"Not a great FPS..."

Call Of Duty: Finest Hour (November 16, 2004)

Well, we have all heard of this game somewhere. Call of Duty: Finest Hour takes place during World War 2, and you play as random soldiers from the perspective of the Russians, British, or Americans depending on game progress. In the three parts, as the Russians you'll be trying to force Germany out of the city of Stalingrad by crossing the Volga River, as the British you will be in the deserts of North Africa, and the American story has you into Western Germany trying to claim Aachen. Throughout the missions, you will not be the only one fighting. You have comrades on your side that help you progress, but they do a very horrible job of it. For instance, if a comrade and an enemy are fighting without weapons, your comrade will be getting his ass kicked or your comrade will be 'shooting' at an enemy who is not being affected whatsoever. Obviously, your comrades die but a lot more come in to take their place.

The missions gorgeously make the location look real. There'll be gunshot noises, explosions, yelling, etc. If you press start on the pause menu you will have displayed all of your objectives that you must complete to proceed in the game. The missions are long and have a lot of running around, shooting, punching, reloading, and driving. But there are tons of faults here that make the game have a lower score than normal first-person shooters get like Halo. For example, the controls and gameplay are rugged and jerky at some points, and even though the weapons are pretty cool, when you're shooting it takes about ten rounds to take down a soldier, until you have to shoot even more. The main fault is that you can't tell if the enemy is dead or alive. Activision has "solved this problem" by making a little red flash over an enemy's head when he's shot by you, but then he might fall to the ground in annoying death animations.

Another issue about missions is lack of checkpoints. Normally there is only one checkpoint per mission when there should be at least 3-5 making this game frustrating and obnoxious to repeat long lengths of missions over and over again. Obviously they did this to make the game harder, but clearly its a waste of time and kills replay value. Luck and concentration is the key to the missions. A good thing about this game is the ability to crouch, stand up, or walking while ducking. Crouching helps a lot when it comes to sneaking up on enemies while climbing up on hills, and the melee attack move (Z button) is very critical as when you punch someone they die instantly. What a wimp...Anyway, another cool thing is that you can find ammo and rounds, and different guns all over the place as dead guys drop them when they die. Pressing the B button when told to allows you to pick up that weapon. But I must say, the feel of the weapons (particuarly the guns) in the game could have a better approach instead of the normal shots, and again, accuracy needs improvement when shooting enemies.

Grenade throwing is usually one of the fun ways to kill enemies in fighting and action games, as you are able to throw it at any range within easy control, but here it's simply terrible. Pressing the A button throws a grenade, while sitting through a stupid grenade-throwing preparation scenario that is a problem when there are enemies shooting out of nowhere, but the grenade often bounces off of walls easily and other objects making it hard to cause a successful hit. Also you can't even control how far your grenades go, when is a problem that they don't go at different rates. Shooting crosshairs from tanks is very cool because they can kill an enemy before he even has the chance to say 'goodnight' and the tank cannons can take out hundreds of guys swarming around in groups although it takes a lot of time to reload. Sniper rifles kill in one shot, but after only three or five rounds you spend a long time reloading. Sound effects are okay in the game but nothing really original or special that you can easily find in other games. Gunshots are gunshots, talking is talking, the whole deal.

But enough of the cons, because this is a good FPS that would be excellent if extra work was made. On the bottom left side of the screen there is a compass that points out your destination which makes navigation excellent in this game. Graphics in this game are alright, although texturing can use more work and the acting/voice work in this game needs improvement but I'd give it around a 7.5/10. It's a disappointing thought that this game does not have multiplayer options however for the PS2 and Xbox versions although online multiplayer. They include capture the flag, search and destroy, standard death-match, and team death-match. Online multiplayer is compatible to up to 16 players at a time.

OVERALL, this game is OKAY. It scores high enough to match up with its other competitor FPS's, but its gameplay, repetitive levels and missions, etc. need lots of work. People who love Action FPS's based on the past would love this game. But for gamers who are used to playing "Halo", "Counter Strike", "007 Nightfire", etc. wouldn't like this game, so overall rent this game. If that curious about how this game really is then fine, go ahead buy it, it's not THAT much of a waste because this is a decent game although not great. It just can't match up to be like its older siblings that people are into today.

Gameplay- 6/10, Graphics- 7/10, Sound- 7/10 Value- 6/10

Overall- 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/07/05