The Finals adds its unique flavor to a permanent Team Deathmatch mode in Season 6

For over a year, players have been experiencing a different sort of objective-based shooter with The Finals. Developer Embark Studios has been looking to evolve its game show-centric shooter in exciting ways for the year ahead, but one of its newer ideas may also be one of its simplest. For all of the complexity that modes like Cash Out and Bank It offer, there's a certain joy that comes from a straightforward Team Deathmatch experience. Embark Studios recently offered players a small taste of TDM, offering it as a temporary experience up until earlier this month. For the upcoming Season 6, subtitled Rising Stars, The Finals is finally about to get a permanent Team Deathmatch mode and Shacknews recently had an opportunity to experience it.

Team Deathmatch in The Finals is as simple as it sounds. Teams of five will come together across the game's various maps and compete to see who can collect the most cash in a best two-out-of-three rounds scenario. As the game mode implies, cash is collected through successful eliminations of opposing team members. There are no special gimmicks in Team Deathmatch, but the inherent features and mechanics of The Finals themselves help set this apart from other TDMs in the gaming world. That means TDM can become quite chaotic when playing in a destructible arena setting with different loadouts from the game's various sponsors.

Games took place across arenas like the reworked Las Vegas Stadium and Seoul 2023. In addition to hooking up with new sponsors OSPUZE, ALFA ACTA, and ENGIMO, Season 6 will add some new weaponry. The first few sessions saw nearly everyone going Heavy and trying out the new M134 Minigun, a behemoth that fires off dozens of rounds per second at the expense of the carrier's speed. It only took minutes to see the potential of TDM in The Finals, as the M134 not only carved up opponents, but wreaked havoc on the terrain itself, bringing down numerous sections of the arena. This isn't the only weapon that's being added to the game with Season 6. Medium characters can try out the CB-01 Repeater, a lever-action rifle that can hit hard at close quarters as long as the wielder's aim is true. Light characters can use the new ARN-220 assault rifle, which offers double mags and a high firing rate with little recoil.

While there wasn't too much time to soak in the revamped Las Vegas Stadium, the TDM atmosphere got intense as fights often broke out along the rooftops. The roofs offer multiple zipline routes and cover positions for teams to regroup, plant traps, or prep an ambush before jumping out into the wide open spaces to get into all-out firefights. Before long, it appeared that one of my teammates got tired of the rooftop fighting, because they took out a sledgehammer and started smashing the arena's interior, bringing the building supports down and creating fractures on the roof.

While Team Deathmatch will be one of Season 6's biggest highlights, there's more coming with The Finals' next major update. Power Shift has been a hit since its Season 2 debut and now it's about to expand into some additional maps. The payload mode will now be playable on the Bernal and Las Vegas Stadium maps. Plus, Embark will look to update weapons, gadgets, and other mechanics throughout the season for what the studio hopes will be a fairer experience. If it's been a while since you've played The Finals, Embark hopes to make it easier to jump back on board by upgrading the game's Tutorial and Practice dummies to move more fluidly and work with newer mechanics.

The Finals' Season 6 is just the beginning of what's expected to be a year-long push into the world of esports. The Finals will have its first major during Season 8 later this year and it will officially integrate esports into the game's lore with teams and tournament winners featured across in-game billboards and commentator discussions. Embark hopes to infuse esports culture into The Finals and it's an idea that will begin over the course of Season 6. Embark will share more details about this in the future.

Look for Season 6 of The Finals to kick off on Thursday, March 20. Be sure to also follow our topic page for The Finals to catch up with anything from the game that you might have missed.

This preview is based on a Steam beta build provided by the publisher.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?