We're giving away two copies of Call of Duty: Finest Hour (XBOX)
The features of the game:
Cinematic fever of war:
Play through epic battlefield moments that thrust you into the front lines of World War II’s most intense battles, with the sights and sounds of war echoing all around you. Take on the Nazi war machine through 12 authentic combat missions across four countries along the war-torn eastern, North African, and western fronts. Missions range from large-scale conflicts featuring hundreds of soldiers to coordinated tactical assaults featuring sabotage, stealth, sniper, and vehicle-based combat missions.
Brothers in arms:
Experience the camaraderie of a squad, bound together through the chaos of battle. Through advanced A.I., your squad will act like a trained military unit with authentic military tactics, laying down suppression fire, providing cover fire, and coordinating attacks on enemy positions. Your squad will be comprised of soldiers from a variety of backgrounds, with distinct personalities and roles to play on your missions. As you progress through the game, you’ll experience the war from six unique player perspectives and through each character’s own personal and patriotic journey.
Allied front:
Relive the war from multiple perspectives—through the eyes of American, British, or Russian soldiers. Begin your campaign as a raw Russian conscript, thrown into the harrowing battle of Stalingrad. Take on the role of a British PPA Commando, sent on daring raids in North Africa. Battle Nazi tank forces throughout Belgium as an American tank commander.
Realistic weapons: With your opponents, command an arsenal of more than 30 authentic WWII armaments from the Russian, British, American, and German armories, including pistols, machine guns, sniper rifles, and grenades.
Online multiplayer:
Go on Xbox Live™ for Axis-versus-Allies team-based multiplayer gameplay online. Choose your side and work together with players from around the world to eliminate enemies and complete mission objectives. Choose from a variety of team-based scenarios or be the last man standing in Team Deathmatch. Call out to allies or enemies with voice support.
There are so many different types of combat the game never gets repetitive. Go online and join a team death match game to make some friends (and enemies) .
The saving grace of Call of Duty: Finest Hour is the gameplay. The storyline and action that follows keeps the game challenging, with options to fire regular weapons, operate tanks, even some hand to hand combat. While capturing pillboxes you can use single fire weapons, machine guns and even throw grenades at your enemies. All the while you are guiding through the game by friendly comrades who give you direction and even fall while in the line of duty. The controls take a bit of getting used to if you are not used to a first person shooter type of game but thankfully you can go to the settings menu and personalize and save the controls to your personal preference.
While it is fun to shoot while crouching and follow comrades into battle, one frustrating point to the game is the fact that it takes forever to reach safe points during missions where you will start again should you die. Seeing as how it sometimes takes 1 or 2 tries to figure our a particular mission you sometimes spend 20 minutes blasting away enemies only to have to do it all over again.
Again the realism of the battle scenes keeps you engrossed enough to want to keep playing. The real heroes who fought never had the opportunity to start over again.
Experienced gamers used to first person shooters could probably mow through the missions fairly quickly once they master the controls. Although shooting wouldn’t be too much of a problem dodging enemy fire and staying alive would provide a different challenge all on its own. The 12 missions are fun to play and require concentration since there is so much going on all around you.
Call of Duty Finest Hour gets bonus points for brining the War right to your XBOX with originality carried over in the ongoing series. The game play is similar to other first person shooters but original for the format it is presented in and the different genres with which you can play. An intense brand of war like fun.
Even though the graphics don’t live up to the PC counterpart, Call of Duty: Finest Hour is well worth the price and offers hours of intense combat and strategy. All this and no numb feeling in your right arm trying to aim to fire with a mouse. Even though consoles don’t have the computing power of today’s new gaming PC’s, Call of Duty still holds up fairly well on the Xbox. For the PS2, its a great buy since its enters the market as one of the top shooters that supports on-line broadband play, and looks good on the system.
There is not much time to rest during missions and even the cinematics are intense. Going into and out of some of WWII’s most intense battles will keep you coming back for more. If you can get by the average graphics and a couple of A.I. wobbles you’ll have a great time playing this game. If you are a fan of the series, it is a must have otherwise it’s a fairly solid title that shines on the PS2 and GameCube, and moderately impresses for XBox.
SYNOPSIS:
Call of Duty Finest Hour puts you, the player in the midst of World War II from three unique perspectives. Each of the American, British and Russian sides are yours for the taking as the Allies battle the evil axis powers. With incredible cinematics, awesome gameplay and intense action, you will easily get engrossed into the action. Whether firing a Browning Automatic Rifle or driving a Russian Tank you’ll be in the thick of the realistic warlike action Call of Duty has to offer. There are a couple of A.I. bugs and some orientation issues that need to be worked out. The gameplay more than makes up for it.
