1/5 ★ – cha0sknightmare's review of Call of Duty: Finest Hour.

Call of Duty: Finest Hour is a console spin off, based on the original PC only Call of Duty. It has some good ideas on paper, and even comes out the gate with a super strong first impression, a much darker, grittier and more atmospheric overall approach, that in many ways feels better than the original game. Unfortunately, frustrating execution and flawed game design undermines all of what it sets out to achieve. Like the original Call of Duty, Finest Hour splits its campaign across three fronts, The Russians, The British, and The Americans. Each campaign drops you into a set of loosely connected missions, ranging from standard shootouts to tank battles. There’s a decent amount of variety both in locales and gameplay objectives, the mission design as a whole, feels less formulaic than Call of Duty 1 and surprisingly even Call of Duty 2. Some of the levels here are actually really well framed, with a solid atmosphere and cinematic ambition, especially for the game's time. Unfortunately, shooting, arguably the most important element of the game, is where the game starts to unravel, gunplay is barely functional, completely lacking the snap and impact that defined the original. Granted, this is a PlayStation 2 game, so you’re going from mouse to thumbstick, but by this point, we already had multiple examples of tight, responsive FPS controls on console. Aiming here feels unreasonably sluggish and unresponsive, enemy feedback is vague, and hit detection is wildly inconsistent. It drains any real sense of satisfaction from combat, turning firefights into drawn out infuriating slugfests. You’ll tire quickly, and end up spraying bullets in the general direction of enemies, hoping something lands, just so you can move on. Combine all this with all with an absurd checkpoint system, and the levels of pure frustration present are head and shoulders above anything experienced in the original game. It’s a shame the gameplay experience is so weak, because I honestly believe Finest Hour finds a way to capture the chaos and desperation of WWII in a way that feels more raw than its PC counterpart. As you struggle through, you’ll get constant glimpses of what the game it wanted to be, atmospheric with a darker pallete and tone, and more cinematic with set peices and a real sense of claustrophobia. Sadly, these moments are few and far between, buried under clunky mechanics and uneven design that rarely let the experience breathe. Overall It makes for a hard game to play, an even harder game to recommend, and an overwhelmingly missed opportunity.