The second season of Embark Studios’ first-person shooter The Finals launches March 14, giving players all-new tools to speedily traverse through — and destroy — its game show-inspired levels. Players can already blow holes through walls, floors, and ceilings to reshape the game’s highly destructible maps, but players will get a new tool called the Dematerializer that straight-up 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’s a spin on a classic game type seen in shooters like Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch 2, where players must guide a moving object through a level, pushing it further than the opposing team.
However, The Finals’ version comes with a twist. Rather than having the movable payload on a rail that moves cleanly through a map, the platform contestants fight over dramatically bulldozes through objects in the environment — buildings, trees, whatever. Anything standing in the way of this unstoppable payload crumbles in its path.
I played a few rounds of The Finals’ 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 over the platform is just as exciting as controlling it, like riding a slow-moving theme park ride with all the safety measures turned off. While destruction rains around you, the enemy team — it’s a 5v5 mode, by the way — is doing everything it can, including lobbing grenades and sniping at your team from rooftops, to knock you off the mode’s moving platform.
Image: Embark Studios via Polygon
Power Shift is both pure chaos and a showcase for just how impressive The Finals’ level destruction mechanics are. It’s also a mode where players can switch their contestant type upon respawn, letting them rebalance their team composition on the fly to match what the opposing team is doing.
In addition to Power Shift, there are a bunch of new guns, gadgets, and specializations coming to The Finals with season 2. These new additions include the aforementioned Dematerializer (for Mediums) that erases physical surfaces and creates new pathways, an Anti-Gravity Cube (for Heavys) that reverses gravity in a small area to lift up players and objects, and the Gateway (for Lights) that deploys a portal that lets players teleport short distances. Mediums also get an incredibly fun gadget called the Data Reshaper, which is aptly named since it magically transforms enemy fortifications like turrets or land mines into innocuous objects — like a chair or a “wet floor” sign. It’s all part of The Finals’ new hacker-themed season, which also includes a new map called SYS$HORIZON that’s presented as a glitchy, vaporwave-y cityscape.
For lapsed players looking for a reason to return to The Finals beyond 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 Finals’ use of destructible environments is more than just a gimmick.
The Finals season 2 goes live Thursday, March 14, on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
