the most creative, most innovative, most exciting shooter to come out since apex back in 2019. the sight/sounds of gunshots, explosions, coins, and crowds cheering, while buildings crumble around you and the commentators announce player killstreaks, make the funny brain chemicals go crazy. many developers have tried to do the "virtual sport/gameshow" aesthetic before and i believe embark has done it the best by far.

As far as gripes go; balance can be a little shaky. light flip flops between "wow i die when someone looks at me" and "how did i kill that guy so fast". imho it took them too long to remove nukes. however the devs are very active and look like they actually care, which is a breath of fresh air after playing apex for so long. I also want a world where we have an anticheat powerful enough to send cheaters to the shadow realm for eternity.

but these are issues present in every fps and theyre small compared to what this game brings to the genre. we had a drop in players after the initial launch but tbf apex did too and it grew to one of the most played games. this has the foundations to rise to those hights and i want to see it do so.

based game, very alive, go play it.

edit: the game is on the right track; ive been officially addicted since season 4 and balance is the healthiest it has been since launch. I will admit, this games community has a bit of a meta-slave issue (it'll be 2am and there are tripple stacks of ruby players in qc using whatever the meta weapons for their class are. like- wtf you losers, this is the place to be not-sweaty and do stupid ♥♥♥♥. try a new weapon and layback a little) but this is an issue that every pvp game has nowadays so i cant really give the finals smack for it. just please try and remember casual is called that for a reason.

edit2: got banned twice in the span of TWO DAYS for "player behavior". when i asked support what was going on they said "you were toxic uwu". I'm not dropping slurs I'm not wishing death upon my teammates so I have no idea what this means. Give players the tools to mute/block/filter who/what they want and they WILL moderate your game for themselves. This banning for toxicity thing needs to die.

edit 3: wanted to add: THE FINALS is one of very few multiplayer games where music is not muted and stays on; ♥♥♥♥ slaps so hard. also whoever makes the trailers for this game are genuine geniuses; its like they're old masters of hype that have ancient knowledge the rest of the industry have forgotten. best trailers in the industry right now. full stop.