Environmental Destruction as a Strategic System, Not Just a Visual Effect
Every other element of The Finals is interesting. The destruction mechanics are exceptional. The capacity of every arena to be progressively dismantled is not a background feature or an aesthetic flourish — it is the central engine of the game’s most memorable moments and its deepest tactical layer. Entering a room through the door or window represents the conventional option. Crashing through the ceiling from above, or blasting open a floor so that a vault drops directly to a waiting squad below, represent the kind of plays that feel impossible to replicate in any other competitive shooter.
“The destructibility of each stage is the real star of The Finals.”
The Finals — IGN ReviewThe strategic implications extend far beyond dramatic entry points and falling rubble. On a map built atop skyscrapers connected by elevated sky bridges, witnessing a team systematically destroy the structural junction where a bridge meets a building — sending the entire span plummeting to the ground below — is genuinely stunning the first time it happens. Split-second decisions about whether to leap free of a collapsing structure or ride its debris down into a lower position can determine the outcome of firefights in ways that no amount of pre-match planning fully prepares a team for. The final seconds of a tightly contested match were decided not by a last-second elimination but by the sheer volume of rubble piled between an enemy squad and the bank they needed to reach — a moment that would be impossible in any arena that didn’t collapse in real time.
Solo Matchmaking and Crossplay Support Make The Finals Broadly Accessible
Players without a pre-formed squad will find that jumping in alone carries a reasonable experience. Matchmaking is quick, and a streamlined single-button ping system handles essential team communication without requiring voice chat — sufficient for most objective-focused interactions with random teammates. Because the game offers no meaningful incentive for ignoring objectives in favor of purely chasing kills, most matched teammates stay reasonably task-oriented, making solo play viable in a way that many team-based games fail to achieve. A persistent problem, however, is that when a team enters a match short a player, or loses someone mid-round to a disconnection, replacements are rarely pulled in to fill the gap. Competing as a two-person team against intact trios is a deflating experience with no rational basis for optimism.
The rewards of organized play with a known group are substantial. Coordinating an assault, locking down a deposit position with defensive gadgets, or engineering a squad composition where a flamethrower-wielding Heavy is sustained by a Medium’s healing beam and supported by a Light’s harassment from unexpected angles — these combinations reflect a genuine strategic depth that solo play can only approximate. When a fallen teammate leaves behind a small action figure that teammates can grab and carry to a safe location for a full revival, the mechanic serves both tactical and tonal purposes simultaneously — it is useful and quietly absurd in equal measure. Crossplay functionality, alongside shared progression across PC and Xbox Series X, ensures that moving between platforms introduces no friction for players with friends across different ecosystems.
Fully destructible arenas are the defining feature — buildings collapse, floors give way, and bridges topple, producing unrepeatable tactical moments across every match.
The gameshow-meets-squad-shooter presentation — colorful, self-aware, and energized by play-by-play announcers — creates a tone that is entertaining without becoming obnoxious.
Only two casual modes are available at launch — a potential long-term retention concern if new modes are not added through regular updates.
Heavy builds dominate competitive modes and the in-game reward economy progresses too slowly — both areas require ongoing developer attention.
No pay-to-win mechanics exist — premium currency buys cosmetics only, and nothing restricted to paid purchases confers a competitive edge.
When the Dust Settles, The Finals Earns Its Place in the Competitive Shooter Conversation
The Finals earns its distinction within the overcrowded competitive shooter market not through refinement of what already exists, but through a genuine structural innovation — the systematic, physics-driven collapse of its arenas. The combination of objective-driven modes, rapid grappling-hook traversal, wall-smashing character archetypes, and destruction that erases the predictability of any given map produces a competitive experience that repeatedly generates moments no amount of conventional design could manufacture. The limitations are real: two game modes is a thin offering, balance across character classes needs substantive adjustment, and the pace of reward unlocks through play should be meaningfully accelerated. Those are criticisms that future updates have the capacity to address. What they cannot manufacture after the fact is the foundational spectacle of watching an entire building reduce itself to rubble around an ongoing firefight — and on that measure, The Finals has already delivered something the genre has not seen before.
