Call of Duty Marathon: CoD: Finest Hour - Two Levels In

I haven't gotten to much time into to continue my CoD marathon as of late because I picked up Wargame: European Escalation, which came with a multi-player beta that I have been playing, and just picked up the new Twisted Metal game which I've played a few rounds of. Finally, last night I was finally able to sit down and play another level of Call of Duty: Finest Hour on the Xbox.

It only took me one more level to realize how painful this journey is going to be. The Call of Duty games on the sixth generation consoles were never highly praised in their day. They were made by a company called Spark Unlimited, and while Activision gave them a decent sized budget, the constraints of the sixth gen consoles are blatantly obvious. In 2004, when Finest Hour was launched, console FPSs were still lacking any sort of real identity. Halo: Combat Evolved led the pack but most shooters did not follow suite in terms of controls, shooting mechanics, and overall feel. Finest Hour may have implemented iron sites, but the rest of the controls were mapped all over the place and it is difficult to go from the flawless controls in Halo to Finest hour.

Not only are the controls flawed, they aren't extremely responsive. There seems to be a major disconnected feeling between moving the analog sticks and actually moving your character, the characters don't feel well grounded in the environment and seem to float along, and the shooting mechanics also leave a lot to be desired. Shooting the weapons doesn't feel like it has any impact on the environment or in your hand.

I don't want to say these flaws make the game terrible. In 2004, there wasn't many FPSs on the console to compare Finest Hour with, so the bulk of the low scoring can be attributed with the game design itself. Also, it's not fair that I'm comparing modern shooter controls with something from 2004. However, while I'm only two levels in, the level design is rather lackluster. AI opponents seem to spawn out of nowhere and lack basic common sense, friendly AI just drops dead for no reason, and the visuals are extremely muddy. I understand this game had to run on the PS2 and that they were trying to get many AI characters on the screen at once, but a brown on brown color pallet does not help anything, especially when the lighting is about as sophisticated as DOOM. Though, I do have to give them credit for keeping a relatively smooth FPS with all of the AI models on screen.

Above: Spark Unlimited's idea of art direction.

I don't want to rag on the level design to much only being two levels into the game. I will say that all of these elements combined, my initial impressions of this game aren't to good. I'm going to have to force myself to get through this.

Call of Duty Marathon: Update #1

I've now officially survived the Battle of the Bulge, somehow became a British SAS commando and kicked some Nazi ass in Italy, and am currently deploying to the Eastern Front along side my many brave brothers and sisters of the great Soviet Union. I don't remember my first play through of Call of Duty: United Offensive as being this much fun. I remember a few missions taking a lot more time and headaches to beat, but this time through I'm just enjoying the hell out of it.

The battles in United Offensive are definitely longer and much larger scale. While the levels in Call of Duty took me 5-10 minutes to beat with many more levels in a campaign, United Offensive levels are taking 15-30 minutes to complete and are much larger in size. I actually really like this as the levels now feel far more complete and make more sense. They manage to revisit earlier parts of the level without feeling like backtracking, which is an impressive feat. The continuity of the levels gives them a very unique feel that stands out from the first game. You can tell it's a CoD game, but it feel like a proper expansion or sequel to the original, not some quick cash in.

I should be able to power through the Russian campaign tonight. I have not been able to capture any footage due to Livestream Podcaster having some sort of incompatibility with the engine. It's a very old version of the idTech 3 engine used for Quake 3 Arena, so I'm not that suprised.

I'm actually quite excited to start the 6th generation console Call of Duty games (Finest Hour, Big Red One) to see how well they actually stacked up. Console gamers really wanted Call of Duty on their systems but none of the consoles at the time could muscle a direct port of CoD, so they had to make new versions specifically designed for the consoles. Early on, the CoD series was one of the many that PC gamers would use when flaunting the capabilities of their PCs compared to that of the consoles. The two 6th gen console CoD games are a testament to how much wider the gap was between PC gaming and console game back in 2003. Times have certainly changed.

Call of Duty Marathon: CoD Summary

Last night I stormed The Reichstag, defeated the Fascists, and avenged all of my fallen brothers and sisters who have given their lives in defense of the Motherland. I guess the Americans and the British helped, a bit. You know, blowing up those V2 rockets and smashing the Western Front and all.

I'm not going to go on and on about the quality of the game or shooting mechanics, partly because we already know that it's a fantastic, genre-defining shooter, and partly because you've all probably played it at some point. If you have not, I suggest picking up a copy ASAP. It's on the PC and was ported to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 a while back and is probably pretty cheap. It is a great game and can be just as fun today as it was back in 2003. However, it does show it's age.

The biggest complaint I have is the consistency. Consistency is something we really take for granted in the latest CoD games. In the original, the pace and difficulty ends up being all over the place. Newer CoD games have a very flat difficulty. They are as difficult at the end as they are at the beginning with maybe some small spikes here and there. This is different from the increasing difficulty model of older FPSs where games start out much easier than they end. The developers designed Call of Duty to have a very flat difficulty level. The AI didn't get the memo.

Quite often, especially in the later levels, the AI will get a super human boost of accuracy and be able to land 3-4 shots on you in succession randomly. This is no rhyme or reason for it and thus no way to predict and prevent it from happening. These random acts of super-solidering seem to occur in the last place you would expect. Exposing yourself to long from behind cover? Nope. Running in the open to the next position? Nope. Slowly peaking your head around the corner? FACE FULL OF LEAD. These moments would be shrugged off if I could just regenerate health. However, since you must pick up healthpacks, this can leave in you an extremely tight and frustrating spot.

It's not that this breaks the game. I still beat it for the 20th time without ragequitting, but those moments do get under your skin. It's not like a modern CoD game where when you screw up, the game kills you but you get to start over really soon. In modern CoD games I expect to die when I screw up so that I can take advantage of the generous checkpoints system built around the regenerating health, not be sitting there half dead because AI got extremely lucky for a quarter of a second. It's not that the game is difficult and I suck at it, it's that these cheap moments lead to me having to replay decent sections of a level over just because of bad luck. It's annoying.

Other than that, Call of Duty is as fun as it has ever been. A pair of tank missions towards the end and still fun as ever to play, hitting the shore of the Volga river at Stalingrad is still as intense as it was in 2003, and driving through the French countryside with Tommy Gun blasting never gets old. While I don't want to give it a score, as I think scores are a very crude way of summing up my opinions, especially with an older game, I will just say it's a fantastic title worth your time. Just expect some rage here and there.

I am now moving onto Call of Duty: United Offensive. I've only played through this game once, but I do know that there are several points in the game that have some terribly bad level design choices that make me want to punch kittens with rage. Hopefully I can make it through them without ending up in court for animal cruelty.