Call of Duty: Finest Hour

"Call of Duty: Not so Fine Hour"

I love war games, thery are most definitly my favorite genre of games. But I hate to see the game makers make wars unrealistic, like when it ends up being your character agaisnt the other side. That's what this game ends up being like.

Story: 9/10

Its WWII you cant really bend the story of WWII. But you can make lots and lots of sub stories within the general story. They give lots of little details about each character you control. Which are from Russia, England, and America.

Graphics: 9/10

Call of Duty: Finest Hour sports some very good graphics. During enourmous battles particle effects are amazing and the level designs are great. The recreation of Stalingrad is accurate and very good. But simply put the particle effects are astounding.

Sound: 10/10

I am lucky enough to get to play this game on surround sound. And it is very immerisive. Coupled with the great graphics the level of immersion in this game is great. With explosions happening every thirty seconds all around me I felt like I was a WWII soldier fighting against those Germans.

Controls: 7/10

This game has story, graphics, and sound. But this is where it starts to slip a little. No matter how good a games story, controls, and sound is if there aren't good controls are gameplay it can't succeed. The controls are tight and good for the most part but the grenade throwing really needed some serious work. You can not control how far you throw it and it always goes exactly where you're pointing. I like the precision aiming mechanism though.

Gameplay: 5/10

Its got the scene set. But what will happen when the curtains are pulled? A big dud. This game just isnt that much fun. Too many missions involve you piloting a tank, which is cool for a while but gets boring eventually. It's also almost impossibe to tell if the person you shot is dead or not. Which isnt a major problem but it leads to you wasting ammo when you really need it. It also feels like its you against the entire German army. Which is a big problem for gamers like me, the AI does to nothing to help you in your cause besides fire a few rounds and occasionally kill an enemy or two. If they had just perfected the gameplay this game could reach the sucess it did on the PC.

Replay Value: 6/10

The multiplayer is basically just the single player which and extra soldier on your side. If the gameplay wasn't good there its not gonna inprove much here.

Overall Call of Duty: Finest Hour was not what expected from such a great PC franchise. The presentation was superb but the gameplay just wasn't there.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/04