Call Of Duty: Finest Hour leads you back into the World War, where you will experience epic battlefield moments in the war's most legendary conflicts. Fight alongside ordinary men who fought and died for freedom and changed the world.
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100% on RetroAchievements - Played on PS2 Emulator
Mad How big Call of Duty got starting with this gunplay? It's considerably worse than Doom Wolfenstein Quake from around the same time period. Gunplay-wise, and the slow-motion effects were plain aggravating. Additionally, the game likes to be so fucking dark that it's hard to see where to go. Did all the achievements for this on retro achievements was very easy, however this is just not a decent game in terms of gunplay or design.
Some of the cinematic scenes they stole from the PC version are reasonably ambitious for its day, but when you look at the AI, animation, movement and remember that Halo 2 came out the same year, it's harder to be so generous.
Let's get the only good parts out of the way: The Rhine crossing mission rules conceptually and mechanically, and its theme is the cherry on a generally strong score. Unlike its PC brethren, it does make an old college try at writing dialogue intent on character development. Even though the writing overall is worse than its predecessor, it does make the missions feel a little higher stakes and a little more lived in. But that's about all I can say.
The in-engine scenes just do not have the same choreography and composition of its source material. Not to mention, the original has such variety — trench warfare, espionage and infil, daring escapes, sieges. Meanwhile you spend probably 85% of Finest Hour in crumbling buildings or city streets. The North African stretch is a nice touch, but where are the fields? The villages? The snowy forests? At least we have plenty of underground tunnels!
Truly horrible character mobility. The look system has a screwy and floaty dead zone, quite unlike its contemporary console/analog stick FPS cousins, and it feels like you're walking through a swamp. Not to mention getting glued in place if you're being shredded by a buzzsaw MG42 or within 20 feet of a grenade.
The gunplay is where things get really rotten, though. Often I'd have an enemy dead in my iron sights 10 feet away and still miss. Good luck if you need to murk a sniper and you ran out of anything but MP40 ammo. I get it if you want guns to be less accurate to feel more realistic, but if you're going to design a game around that concept, you should probably not also require enemies to take 5-8 bullets to the head before they die on EASY difficulty. I truly couldn't believe how grueling the endgame was. I will say the tank movement and shooting feels relatively fine, but like almost all tank combat in gaming, it is too sluggish and imprecise to really be that exciting. And there is a LOT of tank combat here.
More than a few times, the mission trigger didn't pop and I got stuck, which meant I had to go back to the previous awfully designed checkpoint and often lose like 10-15 minutes of progress. Who designed this? CoD PC is a brutal game, but it at least acknowledges itself and gives you quicksaves and fairly frequent checkpoints.
I'm a big fan of the series and the early PC games had a cinematic quality that make them the definitive WW2 sim experience for their day. But this, this is just cash-in garbage farmed out to a team that either misconstrued or was technologically incapable to deliver what worked so well about the original.
Let's get the only good parts out of the way: The Rhine crossing mission rules conceptually and mechanically, and its theme is the cherry on a generally strong score. Unlike its PC brethren, it does make an old college try at writing dialogue intent on character development. Even though the writing overall is worse than its predecessor, it does make the missions feel a little higher stakes and a little more lived in. But that's about all I can say.
The in-engine scenes just do not have the same choreography and composition of its source material. Not to mention, the original has such variety — trench warfare, espionage and infil, daring escapes, sieges. Meanwhile you spend probably 85% of Finest Hour in crumbling buildings or city streets. The North African stretch is a nice touch, but where are the fields? The villages? The snowy forests? At least we have plenty of underground tunnels!
Truly horrible character mobility. The look system has a screwy and floaty dead zone, quite unlike its contemporary console/analog stick FPS cousins, and it feels like you're walking through a swamp. Not to mention getting glued in place if you're being shredded by a buzzsaw MG42 or within 20 feet of a grenade.
The gunplay is where things get really rotten, though. Often I'd have an enemy dead in my iron sights 10 feet away and still miss. Good luck if you need to murk a sniper and you ran out of anything but MP40 ammo. I get it if you want guns to be less accurate to feel more realistic, but if you're going to design a game around that concept, you should probably not also require enemies to take 5-8 bullets to the head before they die on EASY difficulty. I truly couldn't believe how grueling the endgame was. I will say the tank movement and shooting feels relatively fine, but like almost all tank combat in gaming, it is too sluggish and imprecise to really be that exciting. And there is a LOT of tank combat here.
More than a few times, the mission trigger didn't pop and I got stuck, which meant I had to go back to the previous awfully designed checkpoint and often lose like 10-15 minutes of progress. Who designed this? CoD PC is a brutal game, but it at least acknowledges itself and gives you quicksaves and fairly frequent checkpoints.