FEATURE LIST
The features of the game:
Cinematic fever of war:
Play through epic battlefield moments that thrust you into the front lines of World War II’s most intense battles, with the sights and sounds of war echoing all around you. Take on the Nazi war machine through 12 authentic combat missions across four countries along the war-torn eastern, North African, and western fronts. Missions range from large-scale conflicts featuring hundreds of soldiers to coordinated tactical assaults featuring sabotage, stealth, sniper, and vehicle-based combat missions.
Brothers in arms:
Experience the camaraderie of a squad, bound together through the chaos of battle. Through advanced A.I., your squad will act like a trained military unit with authentic military tactics, laying down suppression fire, providing cover fire, and coordinating attacks on enemy positions. Your squad will be comprised of soldiers from a variety of backgrounds, with distinct personalities and roles to play on your missions. As you progress through the game, you’ll experience the war from six unique player perspectives and through each character’s own personal and patriotic journey.
Allied front:
Relive the war from multiple perspectives—through the eyes of American, British, or Russian soldiers. Begin your campaign as a raw Russian conscript, thrown into the harrowing battle of Stalingrad. Take on the role of a British PPA Commando, sent on daring raids in North Africa. Battle Nazi tank forces throughout Belgium as an American tank commander.
Realistic weapons: With your opponents, command an arsenal of more than 30 authentic WWII armaments from the Russian, British, American, and German armories, including pistols, machine guns, sniper rifles, and grenades.
Online multiplayer:
Go on Xbox Live™ for Axis-versus-Allies team-based multiplayer gameplay online. Choose your side and work together with players from around the world to eliminate enemies and complete mission objectives. Choose from a variety of team-based scenarios or be the last man standing in Team Deathmatch. Call out to allies or enemies with voice support.
There are so many different types of combat the game never gets repetitive. Go online and join a team death match game to make some friends (and enemies) .
GRAPHICS
The Graphics in Call of Duty are somewhat bland and linear. The cinematics, although impressive to watch, aren’t much more impressive than the game itself. Having seen Call of Duty on the PC, the Xbox version pales in comparison. The comprehensive feel of the overall well theme is captured very well as concussion grenades, artillery and bullets are whizzing by. Nevertheless, the PS2 and GameCube editions show off better-than-average graphics an action.
SOUND
Concussion grenades, blurry vision, and machine gun fire all around you! An impressive barrage of sound from comrades screaming for help, to explosive tank fire power. Presented in Dolby Digital sound I found myself ducking a couple of times trying to dodge incoming shells! The low frequency sounds of tanks rumbling by and airplanes overhead shook the room. Perhaps I should have turn the surround sound volume down a bit. The neighbors would’ve appreciated that…
GAME PLAY
The saving grace of Call of Duty: Finest Hour is the gameplay. The storyline and action that follows keeps the game challenging, with options to fire regular weapons, operate tanks, even some hand to hand combat. While capturing pillboxes you can use single fire weapons, machine guns and even throw grenades at your enemies. All the while you are guiding through the game by friendly comrades who give you direction and even fall while in the line of duty. The controls take a bit of getting used to if you are not used to a first person shooter type of game but thankfully you can go to the settings menu and personalize and save the controls to your personal preference.
While it is fun to shoot while crouching and follow comrades into battle, one frustrating point to the game is the fact that it takes forever to reach safe points during missions where you will start again should you die. Seeing as how it sometimes takes 1 or 2 tries to figure our a particular mission you sometimes spend 20 minutes blasting away enemies only to have to do it all over again.
Again the realism of the battle scenes keeps you engrossed enough to want to keep playing. The real heroes who fought never had the opportunity to start over again.
ONLINE / MULTIPLAYER
Experienced gamers used to first person shooters could probably mow through the missions fairly quickly once they master the controls. Although shooting wouldn’t be too much of a problem dodging enemy fire and staying alive would provide a different challenge all on its own. The 12 missions are fun to play and require concentration since there is so much going on all around you.
Call of Duty Finest Hour gets bonus points for brining the War right to your XBOX with originality carried over in the ongoing series. The game play is similar to other first person shooters but original for the format it is presented in and the different genres with which you can play. An intense brand of war like fun.
OVERALL IMPRESSION
Even though the graphics don’t live up to the PC counterpart, Call of Duty: Finest Hour is well worth the price and offers hours of intense combat and strategy. All this and no numb feeling in your right arm trying to aim to fire with a mouse. Even though consoles don’t have the computing power of today’s new gaming PC’s, Call of Duty still holds up fairly well on the Xbox. For the PS2, its a great buy since its enters the market as one of the top shooters that supports on-line broadband play, and looks good on the system.
There is not much time to rest during missions and even the cinematics are intense. Going into and out of some of WWII’s most intense battles will keep you coming back for more. If you can get by the average graphics and a couple of A.I. wobbles you’ll have a great time playing this game. If you are a fan of the series, it is a must have otherwise it’s a fairly solid title that shines on the PS2 and GameCube, and moderately impresses for XBox.
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