7 people found this review helpful
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 12.0 hrs on record
Posted: Jan 15 @ 11:30am
Updated: Jan 17 @ 5:45pm

FAME, FOURTUNE, AND GLORY

The Finals is a game that was announced during The Game Awards this multiplayer team-based shooter was a pleasant surprise to see and was a bit of a fresh take for the genre. At the time of writing this review, anything I mention may be patched in a future update, so please bear that in mind.

Pros and Cons
Pros
  • Fun multiplayer gameplay
  • Three classes for you to play as, with their own weapons and abilities
  • Destructible environments
  • Customization options for your characters
  • Beautiful graphics that make the areas feel alive

Cons
  • Limited game modes for you to play
  • Vaults can be placed in hard-to-reach locations, impossible to get to
  • Vaults can land on bounce pads, making them impossible to contest
  • The map pool is very small, with only four maps in total
  • The anti-cheat system is really bad
  • AI voice acting

Gameplay
The Finals takes place in a virtual combat game show, where contestants are searching for fame, fortune, and favor from the sponsors. There are two main game modes for you to play, Quick Cash and Bank It. Quick Cash puts three teams of three against each other to open a vault, once opened, the team that opened it must go to a cash-out. There, they can cash out the vault for 10,000, the first team to get 20,000 wins. The other teams can steal the vault you have or contest the cash-out vault that you are trying to capture, so you better prepare to defend it.

Then there is Bank It, this game mode is more of a team death match, where there are four teams of three. When you kill someone, they drop coins, and you then can cash them out at a vault, the first team to 40,000 coins wins. There are vaults that can give you a lot of money, so look out for those along the way.

There are three classes in the game, Light, Medium, and Heavy, each class has a different speed, health, weapons, and specials they can utilize for their advantage. Light can move fast and have the best movement; they get a grappling hook and the ability to turn invisible. Medium classes have the best specials in the game, ability to heal people, place down turrets, and can also instantly revive people with a defibrillator. Heavy has the highest damage in the game with their weapons. They have many destruction-based tools, like an RPG and C4s. One of their specials is a charge ability which can destroy buildings with ease, although they can also have a dome shield for protection.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3138268422
Each class also has a certain weapon they can use but they can also customize them to spice up the gameplay. There are many options for you to try out allowing you to find a loadout that suits you best. Players who are killed are turned into statues, but they can be revived by their teammates which takes at least five seconds to be fully revived. However, with the defibrillator, this can be instant, making this one of mediums class's best tool in the game besides the turret.

The environment is entirely destructible, and you can use this to your advantage when trying to reach for the point. Although Heavy is probably the best at doing this since all their abilities can destroy buildings. There are also objects in the arena that you can throw, some explode, can cause a fire, or make a goo wall that can help in a defensive situation. Make sure to utilize these abilities as best as you can when trying to take the objective.

There are also many customization options available for your character. You can get cosmetics by normally leveling up but there is a battle pass you can purchase. You can mix and match the sets to make your character shine. You can even customize emotes, for your character intro, which is something I find very nice. The options are endless when it comes to your character, I love the variety and the sets you can receive. That is if you pick up the battle pass, which you can only get by using gold coins, the game's currency. If you get the starter pack, it will give you enough coins to get the battle pass, so it’s a pretty sweet deal.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3138268695
Although as much as I had fun with The Finals, there are some serious issues that do need to be addressed. in quick cash, vaults can be placed in hard-to-reach areas that can be made almost impossible to contest in certain scenarios. Especially if the platforms are moving and it has one or if the only way to get up there is by zipline or grappling hook. Ziplines and grappling hooks can be destroyed, so you better hope to get a bounce pad if need be when the time comes or equip one. Therw are some gadgets that can get you up there, however. But it does not end there either, as vaults can be placed on bounce pads, although to be fair, this is a bit hard to do, as you have to place it right and they can be destroyed. Although, if left alone, contesting the vault becomes impossible and will lead to the team setting this up winning the game, although it can be amusing when this happens.

There is also a limited amount of game modes, with there only being three in total, Quick Cash, Bank it, and Tournament Mode which is ranked but that’s just Quick-Cash in multiple rounds.

