The Finals. It's a weird one for me considering I loathe free to play games. Overall it's been a good year in gaming. I thought Totk is going to be best game of the year, then BG3 came out and I was certain that would end up being the best game of the year (and I'm certain for many it is), but then I decided to give The Finals a try. For me it felt like a fundamental shift in online shooters, like a new baseline to compare shooters to.

On paper it doesn't seem anything exceptional. You have 4 maps with some variations on each map, 3 game modes and 3 classes each with a handful of weapons and gadgets. There's really not much content when you lay it all out, but the replayability is insane. The destructible environment and the tools to manipulate the environment has emergent gameplay going through the roof.

You can get really creative with how you want to attack or defend and it makes each match feel fresh. Sometimes you blow up the side of the wall and defend from the building across the street, sometimes you blow the roof to attack from above, sometimes you bring the entire building down to use the chaos to your benefit. You can use jump pads for an unexpected attack angle, you can put up barricades and defenses to block attackers. There's so much you can do within a match.

It has some flaws, but it's the most fun I've had in a shooter since some of the earlier battlefield games.