No Weekend Plans? You Could Try The Finals Beta

Applications Seem To Be Quickly Approved

The Finals will be a free to play FPS when released, currently there is a playtest going on at Steam which you can apply to take part in.  The game is built around four teams of three people, assuming it can match you with two other players and you aren’t stuck on your own or as a dynamic duo.  They used the new Unreal Engine and the game is certainly pretty, with ray tracing that seems well supported by AMD cards regardless of the fact they clearly label it as RTX ray tracing.

There are three classes, or body types, to chose from and if you guessed one is quick and great for scouting, one is an all arounder and one a heavy then give yourself a prize.  The classes all have their special moves and equipment, from healing guns to grappling hooks or even the ability to run through walls.  That latter tells you something important about the game, which is that all the environments are destructible.  A well placed rocket could collapse a stairway or destroy the floor that sniper is squatting on, and the destruction seems dynamic and not scripted as it has been in other online shooters.

However, you will need to be patient to play the game.  The load times to start a match are rather long, and that is after the wait for it to find enough players to start loading the map.  If you get offed, which will happen frequently, and don’t have a team mate handy to revive you then you have around a 30 second wait before you can rejoin the match.  This changes a bit if your entire team gets wiped while you wait respawn, and you have a limited number of respawns in most games as well.

As for the goal, you need to hunt down a box of cash, grab it and head to a drop off point.  The fun part is you can’t shoot nor climb over obstacles if you are carrying the box, so you depend on team mates to protect you while you deliver the goods and you may need to toss it around a bit to navigate to the drop off point.  Once you manage to get the box into the other box, you switch to defense as it will take over a minute to claim all of it.  If another team takes control from you, they get all the benefits.

The game seems fun in theory, but you may find yourself frustrated by the pacing.  It goes from high speed action to sit and wait with great frequency, and the wait times for most things seem rather extensive.  It is free though, if you are looking for something new to try.