Call of Duty: Finest Hour (PS2) Gameplay "Not One Step Back"
1If you were a console player in 2004, then Call of Duty: Finest hour was probably your introduction to the Call of Duty series. I've always said that Call of Duty took the Omaha Beach scene from Medal of Honor Frontline, and made an entire gameplay style out of it where the single player is mostly focused on big setpieces, with some smaller missions in between to fill the void. I would say it was an attempt to give the players an idea of the size and scope of world war II.
The story, likewise, doesn't focus on a single allied soldier, but unfolds through the eyes of multiple soldiers in various campaigns, starting in Stalingrad, and ending as an American squad trying to take a bridge too far with a number of turret and tank scenes in between. The game is very scripted, everything feels pre-planned out in meticulous detail, but the enemy AI definitely changes their tactics a lot making each playthrough feel different. The A,I, isn't perfect, but they do a good job at harassing the player. The game, overall doesn't feel as forced in it's scripting as later Call of Duty games would. There is more openness to it's feel. The game while heavily scripted, creates a very intense feeling in it's gameplay.
The graphics are nicely detailed for a 2004 PS2 game, but the framerate suffers from constant dips. Nothing game breaking though. The overall physics feel floaty, even in the aiming controls which will take some getting used to. The music is epic, symphonic and fitting for a world War II game, but some of the gun sounds sound like pea shooters. The game's difficulty can also be a little steep, thanks to the infrequent checkpoints, meaning, dying can lead to replaying large portions of the levels.
When the game was online on the official servers, it made for some fun deathwatch action for teams or by yourself, that was, until the usual codebreaker 9 users came in to ruin it for everyone else....mister pickle!!!!
The Bottom Line: while it's a completely different game from the original Call of Duty on the PC, Finest Hour is still my favorite Call of Duty single player. It's set-pieces are by-far more memorable than any call of duty I have played since, and the scope of the story really does give you an awe-inspiring, and quite humbling idea of just how massive a conflict WWII was. Intense fire-fights in well scripted levels, a story that lets you experience the horrors of war through the eyes of soldiers from all three major members of the allies, and sometimes steep difficulty lead to a game that is memorable, and incredibly satisfying when you finally beat it.