Discussing Call of Duty: Finest Hour is frustrating... and bizzare. It's gunplay is a weird hybrid of old school FPS and modern FPS. It looks great and sounds even better, but suffers from some severe jank at times. It's a game that presents WW2 in a captivating fashion, but it's terrible AI and poor scripting frequently take you out of the experience.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour is the "console" version of the original CoD. It's a product of a bygone era when consoles received unique versions of PC exclusives. It's an era I miss, simply because we got to see games shape themselves to suit the unique home console experience. It's a philosophy that would be seem outdated today, but it is something I appreciate looking back on. There was more misses then hits, and a hell of a lot of "in-betweens".
Finest Hour therefore finds itself in this spot. Visually speaking, this is still a good looking game nearly 20 years later. But you have to unearth this game from it's dark default state to actually appreciate what you're seeing.
Compared to the PC original, Spark Unlimited seems to have opted for a more Hollywood approach to it's story telling. Every act is bookended with a documentary style video, and between levels we're introduced to soliders that give their lifestory before we're thrusted into action. Sometimes before that starts, you're treated to an in-game cutscene. Facial animations and voice acting here are impressive, at times. But the soundtrack is even better. Giacchino's score outshines the game, adding some much needed gravitas to the what-would-be duller moments. It features an equal mixture of harrowing and bombastic composition. The final level, in particular has a standout track. With such nice presentation, I found myself getting into the story a bit at times. But that was short lived.
People can act stupid. Very stupid at times. But if you're in a World War of all things, my wager is that you'd be sharp. In Finest Hour, you're encouraged to work with your AI buddies (or inferiors, depending on your ranking), but they are dumb. The privates you have with you swing into battle like their invincible bullet sponges and get themselves gunned down. Tough luck, because they're the only people that can shoot at the enemy and deal some damage. Meanwhile, as you're in the midst of that 10-20 enemy ambush, you can witness your Cpl. melee fighting an enemy while getting shot at by 5 of them. Or how about you wanna move up the stairs but Cpl. Forgettable is blocking the way? Get ready to melee punch him 5-10 times so he can get back to his well-assigned pathing. Sometimes he may even forget he's supposed to follow you, in which cases he conviniently despawns and spawns right behind you. The enemies can do that sometimes as well. Whomever it may be, their pathing will be certainely well-assigned, because they are only going that way. Enemies be damned.
You do the same? Well then on Hard difficulty you're gunned down in seconds. My recommendation: Play this thing on Normal. Or at the very least, play it on Hard until you realise how broken the game can be, and then play on Normal so it feels like Easy. I played it on Hard however, it was at parts challenging but a lot of time was spent figuring how to progress so I could stand back and watch the AI kill a bunch of enemies for me. If you looked at my gameplay, you'd be wondering if I was playing a homebrew of Arma on the PS2. Well, my cautioun is really due to the terrible balance in this game. Checkpoints are sparse, with only one per level (only one level has 2), so get ready for major backtracking so you can experience the terrible gunplay on display since Sgt. Dehart wanted to go Rambo and ultimately found himself killed. Again, and again.
The guns here control weird, despite feeling unqiue from one another. Not that it matters, as I was fighting the unreliable lock on and awfully slow camera to actually land my shots. That's not to mention the weird scopes. Like the sniper rifle, which could fit like 5 heads onto it's one reticle. I found myself disappointed with these tiny things, because they seem like simple things that could be improved upon. But when you top this all off unreliable hit markers too, I was just left annoyed. This lack of polish to gunplay is Finest Hour's achilles heel, and is what is holding it back from being a truly good game.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour is fine. You're gonna be done with it in 6-9 hours. I enjoyed my time with it, when it actually was working. The thing that sucks though, is that there is a lot of potential here. When I started the Soviet campaign and was greeted with what looks like the Gates of Hell, I was excited to see what I was in store for. But instead, the terrible controls and AI really made it all come crashing down. This could've been CoD's Finest Hour, if it spent a little more time in bootcamp. I give this game a very cautious reccomendation, if you can deal with the negatives.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour is the "console" version of the original CoD. It's a product of a bygone era when consoles received unique versions of PC exclusives. It's an era I miss, simply because we got to see games shape themselves to suit the unique home console experience. It's a philosophy that would be seem outdated today, but it is something I appreciate looking back on. There was more misses then hits, and a hell of a lot of "in-betweens".
