Strap on your space boots, tighten your fishbowl helmet and load up your blaster as the finals race into Season 11! Galaxy Masters is the name and retro-futurism is the game, with a new map that looks like pre-apocalypse Fallout at the start of a game – and looks like post-apocalypse Fallout once players are done destroying it.
In addition to the space-age aesthetic – cosmetics to match – Season 11 makes major adjustments to the free-to-play shooter’s melee combat and new player onboarding system, expands bot matches, and offers all the usual bits and pieces you’d expect from a new season, like a new battle pass and balance and quality of life updates.
The new map, Galaxy Estates, is set in a ring around Saturn and is inspired by space colony art from NASA’s 20th century vision of the future. When I first saw the Flyby intro video during our press preview, I thought it was beautiful, with its peaceful neighborhoods, quiet backyard pools, and even gyms, but lamented that property values would plummet once players jumped into the fray.
Competing in games proved this as the usual destruction was on full display and despite having two Embark Studios employees on my team, I struggled a lot. As a new Finals player, I find traversing the map to be my biggest hurdle to overcome, made even more difficult as the battlefield changes as the destruction increases.
Galaxy Estates adds some innovations that will help you reposition yourself faster. Speed tunnels let you zoom around the map’s core in a ring that speeds up your running speed (until they’re inevitably destroyed), while anti-gravity volumes give you some verticality beyond the usual zip lines.
All in all, it’s a cool looking map with a great theme that shows how innovative the art and design team can be, and players will love getting the chance to cause some chaos in the suburbs.
Battle Bots
Getting used to a new game is a problem for any new player, but given the pace and flow of The Finals, it’s particularly challenging. I experienced this firsthand in the beginning, so it’s refreshing to see a new onboarding experience being introduced to the game in Season 11.
Your journey will be guided by Dede, who will guide you through the early stages of your rise to fame, introducing you to various gameplay elements through bot matches and the early talent program, with various quests and rewards as you progress through the academy. The video describing the system states that it “relaxes” you going into a game. However, in The Finals I can only really relax when I close the game.
A key part of the new “relaxing” experience is an expansion of bot matches, including Cashout mode, which you can play to your heart’s content and earn rewards, albeit at a reduced price. I was told that the bots were “good” and had varying difficulty levels so you could increase your pain tolerance before jumping into PvP.
Once you’ve mastered Git Gud, you can try mastering the revamped melee combat system, which is sure to make sledgehammer-wielding heavyweights even greater threats. You can still hack and punch like Freddy Krueger, but precise strikes maximize your damage.
When you need to close gaps quickly – and what crazy slasher doesn’t? – The new lunge ability available to all melee weapons allows you to do this, but at the cost of a new stamina resource that slowly refills over time, or faster when you land hits, and even faster when you can chain hits together.
Quick melee attacks also utilize the stamina system, granting access to a kick that can knock players away to counter melee attackers if they get too close, while the Riot Shield gains a shield bash to give the defensive “weapon” some attack power.
Send your rank into orbit
No patch is complete without a few quality of life updates, and the highlight of Season 11 is arguably the new personal achievement system for ranked matches, which takes your performance and current rank into account when determining how you level up. You can even take advantage of a loss if you’ve played well enough.
How good is “good enough”? At least a small part of the mystery could be solved with a better results breakdown at the end of each game, and Embark Studios has updated how it calibrates player rankings. Those good enough to reach the upper ranks can earn two Diamond Tokens at D4 and D1.
Other advancements mentioned during our briefing included an improved ping system with better visual feedback and better target spawns in Cashout mode. You can also customize your player cards for each of your participants to give each of your gladiators a slightly more personalized touch.
We even got a list of bullet points for Season 12 when it comes out in October. Admittedly, these were all under the optimistic but non-specific motto “more and better”, with this slogan being applied to “gameplay possibilities”, “visual improvements”, “destruction and dynamics” and “progress and purpose”. Let your imagination run wild.
In the meantime, though, we can play with Season 11, and it should be a blast! Just stay off my lawn, you damn kids.