again. But it needs time, there's so much the developers need to sort out. There's no cushion it can come back from if they ignore all the issues mentioned. Also, what's the point of playing a flashy game if I can't look fashionable?
There's literally an Avatar customization mode where I can pick how my characters on all 3 builds look. And most of the stuff is locked away as paid for cosmetics. Where I have to earn currency buying the premium pass, and spend real money. But hey, this reel looks cool.