Ahhh, Call of Duty. Along with the Medal of Honor series, the game is known for the huge sense of immersion it offers as a World War 2 title thanks to the elaborate and incredibly well-done scripted sequences implemented on behalf of the development team, as well as impressive graphics and explosive action. Truly one of the most memorable PC titles to date (especially with the United Offensive expansion pack), and now Call of Duty has made its debut on the Xbox thanks to Spark Unlimited’s new title, Call of Duty: Finest Hour. But could a game that revolves around frantic action, incredibly precise aiming, escalating difficulty levels, and immersive gameplay truly make for a decent experience on the slightly less-capable Xbox? Let’s dive in to find out.

First and foremost, CoD: Finest Hour is much more than a direct conversion of the PC version’s content onto the Xbox – the game actually features three campaigns with totally new missions and content not seen in the PC version, with a number of neat new scenarios. One thing I found most interesting when I first started playing, however, is that the development team has opted for a third person cutscene style of approach to telling the game’s story, with numerous engine-rendered cutscenes breaking the action up into segments. Perhaps this was to help direct the player’s attention to important events in the environment, but I personally enjoyed the pure first-person perspective offered on the PC version a lot more. Each mission in the game also introduces a new character’s shoes to put the player into, so one mission you might be playing a sniper picking off German forces from a distance, and the next taking up the reigns of a tank commander steamrolling through thick enemy fire.

And there’s definitely a lot of enemy fire to go around. Call of Duty: Finest Hour is just as action packed as ever, with dozens upon dozens of enemies active at any given time trying to cut you down, and friendly NPCs constantly rushing in to reinforce friendly lines. But while the overall level of action is the same, some subtle gameplay changes have been implemented for the purpose of the game’s console transition. One interesting example is that medical kits are no longer “on the spot” items, but can also be picked up and stored for later use if the player is already at full health, and these medical kits can also be used to heal certain injured NPCs. There are also a number of unlockable cheat modes, which help extend the replayability of the game a bit (and give it that extra “console game” feel, I guess), but one thing that really stood out for me was the tank scenes. Like the PC version, the Xbox release of Call of Duty has several levels that involve driving a tank through enemy forces, but new to the Xbox version is the ability to “unbutton” from the driver’s seat and sit on top of the tank gunning down pesky enemies with your primary weapon while driving around. A third person mode is also available, which I imagine was implemented to ease navigation a little. One change I had a problem accepting though was the way in which the tank automatically fixes itself over time, which was a huge hit in realism that spoiled my immersion to quite a degree – it’s understandable from a gameplay standpoint, but I wish they had found a better way.

One of my biggest concerns about seeing Call of Duty being ported to the Xbox was the issue of controls. Of course, the Xbox is home to one of the most widely-renowned series (Halo) for having an amazingly excellent control system, despite the lack of any kind of mouse / keyboard input, but there haven’t been many titles that have matched up to its level of quality – Call of Duty included, sadly. The controls in CoD are adequate, and the game features all of the usual console novelties (like aim-assist), but I quickly found that I just couldn’t get anywhere near the same level of response that I could on PC, even on the maximum speed setting. This actually hurt my experience by quite a bit, because one of the biggest draws of Call of Duty is all of the action occurring around the player, rather than right in front of him, and being unable to reliably look around to take in all the action was quite annoying. Perhaps I’m being a little too harsh, but I find this to be one more reason why Call of Duty just doesn’t work well as a console title. Even the actual bindings are a little awkward to work around – there’s no way to “cook off” grenades, for example (pushing X does a complete arm-and-throw action), and while a leaning function has been implemented, it’s so awkward that I found myself rarely using it purely due to the strain on my fingers – holding down the left trigger and using the D-Pad at the same time is certainly quite awkward.

A level of difficulty that bounces all over the board is something of a trademark to Call of Duty (and the Medal of Honor series, of course) – one minute you could be mowing down enemies by the dozens, the next a single machinegun nest will be singling you out (amongst a dozen other friendly NPCs shooting at it) and filling your face full of nasty bullets every time you poke your head out. Sadly, things are no different in the Xbox version of Call of Duty, with enemies capable of landing crazy shots from far away, utterly useless friendly units that do a better job of running around in front of your gun sights than actually hitting enemy targets, and deviously-crafted scripted sequences that sometimes require several attempts before you discover the secret “trick” the developers intended for you to win with. All this stuff I can usually work around on the PC, but for some strange reason that I cannot begin to fathom, the developers felt it necessary to continue the stupid trend that console titles can never feature a quicksave function – so in contrast to this tedium-removing feature that helped me plow through Call of Duty on the PC with only a few minor annoying hitches, the Xbox version forced me to run through entire difficult segments over and over again every time I died, aided only by sparsely-placed checkpoints. Of all the things that make me want to stop playing a game in short order, having to do the same challenging part over and over again ranks pretty highly, and I was thoroughly unimpressed that a quicksave feature was chosen not to be included for such a difficult game.

Given how I haven’t had a chance to play the game or write this article until well after the release of Halo 2 and Half-Life 2, I don’t feel entirely justified giving Call of Duty’s graphics engine the usual critical inspection. What I will say, however, is that the overall graphical approach holds up very well for a WW2 FPS title, and that the animations and special effects are quite well done. The framerates hold up good, and the sizable levels are rendered with a fairly impressive amount of detail. However, one major problem I had with the game that really can’t be overlooked is how dark the palette was. I knew to expect a certain degradation in image clarity compared to what my PC could offer, but the entire game just looked so grainy and had such a gritty style that it was commonly very hard to make out smaller details – perhaps that was the entire point to cover up some other defects with the graphics and artistic direction. It certainly hurt my experience though, given how hard it was to really get a clear look at anything, and I found this to just be another strike against what’s proving to be a mediocre console conversion. At least the load times are spread out quite a bit.

Multiplayer in Call of Duty can be played over System Link or Xbox Live, and supports up to four gameplay modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and “Search & Destroy”, an interchangeable attack / defend scenario where one team has to try to plant a bomb at critical points on the map, while the other team attempts to prevent them from doing so, disarming the planted bomb if necessary. The multiplayer action is pretty decent, and there are a number of maps available (I was also impressed at the server customization options available, such as specifying map rotation and reserving player slots), but two things I found sadly lacking was the lack of co-op support (which really could have helped made this game a lot more appealing as an Xbox-exclusive feature), and the interface for the friends list, which for some reason took several seconds to load every time I accessed it and suffered from the same irritating problem I’ve encountered with a few other titles where, for no apparent reason, my friends list selector kept jumping back up to the top every time I tried to move it. What the hell? All that combined with a lack of split-screen / guest account mode makes even Call of Duty’s multiplayer mode disappointingly lackluster.

To be frank, Call of Duty: Finest Hour just isn’t that great of a title. As a standalone Xbox title, it does a few neat things and holds up as a fairly decent FPS title (especially due to the intense scripted sequences we all love), but even if I hadn’t played the crap out of the game series on the PC, I would have still felt the game was lacking any significant punch to set itself ahead of the market for its time. Some awkward controls, a somewhat clunky interface, and an astonishingly dark graphical style really cause this game to suffer, and were a slightly different approach taken to all of these elements, and more focus given on what makes Call of Duty a cool title rather than just making it for the sole reason of “hey neat, we can develop for consoles too!” I might have finished the game with a much more favorable impression. If you’re an FPS nut who has nothing else to play, you may get some amusement out of this title, but otherwise I vote it a definite “pass”.