Call of Duty: Finest Hour preview

Stalingrad lies shrouded ahead of you. You’re in a flimsy little boat, travelling down the mighty river Volga. At the opposite end of the boat sits a political commisar, yelling trite, empty phrases about how you and your army comrades have to stop the German invasion of Mother Russia, and how you should just kill as many Germans as humanly possible. But the only thing on your mind is the all pervasive roar of German Stuka dive bombers constantly rushing from the skies, killing hundreds of your allies before they even reach the shore.

Sound familiar? Yes, this could actually have been a description of the first Stalingrad mission in Call of Duty for the PC. But instead, it’s the first mission of Call of Duty: Finest Hour for Xbox, GameCube and PS2. And the similarities stop right there.

A simple crossover

The Stalingrad mission is meant as a crossover to the PC version. You’ll get to see some of the same things, but this time, you take the role of a female sniper, which means your objectives in the war torn city will be somewhat different. In addition to Soviet missions, some will take place in Northern Africa and others in Europe. The developers, Spark Unlimited, want to make it clear that this is a standalone game and in no way a PC conversion.

The missions, levels and characters are entirely new. For instance, you’ll find yourself playing as a soldier of the 761st Black Panther armoured battalion. This was the only battalion in the US Army which consisted entirely of African American soldiers. They met with a lot of resistance from certain parts of US military command, because it was believed that blacks were not smart enough to operate tanks properly. But this prejudice was brought to shame by the soldiers, who assisted in the liberation of more than thirty cities, multiple KZ-camps and four airfields, as well as conquering 461 cars/trucks, 34 tanks and 112 heavy cannons. During a three-day battle in 1944, they KIA’d 4000 German soldiers. The background history of the game is indeed an interesting one.

200 soldiers onscreen on the PS2 – insane

During the demonstration of the Stalingrad mission, I had to rub my eyes several times. The game was running on a PS2, but displayed no fewer soldiers at any one time than Call of Duty for the PC. I hear that Finest Hour is able to handle 200 soldiers onscreen at a time and this gives a whole new sensation of size to the larger battles, such as Stalingrad, especially when compared to the lacklustre Medal of Honor efforts we’ve had to put up with lately. In comparison with Call of Duty: Finest Hour, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun stacks up as well as a £10 watch from the supermarket does to a genuine Rolex.

It is incredible that such things can be achieved on the RAM-deficient PS2. Granted, the graphics lack some of the detail found in the PC game, but the atmosphere is actually better. Stalingrad now looks far more sombre and dark, with a dull red glow looming in the sky, caused by the smoke and fires everywhere.

Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Xbox)

The number of soldiers is unimportant if there is no interaction, though, yet Finest Hour still manages to shine. I watched a sequence in which several hundred Russian soldiers attack an MG42 machine gun nest and when you sneak around the German flank and take them out, your comrades stop and yell out in celebration. This really gives you a sense of partaking in something real.

I was quite sceptical before the demonstration – not least because of my horrible rendezvous with Medal of Honor: Rising Sun some months ago. But Finest Hour really looks to be a decent game. But decent is one thing and brilliant is another. We’ll have to wait until it is released for Xbox, PS2 and GameCube later this year to see if it rises to the latter status.


Source: Boomtown DK
English version by: Jonatan A. Allin (neonwolf)