I love anything to do with World War II. I love to read about it, I love to watch documentaries about it, I love to watch the movies and play the games that are based on true events from it. It was an interesting war that quite literally changed the world. Apparently I am not the only one that digs this whole WWII thing: There is obviously a pretty high demand for this stuff, because there are so many movies and games out there these days that are based around the events of World War II that it is difficult to find any that stand above the rest. Standing as King of the Mountain of World War II games is Call of Duty for the PC. Considered by many (myself included) to be THE quintessential WWII experience, Call of Duty presented an extremely realistic and highly suspenseful take on WWII that was simply unrivaled. So good in fact, that the powers that be (in this case, Spark Unlimited and Activision) saw an opportunity to bring that experience to a wider audience by bringing it to the console market, which brings us to Call of Duty: Finest Hour for the Xbox.
While Call of Duty: Finest Hour may share the same name and overall look and feel with its PC brother, it needs to be pointed out that this game is an entirely different beast. Finest Hour was made specifically for the consoles so it is a completely different game than the PC version. It has a faster pace, and the controls have been fine-tuned to be used with a controller. The missions are also completely different, as it does not follow the tales of the same people you played as in the PC version. Basically, the only things these two games have in common are the WWII theme and the Call of Duty name.
Control-wise, Call of Duty: Finest Hour actually works quite well. At first, it seemed very strange because some buttons are not used in the same manner that most Xbox FPS's are, but in the end it worked out just fine. I think one big plus, as far as the game play was concerned, is that the weapons all seem very real. The recoil of the controller seems to be better than most games, and the sounds of the guns will blow you away. I think the coolest thing of all though is the viewpoint when you hold the left trigger. Pulling and holding the left trigger pulls the gun right up to your face so that you are looking down the barrel of the gun and using the actual sights of the gun itself to aim your shots. I know it may not seem like a big deal, but when you actually use it, it becomes one of the coolest things about this game. There is nothing more intense than getting charged by a bunch of Germans and having to take them down one by one looking through the trusty peep sights of your M1 Garand. I would take this little idea over the recent Halo 2 inspired dual-wield trend any day of the week.
There are a wide variety of missions that you will be charged with completing, and most of them are actually very, very cool. The missions set you up for some real nail-biters and leave you sweating by the time you complete some of them. I am not normally one to enjoy an escort mission, but the missions where you escort the tanks are sweet, and can be quite enjoyable. My only real issue with the missions themselves is that checkpoints do not happen often enough, and it can be very frustrating to play a particular part of a mission for a good 10 or 15 minutes and then have to start over from the beginning. Also, some missions got very repetitive; the missions where you pilot the tanks come to mind.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems as far as gameplay is concerned. First and foremost, the amount of shots it can take to kill your enemies is absurd. It's so inconsistent that not even a headshot will always drop your enemies, and I have a HUGE problem with that. Sometimes, when I would storm a room, I would literally unload an entire clip of rounds into an enemy, and not only would he not die, he would not so much as flinch, shooting at me repeatedly as I fired shot after shot into his head and chest area. This problem frustrated me to the point of almost throwing my controller through my TV screen multiple times. The enemy also has a whole plethora of “cheese-glitches” that will no doubt have you shouting obscenities at your television for hours on end. For those of you unfamiliar with my terminology, a “cheese-glitch” is when the computer pulls unbelievable moves on you that should not happen. For example, an enemy magically slides 10 feet to the side as you shoot at him, or an enemy manages to shoot you dead through a brick wall. Little things like this really made it hard for me to trudge through the entire game; it pains me to see a game that is so well done on almost every front ultimately be almost unbearable because of a few game play inconsistencies and glitches that could have easily been fixed.
