Call of Duty: Finest Hour review

The PC game took three historical campaigns, involving Russian, US and British troops and weaved levels around very different battles. Finest Hour takes that idea and expands it. No longer do we have just one playable character in each region, but several.

It's actually a good idea and is well used to tell some of the history of the Second World War. In Stalingrad we get to play a humble soldier in his first action, a confident female sniper and a tank commander. The US campaign features some play as a tank commander within an all black unit. The irony being they were supposedly fighting against a fascist aggressor while at the same time being segregated on racist lines in their own military.

Some of the conflicts chosen are interesting too, not the usual run-of-the-mill battles one might expect such as the Normandy landings. The US campaign highlights the battle for Aachen, the first German city to fall and later the race to capture the bridge at Remagen, the only bridge still standing over the Rhine. General Eisenhower once stated that "the bridge is worth its weight in gold" though it did later colapse to the cost of 28 US lives.

The all-too-short British campaign too draws on an interesting historical source, being set during the campaign in North Africa, not a location well represented in previous WWII games. Clearly a lot of research has gone into the game and authentic Special Forces units such as Popski's Private Army and the Long Range Desert Group get a mention.

History is bunk

Unfortunately all this history really hasn't made for a better game. Firstly in chopping up each campaign between several characters there's less emotional involvement with each one. The bigger problem though is in the depiction of warfare and the gameplay mechanic.

There's little point using that real history if the drama and self sacrifice is not portrayed in the game. The memorable set-pieces and drama of the original PC game have been lost. The opening sequence at Stalingrad – one of the few locations the game shares with its PC counterpart – has lost many of the aspects that made the original so moving,

You now arrive in a small rowing boat instead of the motor launch from the original game, the landing being much less spectacular, as is the journey from the river into the city. Remember the epic assault on Red Square from the PC game, with the stirring music and the senseless slaughter? Well that's gone.

Instead you'll find yourself firing a rifle through a factory window at a few German troops. And that's the real problem with the setting of Finest Hour, it all feels so small. Part of what made the original great was how it made each conflict, each gunfight, part of a whole – that you were fighting for something and part of history. But the battles here all feel like small unimportant sideshows – even when taking the bridge and Remagen.

Nazi Doom

This isn't helped by a gameplay mechanic that has dropped the run, shoot and cover play of the original in favour of something more akin to Doom. There are times when there's a good gunfight, with both sides using cover well. It's these moments that are reminiscent of the original game and show Finest Hour at its best. But for every moment where an interesting and convincing gunfight occurs, there will be a run and gun Doom style section just waiting round the corner.

There's some intelligence to the play – you can give basic orders to squad mates such as telling them to move from cover. And it's possible to use your health packs on team-mates when they are hurt. However other games just have AI squad mates looking for their own health packs rather than you having to waster your own on them.

The health system really bugged me. Small health packs boost the health bar right away, so far so funky. But larger packs are stored to be used by pushing up on the dpad. This isn't as intuitive as you might expect and there were many times I was killed while in possession of four health packs, because the game doesn't always give you time to use them under fire. Surely the health system could have been implemented better than this?

To make matters worse the checkpoints in the game and the save points are pretty far apart. The combination of harsh sudden death, a tricky health system and a large gap between save points makes for an often frustrating experience. Often several particularly tough sections will be strung together without a checkpoint along the way. You'd think Halo never existed.

Tanks for the memories

One area where the game felt better than the PC Call of Duty for me was in the use of tanks. I didn't enjoy the tank sections very much in the PC game. Yet here they seemed to work. I found controlling the armoured vehicles pretty easy with the joypad and I liked the way some of the tank levels featured on-foot sections too.

There were some problems with the tank sections though – certainly in the Russian campaign the convincing events took a turn for the comical as one level turned into a big arcade shooting gallery at an airfield. And that brings me on to the most annoying feature of Finest Hour.

Yes I know that Finest Hour is not a historical document. It used history to create a scenario for a first person shooter game, rather than trying to be a dry piece of education. But that said, was there any need at all for all those anti-tank guys, really, was there?

According to Finest Hour, about quarter of all German soldiers carried around quick-reloading bazookas with infinite ammo. These crack rocket troops would be everywhere, lining every road that you may drive down in a tank. And they are tough too, always standing in the middle of open spaces, bashing away with their infinite rocket ammo until spotted and despatched with some machine gun fire. If I could pinpoint one thing that ruined the whole experience for me it was these guys.

Lightning war

Graphically we have the very definition of a mixed-bag. I was impressed with the size of some of the levels, being able to look back on Remagen from the bridge for example. Yet Finest Hour hardly seemed to push the Xbox very hard. Some nice effects were counterbalanced by some uninspiring explosions and a general lack of polish.

It looked like a very good PS2 game, and believe me, the PS2 version is quite a graphical accomplishment at times, but for an Xbox game it doesn't cut the mustard. However there's plenty to admire in the animation, with numerous death animations and variety in the motion of the troops. Though sometimes it's actually hard to tell when you've killed an enemy or how effective your weaponry is, due to elaborate death throws.

The sound effects and music are of a very high quality. There's a dramatic orchestral musical score that's clearly a cut above the usual standard in games. However like many of the other elements of the game it isn't well implemented – the music often appearing at the wrong point, the gunfire mixed out at a moment that doesn't quite work. You could tell there was an attempt to capture the way the PC game used music yet it just didn't work for me.

Armistice

I really tried hard to like Call of Duty: Finest Hour, I really did. And there are times when I was enjoying myself – when the Doom-style onslaughts gave way to some exciting duck and cover gunfights or during some of the tank battles.

But the problems with the game can be summed up in a mission to defend a factory, where failure meant game over rather than the continuation of the battle from that point on. Warfare brings its own natural flow, yet Finest Hour tried too hard to wrangle the life out of it and fill it full of hyper-skilled Nazi rocket men.