REVIEW - The Finals Season 7 is polished but balance issues are emerging
Lights be healin’.
By Jonathan Garrett
02/07/24
Reviewed on Xbox Series X.
The Finals has now well established its reputation as a technical showpiece for Unreal Engine, with performance and environmental interactivity complimenting tight gunplay and map design. However, this season's round of new additions have thrown quite a wrench into the sandbox, with potential for things to become quite chaotic as time goes on and players learn to better leverage this fresh gear. It's the first time where we feel this might tip the balance into unmanageable territory.
Lingering issues remain around the entry level capability of the Light class, as their sub machine guns and triple dash continue to dominate the meta. To be fair, Embark have been paying attention, with the prior addition of gadgets like the Lockbolt designed to restrict their movement and counteract their playstyle. The Heavy's new Healing Emitter is another neat improvement to their viability, allowing them to be healers and not just dishing out destruction. However, Light's have now been given the H+ Infuser, which acts as a machine gun style injector that shoots health from a distance.
The Breach Drill added to Medium is handy when clearing a Cash Out, but doesn't appear versatile enough to be useful in other game modes. We've already seen instances of multiple Healing Emitters and H+ Infusers dominating combat encounters, and that remains a concern in a meta that was already full to bursting. Long term impact is hard to measure at this stage, but Embark have shown a willingness to be reactive and tweak attributes multiple times per season. Still, the issue now is the pool of items has become so dense that it might be tricky to keep everything in check.
Nozomi / Citadel is easily the highlight of the season; a dense and visually distinctive new map that mixes the physical and digital destruction types. There's a lot of intricate pathways and ways to escape, with plenty of cover. It certainly favours close quarters combat; snipers will only be effective at street level, and even then there's plenty of ways to duck out of the line of fire. The pastel colour schemes and Mirror's Edge style cleanliness slots this map in nicely alongside existing arenas.
The legacy battle passes are a nice touch. However, although optional, the idea of a second premium tier of the main battle pass seems like a bridge too far, especially when the bonus cosmetics aren't nearly striking enough to warrant such a stark change to their options for monetisation. It feels like an unnecessary step when sales from the existing battle pass (with its optional level skip) and a massively expanded store are surely enough to justify ongoing investment. Although it can be ignored, it doesn't paint a very flattering picture, and leaves us feeling like this season is a tad uneven.
The ultimate cosmetics don’t feel ultimate enough.
WORTH IT?
At the bottom of every game review, we ask the question: Worth it? And the answer is either “Yeah!” or “Nah”, followed by a comment that sums up how we feel. In order to provide more information, we also have “And” or “But”, which follows up our rating with further clarification, additional context for a game we love, or perhaps a redeeming quality for a game we didn’t like.
YEAH!
The Finals is still our favourite free to play shooter, and the new map is a visual treat.
BUT
The addition of three new gadgets runs the risk of overloading the meta with too many options.
3/5 - DECENT
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
