The much-anticipated free-to-play multiplayer shooter The Finals is out now, after being shadow dropped during the Game Awards. The initial reception is surprisingly negative.
The Finals, the first game by Embark Studios, is out now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. That’s a pleasant surprise, as the game didn’t have a previous release date and was released during The Game Awards on December 7.
The Finals Is Available Now
Embark Studios is a new studio created by former Battlefield developers and The Finals is their first attempt at conquering the shooter market once again. The Finals is a free-to-play multiplayer FPS, where multiple teams of three fight against each other in maps that are completely destructible, thanks to innovate cloud-based technology.
In this release version, players get roughly the same content as in the previous betas: two versions of the cashout mode, three classes and not that many weapons and gadgets. Everyone who hoped for a beefier final version after the sparse beta offerings will most likely be disappointed here. At least the season 1 battle pass made it on time.
Mixed Reviews Show Players Are Unhappy With Certain Changes
Shortly after the surprise release, the game already garnered over 6.000 user reviews on Steam. And the result is mixed, with only 65% of the reviews being positive. While many complement the game on its quality destruction, fun gameplay loop and tight design (the things I personally also enjoyed in the betas), a large portion of the player base are very critical of certain issues.
For one, there seem to be server issues during launch. While certain issues are basically to be expected when an online game launches nowadays, things like missing Oceania servers are a baffling omission and an unnecessary issue. The biggest complaints seem to stem from two issues: balancing and game feel/speed. If you look through the user reviews on The Finals’ Steam page, you will see a ton of reviews citing one of these issues for their negative rating:
“Why would you nerf Light class like that? light class is literally unplayable right now, low health, low damage, and what happen to your zap gun? at least know your game before you launch it, open beta is better version than now”
“Y'all remember how buttery and smooth the movement felt in the beta? How it was a breathe of fresh air to actually have working parkour mechanics paired with great gunplay? Yeah, they nerfed the movement speed for ALL classes by a very noticeable amount, and introduced delays in some of the animations. Everything feels extremely sluggish now, even while playing the Light class.”
“If only the game had good movement”
“Game is good, but with movement speed being nerfed across the board, everything feels very clunky and sluggish, pls fix”
It looks like the developers changed key aspects between the latest beta and the full release, which didn’t go down well in the community. I only got a chance to check out one match and the game did indeed feel noticeably more sluggish than in the betas, especially the first one. I would also agree that this took out some of the fun from the once fast-paced action of The Finals.
This is definitely a less-than-ideal start for The Finals, which had hopes to establish itself in the very competitive multiplayer shooter market. Here’s hoping that the developers quickly address the concerns and add new content to the game, so that the promising title can actually thrive and continue to breathe fresh air in this genre for years to come.