I can't remember having this much fun with a multiplayer shooter since Overwatch - not initially at least. The Finals feels so immediate in the impact it has. You load it up, you're thrust into a three-player team and then into an arena with other teams, then you're legging it through levels that are being bust apart around you, rappelling up buildings, smashing through walls, lobbing foam-expanding grenades and swinging heavy sledgehammers. Then you're legging it back another way with a safe of money you've found, trying to deposit it at a vault, all while the other teams frantically pepper you with bullets and hunt you down. There's no breathing space. There's garish colour, noise, energy, adrenaline and excitement. That is The Finals.
It really reminds me of Overwatch, actually, in how polished it feels and how the menus look. I suppose the polish should be no surprise given The Finals released today, in conjunction with The Game Awards, and I played it only a week ago. It's the final build.
But the Finals reminds me a lot of Fortnite, too, in the way it has three-player teams and silly cosmetics, and a big Battle Pass. But it's Battlefield 4 too, in the way the levels can be blown up around you. And it's Payday in the way you chase cash, like an extraction shooter, and it's maybe Apex and Rainbow Six Vegas and a bunch of other games as well. It's a Frankenstein's Monster made up of all of those things, and yet, like that Monster, it manages to be its own very distinct thing.