
	Platform Playstation 2 Genre Shooter Publisher Activision Developer Spark Unlimited ESRB T (Teen) Released November 2004

- Opening gameplay segment is awesome - Some gameplay variety to mix it up with the usual run n'gun - Superb sound design - Tanks are fun - Loads of scripted events that look cool

- Loads of scripted events that have no bearing on the gameplay - Questionable team AI - Lack of checkpoints - Average graphics and dull music

Review: Killzone (PS2) Review: Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Operation Resurrection (PS2) Review: XIII (PS2)
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Call of Duty: Finest Hour

Score: 6.8 / 10

Tossing you in the role of a young Russian soldier rowing ashore a war-torn Stalingrad, Call of Duty: Finest Hour starts off on a soaring high note. The captain gives his victory speech telling, nay, ORDERING you to kill all Germans, amidst the frantic gunfire aimed towards you and your comrades. Some get killed right in front of you, others dive off the boat and are shot as traitors. You make landfall, only to be caught without a gun. You follow your commander, ducking and running for cover amidst a maelstrom of arsenal shells and machine gun fire. You soon make your way up the hill, where you get a gun, and you finally take part in World War II.

Unfortunately, it's about at this point where the game starts to go downhill.

The military-based first person shooter is a crowded genre, fierce with competition, which leaves little room for mediocrity. Where the recent Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault stumbled, there was Call of Duty available, albeit only for the PC. Not wanting to shoehorn the graphical masterpiece of the computer version to a console, Activision created an entirely

new engine and an whole new game, so Finest Hour is more of an adaptation of the PC version, rather than a straight port. From a technological standpoint, it's certainly beneficial, as there aren't any huge load times or frame rate drops usually associated with computer conversions, but a lot of other things are lost in process. While Call of Duty was handed almost unanimous praise amongst critics and fans, the PS2 version hasn't exactly fared so well.

Although it's not for lack of trying. The main draw of Call of Duty is the intensity of actually being in the center of a warzone, and it's at its best when you're taking cover from rockets and the resulting dust and shrapnel. And this is something perfectly captured within the first five minutes of the game. There's a lot of stuff going on the screen, and the PS2 actually manages to keep up the pace rather well. Graphically the game is somewhat dull, with average character models and lots of dark grasslands and uninteresting buildings, although there are some nifty crimson fire effects that illuminate the otherwise boring landscapes. And while the music is a standard issue orchestral affair, the sounds do an excellent job to transporting you to the battlefield, especially if you've got a good speaker system. So aesthetically, it's certainly competant enough and Call of Duty occasionally succeeds in replicating the fury of war.

The game controls suitably too - you can carry two weapons at a time, in addition to using the L1 button toss grenades, and keep medpacks in your inventory with you for quick healing. The triangle and circle buttons make you stand up or go prone, allowing you to duck from enemy fire in exchange for a slowly walking pace. Personally, I've always felt the PS2 analog sticks were a little awkward for first person shooters, and there aren't any sensitivity options that really makes movement feel comfortable, but with time you'll get used to them.

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The foundation is reasonably solid, but other aspects of the game aren't as well ironed. First and foremost, there's the issue of checkpoints, or rather, the lack thereof. They are something of a myth - every once in awhile, a little note pops up that clues you into their existence, but they're all so rare that it makes the whole ordeal quite frustrating. The game is fairly forgiving on the easier difficulty levels (especially in the first several levels), and in a game that tries to capture the intensity of war, you're probably

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going to want to put it on the Hard level for a better experience. So it's natural that the threat of death should be constant, but replaying huge chunks of a level after dying gets real tedious, real quick. Some stages aggravate this problem further. In an early level, you spend ten minutes sitting in a window with a sniper rifle playing Nazi Shooting Gallery. TEN MINUTES. If you miss too many,

then you lose and have to start the whole annoying process over.

But the dearth of checkpoints aren't the biggest problem. Like the sniping sequence, some of the segments are just dull, as you wander through deserted tunnels or deserted buildings and occasionally shoot some guys. If the game is at its best in the core of an intense firefight, why remove it from that context? And even then, you begin to see that even the fiercest of battles are all staged. Yes, pretty much everything is scripted. You see scores of soldiers charge straight into storms of bullets, but they're just going to get shot and killed anyway. Five years ago, this would've been awesome. But since Halo revolutionized NPC artificial intelligence, seeing this scripted behavior now feels like a bit of a cheat.

While the background soldiers play no role in the actual conflict, you're usually fighting alongside a small squadron of fellow combatants. Usually there's a commander barking orders for you too, which makes the game feel even more uncomfortably linear when you're pretty much just following your teammates. It does make you feel more involved to be doing something other than running forward and shooting, as several missions have you escorting tanks or piloting them through city streets. In fact, the levels where you control the tanks are some of the best in the game - while the controls are awkward, it is a lot of fun to storm through snowy battlefields, tossing shells at hapless enemy soldiers and watching them flip and tumble to their demise. But despite the constant companionship of allies, it still feels like you're the only person in the conflict - you rarely ever have any direct control over your teammates, and even when they engage the enemy, they're curiously terrible at it. They take cover, occasionally take some shots, and maybe knock off a soldier or two. But don't count on them too much, because they spend more time lollygagging than actually fighting. You can use your spare medkits to heal them, if you'd like, but doing so is usually a waste.

Call of Duty tries some other tactics to get you involved in the war, but they don't quite work either. The levels are structured into three campaigns: the Russians defending their homeland, the British fighting in North Africa and the Americans pushing in from the west, for a total of nineteen levels. It's an interesting way to get some differing viewpoints of various Allied soldiers, although the history lessons are contained to short vignette before the start of each set. Every few levels, you're put in the shoes of different soldiers, who are given tiny backstories at the beginning in an attempt to make the war - and thus, the killing - more personal. It's an earnest try, but none of the stories are fleshed out, and overall, just doesn't have any of the emotional impact that was probably intended.

It's not that the attempted story hurts the game, but it's simply a lost opportunity to make Call of Duty better. Which is what can be said for the entire game - where it tries to emulate a mass scale war, it ends up fumbling with its staged events and brain addled squadmates, and loses what would have made it stand out. It's still a somewhat reasonable first person shooter, which is somewhat of a rare species on the PS2. It's long enough to make a satisfying weekend rental, but short enough that it probably won't keep you occupied any longer.

- Kurt Kalata

(December 30, 2004)