Another problem I had was the AI of my teammates. It's almost as though they are simply there as decoys to draw the enemy fire away from me, but really, as long as I was in sight, I was the only one the enemies would target. What's even worse is that these guys are terrible shots. On one mission, I was to escort a column of tanks through a war torn city and make sure that no pesky Germans were allowed to sneak around and destroy the tanks with the Panzershreks. Sounds easy enough: I have about six or so other soldiers on foot with me to help shoulder the responsibilities. As we are surrounded, I head up to the front of the column to take out two or three Germans near the front and leave the rear to my squad. As I am taking down everyone up front, a message comes on telling me that the tank is taking heavy damage. I head back to see ONE German firing rockets at the tank, and all six or so of my men firing at him from less then ten feet away. He just kept firing until I walked up and took care of him myself. The mission failed shortly thereafter because that one guy almost completely destroyed the tank. VERY frustrating.
COD also suffers from the all too common problem of NPC’s getting physically in your way. For example, when popping out from a corner and firing a few shots, I would try to back behind my cover again to reload only to find that my jerk teammate had followed me so closely that I could not back up because he was standing right in the way and would not move, leaving me out in the open to be shot while reloading. Moments like these rear their ugly heads quite frequently throughout the game. They like to stand in doorways too. Idiots.
Another problem I noticed was that if you find a new weapon and you just want to see if it's any good, you lose all but a very small fraction of your ammo for the weapon you swapped. In other words, if you have a ton of ammo for a weapon, and you swap for another weapon that you find and don't like it, you can pick your old weapon back up, but somehow, almost all of your ammo that you had for that gun has magically disappeared. That’s not realistic or cool, and it’s certainly not funny. That’s just downright mean-spirited.
To add insult to injury, a split screen multiplayer option is not included in Call of Duty: Finest Hour. No co-op, and no 4-player death matches. LAME. Sure, you can go on Xbox Live, or you can play multiplayer over a LAN connection, but you still only get one player per TV. At this day and age, not including things like this is simply lazy, and there is no reason for these options to not be here. Having some good WWII multiplayer death match on my Xbox would have made purchasing this game a little bit more justified.
Sound, on the other hand, is superb in Call of Duty: Finest Hour. The sound effects in Call of Duty actually have probably the hugest impact on the overall feeling of urgency and intensity in the game. The music sweeps and moves dramatically with the action to set the most perfect mood you could possibly ask for in a WWII experience. The voice acting was also very well done. The sounds of the Germans calling out to each other, the sounds of battle, and the crumbling of buildings are top-notch. The designers did an excellent job in the sound department, to say the least. Even the small things such as the sounds the weapons make and the rumbling of a tank rolling down the street are perfect.
The graphics are adequate in Call of Duty: Finest Hour. Buildings crumble under heavy artillery quite realistically, the muzzle-flash of your enemies is very subtle and thus, more realistic than most games that involve guns, and soldiers are very detailed and well animated. Everything looks good with the exception of a few obvious shortcuts that the developers took. For example, the tanks wheels inside the tracks move, but the actual tracks just slide over the streets without actually moving. It wouldn't be as noticeable if everything else on screen wasn't so highly detailed, but it sticks out like a sore thumb. Overall, I thought the graphics were simply good enough. Combined with the flawless sound in COD: Finest Hour, you have one of the most stunning audio/visual depictions of WWII to date.
In the end, it breaks my heart to have to give such a low score to Call Of Duty: Finest Hour because of a very small handful of problems. Unfortunately, that small handful of problems really hindered my ability to enjoy the game. When I first popped Call of Duty into my Xbox I was expecting something great, and for a good three hours, it WAS great. Sadly, once those three hours were up, the problems really became obvious and it quickly turned into an exercise of patience and sheer determination to complete it just so that I could write this review. If this were a PC game, I would be expecting a patch ASAP; if those problems were not present, this game would easily score an 8.0 or higher. Unfortunately, as it stands, Call of Duty: Finest Hour is a great looking, great sounding game that has too many game play related issues, too many glitches, and a lack of some much-needed multiplayer options for me to truly recommend a purchase. Now, if you will excuse me, I will be on my PC playing through the original Call of Duty...
