Developer/publisher Embark Studios Format PC (tested), PS5 (tested), Xbox Series Release Out now

The thief sets down an auto-turret, a strobing protective eye cast over her partners-in-crime and their precious loot extractor, dinging like a slot machine about to pay out – yet it fails to catch the cloaked swordsman who drops out of invisibility just in time to swing at the thief’s head. A hulking body leaps into the air then drops into a ground-pound, tearing through multiple storeys of a building and the skull of an unfortunate soul on the ground floor. Three squadmates cower in the ruins of a tower block, sheltering from the UFOs that loom overhead, raining down fat green blocks of explosive energy.

Almost every moment of The Finals feels like an action set-piece lifted from a slightly different genre. Breaching charges and meteor showers, sledgehammers and grappling hooks, goo grenades and orbital lasers – these don’t seem like weapons that should co-exist within one game. Yet here, you might encounter them all within the same match. Even more remarkably, it works.

At least, it does once you’ve adjusted to how overwhelming it can all be. The Finals’ onramp consists of a brief tutorial that skips past the many tools at your disposal to lay out the basic rules of the game.