The Finals, Blasting Off Again

EMBARGOED UNTIL JULY 9 at 9 AM EASTERN

Strap on your space boots, tighten your fishbowl helmet, and charge your blaster as The Finals rockets into Season 11! Galaxy Masters is the name, and retro-futurism is the game, with a new map that looks like Fallout before the apocalypse when a match starts – and looks like Fallout after the apocalypse once players are through trashing it.

In addition to the space-age aesthetics – cosmetics to match – Season 11 makes major adjustments to melee combat and the onboarding system for new players, expands bot matches, and has all the usual bits and bobs you expect with a new season, like a new battle pass and balance and quality-of-life updates.

The new map, Galaxy Estates, is located in a ring orbiting Saturn and is inspired by space colony art from 20th-century NASA’s vision of the future. When I first saw the flyby intro video during our press preview, I thought it was gorgeous, with its peaceful neighborhoods, tranquil backyard pools, and even gyms, but lamented how the property values would nosedive once the players jumped into the fray.

Playing matches proved that point, as all the usual destruction was on full display and, despite having two Embark Studios staffers on my team, I struggled mightily. As a new Finals player, I find that map traversal is my biggest hurdle to overcome, made even more difficult by how the battlefield changes as the destruction piles up.

Galaxy Estates adds a few innovations to help you reposition more quickly. Speed Tunnels let you zip around the core of the map in a ring that accelerates your running speed (until they’re inevitably destroyed), while Anti-Gravity Volumes float you some verticality that goes beyond the usual ziplines.

All in all, it’s a cool-looking map with a great theme that showcases how innovative the art and design team can be, and players should love getting a chance to cause some suburban chaos.

Battle Bots

Getting acclimated to a new game is an issue for any new player, but it’s made especially so considering the pace and flow of The Finals. I experienced that first-hand when I was starting out, so it’s refreshing to see a new onboarding experience brought to the game in Season 11.

Your journey is guided by Dede, who will take you through the opening stages of your rise to fame, introducing you to various game elements through bot matches and the early talent program, with various quests and rewards as you progress through the Academy. The video describing the system said it “relaxes” you into matches, though pretty much the only time I can relax in The Finals is when I close the game.

A major part of the new “relaxing” experience is an expansion of the bot matches, including Cashout mode, which you can play to your heart’s content and earn rewards from, though at a reduced rate. I was told that the bots were “good,” with varying levels of difficulty, so you can ramp up your tolerance for pain before jumping into PvP.

Once you do “git gud,” you can try your hand at mastering the reworked melee system, which is sure to make sledgehammer-wielding heavies into even greater menaces. You can still just hack and slash like Freddy Krueger, but landing precision blows will maximize your damage.

If you need to close gaps quickly – and what mad slasher doesn’t? – the new lunge ability, available to all melee weapons, will let you do that, at a cost of a new stamina resource that refills slowly over time, or more quickly when you land hits, and faster still if you can chain hits together.

Quick melee attacks also use the stamina system, which grants access to a kick that can knock players away, countering melee attackers when they get too close, while the Riot Shield gains a shield bash to inject some offense into the defensive “weapon.”

Send Your Rank Into Orbit

No patch is complete without a few quality-of-life updates, and Season 11’s highlight is arguably the new personal performance system for ranked matches, which takes your performance and current rank into account when determining how you’ll advance. You can even get some benefit for losing, if you played well enough.

How good is “well enough”? At least a little of the mystery might be revealed with better score breakdowns at the end of every match, and Embark Studios has updated how it calibrates players’ rankings. For those good enough to reach the upper echelons, they can earn two Diamond tokens at D4 and D1.

Other advances that were mentioned during our briefing were an improved ping system, with better visual feedback, and better objective spawns in Cashout mode. You can also customize your player cards for each of your contestants, providing you with a little more individual flair for each of your gladiators.

We even got a bullet-point list of what’s to come in Season 12 when it arrives in October. Admittedly, these were all of the optimistic but nonspecific banner of “more and better,” applying that tag to “gameplay possibilities,” “visual upgrades,” “destruction and dynamism,” and “progression and purpose.” Let your imaginations run wild.

In the meantime, though, we’ve got Season 11 to play with, and it should be a blast(-off)! Just stay off my lawn, you damn kids.