The Finals Review

We didn't realize how much we missed destructive environments until we played The Finals. In most shooters, a wall is a wall. Here, a wall is just a temporary obstacle between you and the objective, assuming you brought enough C4. The server-side destruction technology Embark has built here isn't a gimmick, it's the core of the game. When a team is bunkered down on the second floor with a cashout station, you don't use the stairs. You blow out the floor beneath them and drop the objective into your lap. Seeing an entire building collapse dynamically, synchronized perfectly for all players in the match, is one of those rare "next-gen" moments that actually earns the buzzword. But the tech would be useless if the shooting felt bad. Fortunately, it doesn't. Movement is slick, gunplay is tight, and the three weight classes (Light, Medium, Heavy) force distinct playstyles. A Heavy swinging a sledgehammer through a wall feels appropriately terrifying, while a Light player grappling around the chaos is pure adrenaline. Where the game trips up is in the ecosystem around the destruction. At launch, the map pool is pretty thin. The meta settled uncomfortably fast into a few dominant team comps, making solo queueing a miserable experience if your random teammates don't coordinate. And we still don't love the AI-generated announcer voices, they lack the punch of real commentary. Still, The Finals is the biggest shakeup the competitive shooter space has seen in years. If Embark can keep the content flowing and figure out the balance, this one has legs.