The Finals Review in Progress

ign.com:

If there’s one genre that lends itself to boom or bust, it's the online shooter. For every success like Call of Duty, Halo, or Apex Legends, it seems like there are at least a dozen other games that have come and gone with barely a spark before they fizzle. With so many good competitive shooters in play, what makes one stand out? What makes it worth diverting your time to in versus another? After my first night of matches in The Finals, I think I’m starting to get a picture for how it answers those questions.

If The Running Manwere about 3v3v3 gun battles, it would’ve resembled The Finals. The vibrant color palette combines with a pair of live sports-style play-by-play announcers to give it that over-the-top, American Gladiators feel that people in the ‘80s thought was going to be the future of sports. It strikes a great balance of not taking itself too seriously without making it a joke or becoming obnoxious.

There are two core “modes” to start with. Quick Cash has each team vying to collect a vault of coins and deposit it at a designated point on the map, which tends to result in a convergence of all of the three-person squads at those points. This is really effective for keeping the action moving, and because taking over the deposit doesn’t reset its progress, rounds move at a steady pace and avoid momentum-killing stalemates altogether.

Bank It focuses a bit more on direct PvP battles, but they tend to be more scattered. Here, each player carries coins in their virtual pockets, coming from vaults around the map or eliminating enemies. The on-the-fly strategizing of going for kills one second to needing to deposit before it all goes to waste is exciting, and it’s pretty fun to eliminate someone at the bank and deposit