Call of Duty finest hour is a first person shooter developed by Spark Unlimited, who is new to Call of Duty. The original Call of Duty was released by Infinity Ward, it was a fantastic shooter, but this is a difficult shooter that isn't very fun because of it's difficulty. In Call of Duty finest hour you play as many different people and the same British, Soviet Union, and American campaigns. These campaigns are all in different length, but the British campaign is really too short. The game itself has no real story just like the other Call of Duty's, but in the previous Call of Duty's you'd play as 1 soldier on each different campaign. In this game you play as many different people in each campaign, so it's real difficult to really care about the soldiers at all. Even worse, most of these battles your in is in the original Call of Duty if not in other WW 2 games and well, frankly, does a much better job than Call of Duty finest hour. The game has you doing many things, most of which, aren't all that much fun. You will do certain tasks such as, transport tanks through urban areas that is insanely hard (probably the hardest missions of the game because for some reason the tanks get beat down so easily and they sometimes get stuck where you have to go in front of them and risk getting shot at for them to keep moving forward). You have to snipe down enemies for 10 minutes strait. Thrilling. Tank missions can also be found here but the lackluster gameplay makes them tough to enjoy. You also do standard shoot em up missions too. The game doesn't get to creative and the missions and levels are all pretty linear. The graphics in the game isn't to great, textures are a bit bland and the environments are pretty repetitive. Still it looks pretty clean and theres no real pop in or clipping. The game has a really tough challenge to it, you start out playing as the Soviet's and well, there campaign is pretty easy, then all of a sudden, the British campaign gets insanely hard and the American campaign is even harder. The shooting isn't to much fun, but the game at least tells you when your hitting somebody by having this red on your screen whenever you hit an enemy. This is really helpful since shooting is so difficult in this game. The weapons are really tough to control and the recoil is crazy. The game is pretty much broken and your enemies are pretty stupid and superficial, especially when compared to the brilliant enemy A.I. in the original, but then again Spark Unlimited could never deliver the experience that Infinity Ward so mastered. Your allies are also pretty dumb. They don't do as much damage as in the original, but just like in the original you almost always have allies with you and they will die shortly, although you never really get back ups like in the original, so you could find yourself alone quite a bit. There are a few different difficulties to choose from, but since all of them are really tough, it doesn't matter which one you choose from. Even easy is pretty hard and you have to be the best WW 2 shooter fan to actually be able to play on the harder difficulties. The game does have a few interesting things. One of them is this health pack inventory system. You can have up to 6 health packs and you can use them when you want. This is great since you will usually get health packs at the wrong time when you don't need them. There's also health packs that enemies drop, so the game isn't to bad overall. You also get the same scope view of a weapon, any one of them, just like in the original. This is great because the recoil can get crazy and this really helps balance the weapon so you can fire properly. You also have some tank missions which are descent and actually a bit better than the original. That's because the original was so difficult with tank driving missions that this game actually isn't to bad, it's still pretty tough, but it was the only real bad thing about the original Call of Duty. The game has a pretty decent campaign. It's mainly because of the bad checkpoint system and no autosave that makes this game so tough to enjoy. You can't really experiment with your enemies because you don't want to restart at the beginning of the level. After you finish the campaign there isn't to much to come back to mainly because the mulitplayer isn't to much fun either. There's Xbox Live but it still isn't worth a purchase. The sound in the game is O.K. The game has pretty good weapon sounds and some pretty good voice acting. No music really plays either. The only real memorable moments your going to have with this game is how frustrating you had with it and how tough of a shooter it is, the game isn't worth a purchase, but for shooter or WW 2 fans, maybe a rental just because it might be fun to try a challenge, but don't be surprised if you get angry and what to throw out your Xbox.
Other Helpful Reviews for Call of Duty: Finest Hour
another short review here! gameplay - this is a fps what do you expect nothing special but no problems like lag or responsiveness either, well done activision!. graphics - a little dated but it all looks good and i... Read Full Review
By All-Madden09 | Review Date: Jan 17, 2010 | XBOX
Ok so COD: Finest Hour, And is a great intro into the series. Campaign: So as I said this game has a great storyline and very historic. The Russian third of the game Is focused on the battle of Stalingrad. The Britis... Read Full Review
