Hour of Victory

The Good
The gameplay takes an interesting approach in which you can play the game in three different ways: By charging head on with Ross, taking out enemies from a distance with Blackbull or sneaking, taking shortcuts and assassinating with Taggert. When going for stealth with Taggert, there's no penalty for not being stealthy, other than to have more enemies to fight. No matter which character you play as, you're sure to find your way to the end of the level and meet your objectives, the more you play. The compass radar is particularly helpful in locating enemies, objectives and to measure the radius of noise you make.

Depending on which character you pick, you have at least one weapon which has its own advantages. There are a variety of great guns you can acquire. Thankfully any character is not restricted from using any weapon. And speaking of weapons, the game kind of mixes and matches with ammunition, which reloads as individual bullets in the case of the sniper rifle, shotgun and panzerschreck, while other guns reload in magazines. I guess this is realistic and takes some getting used to. Grenades fired with the middle mouse button actually work and never fire by accident, the biggest flaw COD2 could never overcome. Your mightiest weapon will be two instances in which you drive tanks, with that neat third-person perspective.

The Unreal Engine does allow for some cool effects like enemies flying and rolling when killed, as well as shooting their weapons while dying, which is reminiscent of special effects from Medal of Honor (PlayStation 1). But it does also have buggy and comic effects too, such as dead soldiers doing cartwheels and flips on the floor. Levels have enough detail and decor to make the locations believable. Castle Festunburg looks large and every room seems functional, it's like you're fighting your way inside a real castle that it's a reminder of that film "Where Eagles Dare". Music implemented in the game is borrowed from various albums, but very fitting for the levels and reminds you that you're in for a hell of a fight. Sound effects and voice talent are well chosen and complete the buildup of the game's levels.

The Bad
While the gameplay is good enough, the game itself doesn't always seem to know what it wants to be. Sometimes you play short levels and other times you play longer levels which lack desirable checkpoints, without the ability to save your game for the more tricky parts. Some might say that respawning enemies are an annoying issue in the game, except that this is pretty common in WW2 shooters. Adding to the difficulty of the game is that you must not move in order to heal. This is just an instance making the game a little too realistic, but then again no healing mechanics in a game are perfect.

One feature that didn't quite make it to the PC version are the compass directions, and missing from the radar are indications of objects' altitude, to let the player know if an enemy is above or below. Not all keyboard functions are mentioned even in the config menu, such as the melee button. The biggest glitch in the game that blows your top off is that NPCs right near you can walk right through you, which equals instant death. It's like a telefrag from DOOM, only much worse. And of course the presentation and plot feels kind of rushed, that we know very little about the three S.O. officers other than their names and skills.

The Bottom Line
So many FPS enthusiasts have called this game really bad, but I don't think they give merit where it is due. We all tend take the fast-paced run and gun style in the Call of Duty series for granted and turn down the slow-patient flow of stealth and pathfinding. But the effort put into this game by experienced developers ought to be recognised, seeing that a lot of the elements, if not all, exist in the common franchises, given what time and budget constraints went into the game's development. It's the way those elements were implemented, combined with the short length of the game, that didn't do this title justice. Nobody said that this game had to be based on real war events, seeing as Call of Duty is now straying from realism these days. The game pretty much rivals that of Commandos: Strike Force.

What really breaks this game is its declining availability due to its lack of compatibility without the use of certain Xbox Live files, so forget about multiplayer mode. Coming to terms with the existing problems, this isn't the worst WW2 action-shooter game in existence. There are far worse titles out there, such as the Battlestrike rail-shooters, the PSP Medal of Honor games and of course Call of Duty 2. This game is great on the outside, good on the inside, but bad in the middle. The multitude of negativity for this game doesn't seem like focusing on the game's elements, but more like people want to hate the game because earlier titles like Call of Duty are better, which gets out of hand. Game isn't perfect, just leave it at that. The company nFusion Interactive is still active and still has an opportunity to remake this game into something functional, better, with perhaps a map and mission editor, it's not too late.