Finest Hour therefore finds itself in this spot. Visually speaking, this is still a good looking game nearly 20 years later. But you have to unearth this game from it's dark default state to actually appreciate what you're seeing.
Compared to the PC original, Spark Unlimited seems to have opted for a more Hollywood approach to it's story telling. Every act is bookended with a documentary style video, and between levels we're introduced to soliders that give their lifestory before we're thrusted into action. Sometimes before that starts, you're treated to an in-game cutscene. Facial animations and voice acting here are impressive, at times. But the soundtrack is even better. Giacchino's score outshines the game, adding some much needed gravitas to the what-would-be duller moments. It features an equal mixture of harrowing and bombastic composition. The final level, in particular has a standout track. With such nice presentation, I found myself getting into the story a bit at times. But that was short lived.
People can act stupid. Very stupid at times. But if you're in a World War of all things, my wager is that you'd be sharp. In Finest Hour, you're encouraged to work with your AI buddies (or inferiors, depending on your ranking), but they are dumb. The privates you have with you swing into battle like their invincible bullet sponges and get themselves gunned down. Tough luck, because they're the only people that can shoot at the enemy and deal some damage. Meanwhile, as you're in the midst of that 10-20 enemy ambush, you can witness your Cpl. melee fighting an enemy while getting shot at by 5 of them. Or how about you wanna move up the stairs but Cpl. Forgettable is blocking the way? Get ready to melee punch him 5-10 times so he can get back to his well-assigned pathing. Sometimes he may even forget he's supposed to follow you, in which cases he conviniently despawns and spawns right behind you. The enemies can do that sometimes as well. Whomever it may be, their pathing will be certainely well-assigned, because they are only going that way. Enemies be damned.
You do the same? Well then on Hard difficulty you're gunned down in seconds. My recommendation: Play this thing on Normal. Or at the very least, play it on Hard until you realise how broken the game can be, and then play on Normal so it feels like Easy. I played it on Hard however, it was at parts challenging but a lot of time was spent figuring how to progress so I could stand back and watch the AI kill a bunch of enemies for me. If you looked at my gameplay, you'd be wondering if I was playing a homebrew of Arma on the PS2. Well, my cautioun is really due to the terrible balance in this game. Checkpoints are sparse, with only one per level (only one level has 2), so get ready for major backtracking so you can experience the terrible gunplay on display since Sgt. Dehart wanted to go Rambo and ultimately found himself killed. Again, and again.
The guns here control weird, despite feeling unqiue from one another. Not that it matters, as I was fighting the unreliable lock on and awfully slow camera to actually land my shots. That's not to mention the weird scopes. Like the sniper rifle, which could fit like 5 heads onto it's one reticle. I found myself disappointed with these tiny things, because they seem like simple things that could be improved upon. But when you top this all off unreliable hit markers too, I was just left annoyed. This lack of polish to gunplay is Finest Hour's achilles heel, and is what is holding it back from being a truly good game.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour is fine. You're gonna be done with it in 6-9 hours. I enjoyed my time with it, when it actually was working. The thing that sucks though, is that there is a lot of potential here. When I started the Soviet campaign and was greeted with what looks like the Gates of Hell, I was excited to see what I was in store for. But instead, the terrible controls and AI really made it all come crashing down. This could've been CoD's Finest Hour, if it spent a little more time in bootcamp. I give this game a very cautious reccomendation, if you can deal with the negatives.