Rating:
4
Game Review: Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Xbox)
12 thoughts on “Game Review: Call of Duty: Finest Hour (Xbox)”
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Games at Work: Participation, Procedure and Play
BARD COLLEGE — IDEA 135
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For some reason I’m finding that the familiarity of this game makes it difficult to critique. The main characteristic of this game that contrasted it from other games was the fact that I wasn’t alone in the story line. I would have another NPC leading me through the game, and actually helping me overcome the obstacles as I went on. After last class, I’m also thinking about the engineering behind making games more stimulating. Such as the vibrating controller, and how much that actually affected my game-play experience. Overall I enjoyed playing this game again. The only thing that suggested that it was made 14 years ago was its graphics.
I’m personally not a huge fan of games in this genre (games situated heavily in the setting of war). If I want to invest a substantial amount of time in a game, I need to be engaged with the plot and how the story develops. I don’t think I could’ve done that with this game, unfortunately. Even the beginning cut scenes didn’t really draw my attention in.
This was my first time playing Call of Duty and it took a while for me to understand the controls. The angle pivoting was probably the hardest. Besides that, I was surprised how engaging the game was. I really enjoyed the slow motion parts where you could hear your breathing and heart rate. I feel that this is where the game rally excelled in drawing in the player. However, I just don’t particularly enjoy war games so I don’t think I would play it again.
I used to play/watch my brothers play COD when I was younger and I have to say I feel like I was a lot more engaged with it then than I was now, playing it for myself. I was thinking a lot about some of the articles we had read for class, and I think it made it hard for me to play this without thinking about some of the implications. I’m really interested and a little bit disconcerted by the role games like this (and I would say this game franchise specifically) have normalized and glamorized war and violence through gamification and right now that’s a really uncomfortable thing for me to engage with.
It was fun to go back to this game. When the NPC that’s helping you gets shot halfway through the first level, I had a strong flashback into my past and the first experience of that cut-scene. The problem I had with the game is that you had soldiers dying all around you, but none of them would drop their weapons (even though this is a core feature of the game later on). They could’ve used the same feature they use to make you follow the objective, which is getting shot if you go out of bounds. Therefore you could potentially get a gun early in the game, but with a high chance of death. This would make the game feel more real and engaging without having to run around with ammo all the time.
I’ve never been one for violence, so this was not very enjoyable for me to play. There is nothing gratifying about being in a war simulation and killing for me personally. It seems to me that they promote quick violent responses as opposed to rational and thought through decisions. I know this is a well discussed point of controversy with games of this genre and that’s all I could think of while playing.
I started to play COD when i was in middle school. Anyway, i am not a good player but i love this game a lot because this game is so “True”. However, i don’t know maybe it is my own problem or not, I easily feel dizzy and faint when i play this game because of its 3D version especially in XBox. In my opinion, this is a very classical game like CS which aim for shooting and group working. Right now, the new version of Call of Duty WWII will come out. I can’t not wait to play it!!!
I was super surprised at how much detail went into this game. Despite the low polygon count/weird animations, the level of detail was quite high. The game really captured the horrific part of war, and it feels more like a horror game than a modern FPS. I think that FPS games are the most successful when they try to highlight that war is a bad thing and is scary, rather than celebrating for getting a head shot or a double kill. The “kill or be killed” mentality adds a certain weight to the fact that you are killing people, and makes it more of a reluctant truth rather than a thing to be pursued and glorified. In this way, this game captures war in a realistic, emotional way.
George, I think you make some valid points about the glorification/exploitation of war in contemporary games. I would argue that the commodification of “kills” and “headshots” seen in games like Modern Warfare 2 is a product of live gaming, which mandates a different kind of point system.
When I was a child, I remember my older brother getting the the original xbox for his 12th birthday. Although we didn’t ever play call of duty, the graphics and controller made me feel extremely nostalgic, and I think because of this childhood experience, my critique on this game is biased; I loved it. Although it was surprisingly hard, especially the mechanics involved in steering the tank, I thought it was the most fun game we have played so far in this class. Although the reason the game was hard seemed to be because of the arbitrary game mechanics involved in moving the tank, switching guns etc… the more I played, the more I enjoyed this challenge. All in all I give it a 5 star!!
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 came out when I was in seventh grade and I played this game endlessly for at least a year. This is by far the most nostalgic game I have experienced and I think this is important context to consider before my review. I was not very impressed with the graphics, low mobility, or the response mechanisms as they were all largely outdated compared to MW2. Although, I did find this experience to be quite interesting as it is the origin of the following games such as MW2. I also felt that people were most likely just as invested in this game as I was invested in MW2. I definitely had high expectations for this experience. Despite the poor playing experience, I found this to a fascinating game to play as a result of it’s historical significance.
I had a bit of exposure to the Call of Duty franchise before playing this version for class, mostly through friends in high school who owned Modern Warfare. I liked the narrative of this older version more than the newer versions, particularly because the narrative seemed more like historical fiction and less like propaganda. The controllers were clunky and difficult to use, but the guide made figuring out the controls easy. I liked the moody atmosphere and at times felt genuine tension.