Call of Duty: Finest Hour

Written by D'Marcus Beatty  on October 19, 2004

Final Glimpse: Calling gamers back in time to WWIIЕYet again.

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Let's face it. First Person Shooters are a really popular genre right now. With Halo 2 and Half Life 2 at the top of many gamers' wish lists, and a deluge of titles on the way, running the gamut from Goldeneye: Rogue Agent to Killzone to Conker: Live and Reloaded, there is definitely no dearth of FPS titles on the horizon. Even within the FPS field, developers and gamers alike particularly enjoy living through past wars, generally the World Wars and, more recently, the Vietnam War. The upcoming Call of Duty: Finest Hour is bringing gamers back to WWII, but, instead of rehashing the formula that has been used so many times before, Finest Hour is exploring new territory, impossible as it may seem, for the over-saturated WWII FPS games.

At first Glancce, Call of Duty: Finest Hour may seem like the typical WWII FPS, but it does a number of things differently. First, instead of following in the shoes of one super-soldier, Finest Hour puts players in the shoes of multiple heroes, each playing a much different role throughout the story. Players will get to play with a total of six playable characters from the British, American, and Russian armies. By utilizing these different armies and perspectives, Finest Hour will allow gamers to take on roles that have previously been overlooked, such as a female sniper for the Russian army or as a black soldier for the 761st Black Panthers Tank division. In addition to previously unnoticed characters, Finest Hour will also allow a glimpse into unexplored territory, such as the British armies attacks in Northern Africa.

Another way that Finest Hour will set itself apart from the other, similar titles is its downplaying of the aforementioned super-soldier syndrome that other games in the genre suffer from. Instead of portraying your character as one person who won an entire war single-handedly, Finest Hour instead has your character as part of a team. You can even choose to unselfishly use some of your stockpiled medkits on fallen allies instead of saving them for yourself.

The audio is important in any video game, but for an FPS, it is doubly so. Since the game is shown from the protagonist's perspective, this type of game has always been, by it's very nature, about pulling the player into the experience. Great audio is essential to complete this formula, and fortunately, seems to be shaping up nicely for Finest Hour. One creative utilization of this is the fact that when a grenade goes off near your character, the sound is diminished temporarily, similar to the effect in the closing scene of Saving Private Ryan.

There has been a tremendous amount of research involved to make this game as historically accurate as possible. Even better than that, the team that is putting the game together is composed of almost thirty members from the Medal of Honor team. Medal of Honor, though lately under appreciated by critics and gamers alike, is unquestionably responsible for making the WWII FPS genre into the rolling juggernaut that it has become by making undeniably great and immersive games. With both this attention to detail and experience under its belt, Call of Duty has a good chance of being a great title.