The second season of Embark Studios’ first-person shooter The finale launches on March 14 and gives players brand new tools to quickly travel through and destroy the game show-inspired levels. Players can already blow holes in walls, floors, and ceilings to reshape the game’s highly destructible maps, but players will get a new tool called the Dematerializer that directly erases parts of a level’s geometry.
But the more intriguing new way to destroy things comes as part of a new game mode called Power Shift. It is a variation on a classic game type that you also see in shooters such as Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch 2where players must guide a moving object through a level and push it further than the other team.
However, The finale’ version comes with a twist. Instead of having the movable payload on a rail that moves neatly through a map, the platform participants fight to dramatically bulldoze through objects in the environment – buildings, trees, whatever. Everything that stands in the way of this unstoppable charge crumbles in its path.
I played a few rounds The finale’ Power Shift mode in a recent preview build, and it felt like Embark has a new go-to casual mode on its hands. Fighting for control of the platform is just as exciting as piloting it, like riding in a slow-moving amusement park with all safety measures disabled. As destruction rains down around you, the enemy team – it’s a 5v5 mode by the way – does everything it can, including throwing grenades and shooting at your team from the rooftops, to knock you off the moving platform of save mode.
Image: Embark Studios via Polygon
Power Shift is both pure chaos and an example of how impressive The finale‘ level destruction mechanisms. It’s also a mode where players can switch participant types during respawn, allowing them to instantly recalibrate their team composition based on what the other team is doing.
In addition to Power Shift, a lot of new weapons, gadgets and specializations are added The finale with Season 2. These new additions include the aforementioned Dematerializer (for Mediums) that erases physical surfaces and creates new paths, an Anti-Gravity Cube (for Heavys) that reverses gravity in a small area to lift players and objects, and the Gateway (for Lights) which deploys a portal that allows players to teleport short distances. Mediums also get an incredibly neat gadget called the Data Reshaper, which is aptly named because it magically transforms enemy fortifications like turrets or landmines into harmless objects – like a chair or a ‘wet floor’ sign. It’s all part of it The finale‘ new hacker-themed season, which also includes a new map called SYS$HORIZON, which is presented as a glitchy, vaporwave-like cityscape.
For lapsed players looking for a reason to return to The finale aside from the typical arsenal and cosmetic updates that come with new seasons, Power Shift is the most compelling reason to revisit the game. For new players, it’s a chance to see why The finale‘The use of destructible environments is more than just a gimmick.
The finale season 2 goes live on Thursday, March 14 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series