The map pool is also very small, consisting of only four maps. There are weather effects in the game to change the scenery but none of them do anything. Except when it’s a sandstorm, as that will create sand dunes but that’s it.

The game uses Easy Anti-Cheat but it is very bad as there are a lot of cheaters, especially in Tournament Mode, and this system doesn't seem to prevent other players from cheating.

Graphics and Performance
The graphics for The Finals are very beautiful, I love the detail that the arenas provide as they are very colorful. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I experienced no issues while I was playing the game, and it ran well.

When it comes to sound design, I do have an issue with the voice acting with the developers confirming the use of AI generated voices. It has been stated to be a mix of professional voice actors alongside AI generated ones by the studio. Personally, this is a practice that I do not like.

Final Verdict
The Finals is a fun multiplayer-based game that I really enjoyed, and I recommend it to others to try it. The game is free, so you won’t be wasting any money playing, although I would recommend finding some friends to play with you as this expands the experience and is more fun that way.

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14 Comments
klevmeister Jan 21 @ 1:28pm 
if the AI announcers won't refer to me by name and dunk on me for sucking at the game i don't want them in the game
poharani Jan 21 @ 10:15am 
Artists have long been supported by technology. Photoshop didn't kill art, it opened new horizons. Nobody was hand-painting game assets, right? They used tools that make you work faster, spend less energy on it, and the end-product ends up being better. Machine learning is a technology that you still have to build, train, and know how to use. Generating assets using machine learning models is here to stay. No company in their right mind is going to avoid using it (apart from irrelevant indies trying to pander to the vocal minority as usual), and they are completely right. Technology replaces human jobs all the time, but new ones spawn even faster.
poharani Jan 21 @ 10:15am 
I mean I guess you could say that the con of every technology around is the lost of human touch too. The bread you eat wasn't made with human hands but with machines. The keyboard you're using isn't hand-made either. The music you're listening to has been heavily post-processed. Even when you're listening to live music, you're listening it through speakers - again, it goes through a filter of human touch. The same is true for the clothing that you wear, the building you live in, the buses and trains you take, the books that you read. Doesn't printing books also lose human touch? Shouldn't we find people to copy them by hand? If you really want to stick with your reasoning for hating AI, you'll end up hating pretty much every corner of the world, because the world moves on and welcomes technology.
♥Skyknighter Jan 21 @ 3:40am 
@poharani Ok then, I'll provide a full explanation on why I don't like AI as a whole. Simply put, to me, it replaces the role of what a voice actor is, why should I feel happy that I liked a voice actors work when the only thing they did is say a few lines and AI did the rest?

It's replacing the human touch and ruins the hard work that other people put in. While this game will not put voice actors out of business, it will get other companies the idea that this is a good business practice and that other companies will use it. It's like AI artwork, not only is not good looking or nice to look at but it discourges actual artists from continuing doing art.
♥Skyknighter Jan 21 @ 3:40am 
Just like how AI voice acting will do the same to real voice actors and discourage them from doing their work because they will find out that companies won't need them no more. Or worse, hire them and pay them for a day's work and there voice is used for things they have no control over. I could say more on this but I think I have said enough.

I hope I made my point clear on why I hate AI.
poharani Jan 21 @ 2:50am 
So there's nothing wrong with the voices and you're just going with the flow of hating advancements in technology, gotcha. I didn't ask about "few other people" nor "game journalists", I don't see why you're bringing that in the picture. You listed it as a "con" of a game, and the only explanation you seem to have is "some people somewhere hold an opinion about it". You don't even mention why it's a bad thing after two comments. I guess you don't really know either.
♥Skyknighter Jan 21 @ 2:10am 
@poharani Exactly, while they did have some professionals do the voices, they were mostly made with AI, I am not the only one who holds this opinion as a few other people have an issue with it, and some game journals view them negatively on this as well (I know we should not trust them but I did agree with them).

If you like the voices in the game, more power to you and I am glad that you enjoy them.
poharani Jan 21 @ 1:13am 
So you don't like them just because they were created in a specific way, irrespective of what they sound like?
♥Skyknighter Jan 20 @ 9:08pm 
@poharani the reason the voices are listed as a con is because they are AI-generated, I myself do not like AI stuff in general, just my opinion though.
poharani Jan 20 @ 4:13pm 
Why are voices listed under cons? They sound great.