Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Xbox)

You can, in Call of Duty, play as first a Russian, then a British and then American soldier. So there is a little more variety - you fight in a wider range of theatres and specific historical battles (including Stalingrad, desert warfare with Popski's Private Army, Remagen Bridge, the Bulge and Aachen - though with little variety - no bad weather, no night missions) and each time you play as different characters, including, interestingly, a leader in an exclusively black (as in African-American) tank group. There was, in the missions involving Chuck Walker and Benny Church, a feel that you're part of a small unit of characters with some familiarity and continuity.

Kit-wise you get to use a large range of firearms and other toys from all sides including Panzerschrecks, gammon bombs, teller mines, Brens, BARs etc. but curiously no bazooka or PIAT. You get also to operate a T34 and a Sherman and ride shotgun in a jeep. The controls are OK if you accept that you're playing on a console; FPS games like Call of Duty really need a mouse for manouvreability, using the thumbstick on the Xbox gamepad makes turning to face - and aiming at - enemies either excruciatingly slow or uncontrollably fast. The other controls are simple and effective though - for shooting, throwing grenades, changing weapons and changing stance. However...the way health packs work is crazy: you have a health bar at the side of the screen - and you pick health packs up along the way (and there are ridiculously few) which you have to pro-actively apply to keep your health up. These are NOT applied automatically when your helth bar runs down. Consequently, you can have up to 4 health packs sitting idle in your rucksack and yet still get killed if your health bar runs out. The game is so intense, and you're so busy that having to constantly keep half an eye on your health whilst fighting again seems really gratuitously hard. There are also far more enemy soldiers on screen than in MOH - and the fire is consequently withering at times. The result is that you're just too busy trying to survive and succeed to really spend time appreciating the graphics or exploring too much. There are undoutedly some nice touches here (like when everything happens briefly in slow motion when you catch a particularly nasty hit, or the great grenade effects), but really you've seen it all before. Enemy AI is OK, friendly AI is good too and your comrades are a genuine boon to fight along side you. There are problems in enclosed spaces however, when you can't get out of the way of stick grenades because your buddies are blocking your exit, but generally it's acceptable.

The maps are actually pretty small but well rendered, and the missions quite short. However, they *seem* to be impossibly big and long because of the sheer uncompromising difficulty of the game, bordering on frustratingly unfair - by virtue of health and save points being very few and far between, not to mention constantly respawning enemy in the places you've already cleared. This leads inevitably to much repetition - you will end up getting 80% of the way to a checkpoint many, many times before you finally succeed. There are 'checkpoints' and 'save points'. A save point occurs at the successful completion of each mission, and this is where you restart next time you play. Checkpoints occur at some places on a map during a mission (if you're lucky!) and, if you get killed in the mission, then this is where you restart from. BUT...unless you subsequently complete the mission in this game session, your checkpoints are not saved. So next time you switch on your Xbox, you're right back to the start of the mission again! Consequently you MUST complete a mission in a session...your progress will not be saved unless you do...and so you can't just dip into this game and play for 15 minutes...if you're playing then you're there for the duration!

Let me give you an example of how hard this game is; in a latter mission, 'Into the Heartland' you begin the mission at one (Allied occupied) end of the Remagen bridge. You have to make your way over the bridge...starting with very little health. You fight your way desperately across the infested bridge (finding a couple of health packs on the way). If you reach the German end of the bridge, you're faced with a broadside of machine gun nests pouring fire down the bridge. If you manage to neutralize these, you then have to fight your way to the top of one of the large towers at the German end of the bridge. This is intense, close-up fighting as you make your way through the labyrinth inside the tower (proliferation of health packs in the labyrinth varies from zero to barely enough). Then *if* you finally reach the top of the tower you have to climb up a step ladder through a small hatch to take out four Germans (where you're very exposed and absolutely peppered) on the roof. If you manage to take these enemy out, THEN you have to man an AA gun and fight off endless waves of Stukas coming from all directions and strafing you mercilessly. From start to finish, this level can take you up to 40 minutes of constant hard work - constantly short of health. At no point is there a checkpoint!!!!! If you get killed, you have to start all over again. Challenging is one thing, but this game really does seem gratuitously and unfairly hard, leading to huge frustration and huge, pointless repetition. You will not really 'enjoy' playing this game - you'll just be 'relieved'...and you will constantly feel like packing it in.

Yes it has it's faults, it's pretty short and the friendly AI is shoddy to say the least but stick the dificulty on hard from the start and you will add a few more hours to your well earned cash. If you are looking for something explosive to immerse yourself into instead of shooting covenant this game comes HIGHLY recommended.

Into the fray!!!!!!!!!!