Call of Duty: Finest Hour

WWII shooters are a dime a dozen these days, with all your sequels to the Medal of Honor series and the Battlefield games. Unless you own a GameCube – Where the Battlefield franchise doesn’t exist and the only Medal of Honor game we got was a big disappointment to the series.

Enter Call of Duty: Finest Hour; a WWII shooter not to be overlooked. Aiming to go where most WWII games won’t venture, the team at Sparks Unlimited – made up of 30 men and women from the original Medal of Honor team – has been hard at work for the past two years conceiving this ambitious title. Finest Hour will tell the tale of the war through three diverse campaigns where players are put in the boots of Russian, British, and American soldiers.

The Call of Duty series gained its recognition as a hit squad-based shooter on the PC, and while most pc-console ports are usually handled by a thousand monkeys – Finest Hour is actually being developed from the ground up for the GameCube. The graphics are quite impressive, each of the various levels have their own unique artistic style and the action flows incredibly smoothly. The game pushes a “Teen” rating – which doesn’t hide the fact this game is about nazis, killing, and war – as things can get quite violent with rocket launchers, tanks, close quarter combat, and murdering Nazis. That being said, gamers mature enough to handle war games will find an intriguing story focused on fleshing out the characters fighting the war.

The first campaign – the Russian campaign – throws gamers into a battle against German forces on Stalingrad where players will wage close combat wars in urban settings and engage in a nerve racking raid on an airfield. The airfield level has the player engaging enemy airplanes striving to take off, you happen to be driving a tank however – which considerably tips the scales in your direction. Tanks are a large part of gameplay and operate with ease, the vehicle controls separately from the cannon and is surprisingly agile on the battlefield. Vehicle missions are a large part of the Finest Hour and players are not limited to just tanks.

The British campaign follows the success of the Russian chapter and follows the tale of a SAS and Popsky's Private Army soldiers are engaged in hit-and-run missions on Rommel's advancing panzer battalions. Set in North Africa this section of the game breaks things up visually and offers unique vehicle missions, one which has the player manning a mounted artillery turret on the rear of a jeep while the driver leads the way up the sides of a desert mountain.

Finally the American campaign is set after D-Day beginning with the Allied advance against the Siegfried defensive line then continuing on through the German boarder. The American campaign is where the core gameplay of the series unfolds, where players take control of a soldier who must use lethal group tactics against the defensive Germen enemy. Your fellow soldiers in your team are all controlled by clever A.I. that makes you feel like your part of a greater force instead of backing you up like most “SuperSoldier” FPS games.

Each campaign has two playable characters and in between climatic moments the story continues to unfold through impressive cinematics. The Call of Duty series is all about the cinematic value on the battlefield and does a good job portraying the emotional struggle between the allies and axis.

Finest Duty is in its final stages of development and will be shipping out very shortly. It should be an engaging and interesting battle to wage, and if your not limited to your GameCube only the other versions feature online play and may be of more value to multi-console gamers. Expect a review shortly after its released November 16th.


(13/11 MB) - Courtesy of GameTrailers.com

(12/11 MB) - Courtesy of GameTrailers.com