I'm a big fan of the series and the early PC games had a cinematic quality that make them the definitive WW2 sim experience for their day. But this, this is just cash-in garbage farmed out to a team that either misconstrued or was technologically incapable to deliver what worked so well about the original.
its aight
At first time looks like a standart port of COD 1 or 2, but Developers did a great job. This is not a standart PS2 port of COD. You can chose paths and play custom. Great work but its difficult. Developers made difficult this game so you can spend more hours and checkpoints are far beyond compared titles released in 2004. Give a try, you will like it.
This review contains spoilers
This game falls short of what it's predesessor has done.
The Story is that you follow a number of different soldiers as they fight through battles during World War 2. Same concept as the first game, but with moments of other protagonists sometimes appearing to another one, and this game didn't need to do any different than what it did.
The Characters are better than the last game, perticularly in the protagonists. They give you their backstory before the first level that you play as them for, and it's good to see different types of personalities fighting the same war. The downside is that most of the characters you don't play as are as bland as the first game. The only exceptions for me was the soldier that you follow in the very first mission of the game, he was good for what little time he had, but nothing great.
The Graphics are worse than the first game. It's slightly more pixelated, and less slightly less detailed, especially the character models. Also why do some soldiers give tasks to ones with a higher rank than them?
The Gameplay has you first person shooting, across World War 2 battles. This is the same type of great gameplay from the first game, with some changes, and some ingame cutscenes to try and give more to the characters despite what little there is. But nearly all of the changes added to this game are for the worse. Like there is no timer now on the bombs. Destroyed vehicles disappear from the scene. The Checkpoints suck. Your allies don't show up on your compass. The Friendly AI isn't as good as the first game's. The Enemy AI is awful in some moments. The props on the screen "including the red X that tells you when you hit an enemy" all feel to cartoony for a serious toned war game. Although I like the idea of using medic kits on fellow soldiers, it's pointless when the soldiers you care about the most will live regardless, leaving only the ones that have no lines to be helped. Even the final minute of the campaign where the last enemies are above a ladder that you can't get to without being shot up, having to fight off stukas without warning, and not being warned which direction the they are coming from doesn't work gameplay wise when they could come from any direction this time. The Multiplayer is mostly the same as the first game's, but with the same problems as the campaign gameplay, and I don't like why the text saying who killed and has been killed is now near the middle of the screen instead of off to the side.
The Music is the best thing in the game. It's not as awesome as the first game's, but it is still of similar quality. Michael Giacchino really puts his effort into even side adventures that a lot of people wouldn't even see. But the sound effects of some of the guns don't have the same shocking impact of the first game.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour is not a Finest Hour to it's predesessor.
The Story is that you follow a number of different soldiers as they fight through battles during World War 2. Same concept as the first game, but with moments of other protagonists sometimes appearing to another one, and this game didn't need to do any different than what it did.
The Characters are better than the last game, perticularly in the protagonists. They give you their backstory before the first level that you play as them for, and it's good to see different types of personalities fighting the same war. The downside is that most of the characters you don't play as are as bland as the first game. The only exceptions for me was the soldier that you follow in the very first mission of the game, he was good for what little time he had, but nothing great.
The Graphics are worse than the first game. It's slightly more pixelated, and less slightly less detailed, especially the character models. Also why do some soldiers give tasks to ones with a higher rank than them?
The Gameplay has you first person shooting, across World War 2 battles. This is the same type of great gameplay from the first game, with some changes, and some ingame cutscenes to try and give more to the characters despite what little there is. But nearly all of the changes added to this game are for the worse. Like there is no timer now on the bombs. Destroyed vehicles disappear from the scene. The Checkpoints suck. Your allies don't show up on your compass. The Friendly AI isn't as good as the first game's. The Enemy AI is awful in some moments. The props on the screen "including the red X that tells you when you hit an enemy" all feel to cartoony for a serious toned war game. Although I like the idea of using medic kits on fellow soldiers, it's pointless when the soldiers you care about the most will live regardless, leaving only the ones that have no lines to be helped. Even the final minute of the campaign where the last enemies are above a ladder that you can't get to without being shot up, having to fight off stukas without warning, and not being warned which direction the they are coming from doesn't work gameplay wise when they could come from any direction this time. The Multiplayer is mostly the same as the first game's, but with the same problems as the campaign gameplay, and I don't like why the text saying who killed and has been killed is now near the middle of the screen instead of off to the side.
The Music is the best thing in the game. It's not as awesome as the first game's, but it is still of similar quality. Michael Giacchino really puts his effort into even side adventures that a lot of people wouldn't even see. But the sound effects of some of the guns don't have the same shocking impact of the first game.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour is not a Finest Hour to it's predesessor.