Alongside its parkour and destruction mechanics, one of the big reasons I find myself going back to The Finals is to play with its kits. Gadgets and specialisations let you refine your character and fill niches in each team, and a good command of your tools can often be the difference between winning a firefight and waiting for a team respawn.
With Season 2, The Finals is introducing a host of new toys that promote experimentation and teamwork in a way we’ve not seen from the game before. But more than that, I just really liked making everything float into the sky.
Season 2 sees The Finals – the virtual game show the game is set in, that is – compromised by a hacker group known as CNS. Their hacks include a whole load of new gadgets and specialisations that warp physics and virtual reality in a way your normal glue traps and grappling hooks don’t.
The medium characters’ Data Reshaper lets you warp items in the world into random chairs and tables – a great way for dealing with mines and turrets, but is highly situational on your opponents’ loadouts. The light class’s Gateway portals are great fun, and using them effectively can enable your entire team to get the drop on an enemy squad, but I’d like to see them given a larger throwing range to help open up more interesting flanks and less whiffed portals hanging in mid-air with nothing to do.
Gateways and flamethrowers make a devastating combination.
The real standouts in this update are the Dematerializer and Antigravity Cube. The first, for medium characters, lets you temporarily delete sections of wall without compromising the structural integrity of a building. Particularly in the early game when everything hasn’t been reduced to rubble, being able to quietly slip through a wall and get the drop on opponents is fantastic.
Meanwhile, the Antigravity Cube was the surprise hit of my time with Season 2. For the heavy class – which I normally don’t like playing due to its slow speed – the cube creates a field of low gravity that pulls anything caught in it up into the sky. Items, rubble, players, and even projectiles are all stuck swimming in syrup for a while, as they’re gently lifted up and away.
Up, Up, And Away
For such a simple-sounding effect, the Antigravity cube completely changed how I see The Finals’ maps (including the new one coming in Season 2, the corrupted neon cyberscape of Sys$Horizon). At first, I used it as a traversal tool, to help slog my heavy character up stairwells and over ledges the smaller, faster characters can mount with ease.
Then, I used it offensively. If a team was dug in behind cover, a well-placed cube could make them all drift out of safety. Throw it at a charging melee weapon-using opponent, and they’re stopped in their tracks to pick off from a distance.
But my crowning moment was in the last minute of a round. My team were on the cusp of winning, but with both other teams closing in and ready to steal our cashout, I threw the cube at the capture point and watched it soar up through a hole my teammate’s Dematerialization had made. A few whacks with my sledgehammer, and it was out of harm’s way in a location nobody was expecting. Nobody could get to it in time to take it back, and we secured the win.
As I went through each class, I ran across moments like this more and more. Moments like opening up the way for my teammates with a well-placed Gateway, or getting their respawn statue to safety by removing the floor beneath them, only for it to close back up just as enemies arrived. Goo grenades and bounce pads are great, but nothing before this has had the same level of emergent gameplay as these newcomers.
The Finals has always pushed teamwork, and the new toys coming in Season 2 promote synergy and creativity more than anything the first season had to offer. Working out how to combine our gadgets and specialisations on the fly, and trying out new and wild strategies only to see them work, is the most fun I’ve had with The Finals in a good long while.
