I was excited to try Call of Duty: Finest Hour. I heard many great things about it, and not being much of a PC gamer, when it came out for PS2 I snatched it up soon after. While expecting it to lose a little in the translation, as often happens with PC to console ports, I was not expecting the level of bugs and frustration that make it seem like the game had been hurried through quality control in haphazard fashion. Like the similar Medal of Honor series, this game takes place in WWII Europe during the battle to defeat Germany. Starting at Russia's repelling of the Nazis from Stalingrad, advancing to the British campaign in Africa, and ending with the USA getting Germany in a strangle hold during the war's final week, the story telling narrative is a refreshing break from the typical "guide a guy through the war" scenario. And within each country you will play as a number of different characters, each storyline segueing nicely into the next. The sound is also another, and sadly perhaps the only other, bright spot of this game. Sadly, the problems in this game do not even wait for the game to start, as I found it impossible to view the alternate control schemes that the manual mentions. The manual itself is sorely lacking, with many on screen icons and the health bar for the tank missions never explained. Bugs range from a mission that freezes during reloading if you fail to achieve at least one of the many objectives before dying, to the game-long problem of allies who throw grenades on trajectories that aren't high enough to clear obstacles in front of them, leaving the grenade to explode at your feet, especially irritating when someone you're charged with keeping alive does this, ending the mission. This is exacerbated by the fact that the sound of a grenade landing near you is nearly identical to the sound of certain shell casings hitting the pavement, leaving you never quite knowing if you are in danger or not. Combined with your allies' tendency to block your path, come to aid you inconsistently, and turn around and run away at full speed, often disappearing from view, if you backtrack even a single step, you fight the assisting AI nearly as much as the enemy AI. Most missions are standard "on-the-ground" combat fare, but gunned Jeep and tank missions keep things interesting. However, while not a bug, the lack of either the ability to save at will or sufficient checkpoints make some missions very unfriendly, and combined with some of the above bugs, completion of some missions simply makes you feel like you finally were lucky enough to get by rather than giving you a sense of accomplishment. The inclusion of "coward moments" when the framerate slows and the sound is muffled to simulate being scared by a nearby blast is neat at first, but grows tiresome as the game progresses. The graphics are fairly good, but could easily be better. On a par with war games released two years prior for this system, and occasional graphics-handling glitches will fling a dead enemy clear out of a building on a straight horizontal line until he exits the screen on the opposite side. The game does truly shine in the sound department. If you have a surround sound system, you will hear bullets whizzing past your head and explosions at all corners of the room. The addition of online multiplayer does add extra value to the title, but if it's as buggy as single player, that extra value may not be so great. Still, the whole package just feels off in so many ways. It clearly needed more development time and more testing. If you must play this game, rent it, don't buy it.
Other Helpful Reviews for Call of Duty: Finest Hour
The Good: +Music is awesome +Sound effects are pretty good +Storyline is surprisingly good for COD The Bad: -Frustrating A.I. -Terrible art direction -Doesn't feel like Call of Duty at all -Gameplay is uninspir... Read Full Review
This game is soo fun i played it none stop for 10 hours and i beat it. the levels are soo cool there very fun this game is a very relistic war game. there is alot of guns you can get and you can get health its cool game.... Read Full Review
