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Hour of Victory is another World War II shooter in the vein of the Call of Duty series and features cinematic battles from the European and North African theatres. It’s predominantly a first person shooter but has a slight twist to proceedings. Rather than follow the paths of an individual or various characters through the story; gamers can choose one of three specialists prior to each mission. There’s a British commando (Lieutenant Ross), Army Ranger (Sergeant Blackbull) and covert specialist (Major Taggart) characters to choose from and what is interesting is the fact that each play somewhat differently to the others.
The demo was released yesterday and I had some play time with the game as I’m sure a number of you have also. The demo starts of as you would expect and upon choosing the various characters I could feel an instant difference in play style. Oh and before I get fully underway I do suggest you change the default controller sensitivity as it is set far too low. After playing with the options the game moves pretty smoothly compared to the sloth like speed the default setting presents.
As I said before each specialist has their own set of skills which can drastically change the way you play. Of course the option to go wading in guns a blazing is always there but obviously you will be missing out on the individual nuances the characters have. To begin the covert specialist can hide in the shadows and comes equipped with a silenced weapon. What is more the covert specialist can also pick locks and cut wired fences which is handy for finding more stealthier routes through the levels. In this case using alternate routes allowed me to sneak around the enemies and also find tactical positions where I could easily flank them.
The Army Ranger offered a slightly different approach. Armed with a sniper rifle and a very steady aim I was able to pick off enemies from afar before moving in. The sniper also has the ability to climb upwards at various points to give a tactical position for sniping the Germans below. Again the play style was very different to that of the covert specialist.
The British Commando seems more like your standard shooter character who is able to take more hits than the other two and is much better at assault. The option to move objects out of the way is part of this character’s repertoire but sadly I didn’t see any use for it in the demo. Again the play style is more run and gun with this guy and I felt confident to take on all and sundry with him.
Hour of Victory features AI team mates and whilst there is no direct control over these guys I did find that they were pretty proficient at taking down the opposition. During one section of the demo I was able to climb into a tank and start raining down punishment on the opposing forces dug in bunkers and other tanks. There’s some impressive physics on display as bunkers were blown to pieces with the occupants being flung into the air. The use of the tank is entirely optional and if you choose you could stealth it and grab a bazooka for that personal touch or just simply run around like Rambo on speed. The demo allows you to mess around a little should you ignore the objectives allowing you to keep shooting re-spawning Germans.
Graphically there are some issues in the demo with detail drawing in slowly on occasion; but in general the game play is fairly smooth and so it should be as it utilizes Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 tech. Some textures look a bit muggy yet the immersive quality of the graphics is enough to really put you there. It’s hard to say if graphically speaking the game is as good as Call of Duty 3 but I guess whilst you are playing the killing of Germans is what players will be focusing on. There’s a reasonable amount of detail in here and some motion blur and depth of field effects are used in a subtle way.
Hour of Victory feels very familiar indeed as it is similar in design to Call of Duty 2 or 3. The health system the vehicular combat and the whole World |War II theme has been done plenty times before. So whilst Hour of Victory might appear to be a carbon copy of Activision’s mighty shooter it does have its own take on proceedings. I think the choosing of specialist works really well here and effectively offers three ways to play the game. Obviously in the full game you can choose to stick with a particular specialist throughout or mix it up a little and pick who you feel is the best man for the task at hand.
Based on the demo and what potential the full game has to offer; I think Hour of Victory will be a decent shooter for any shooter fans out there. There’s little to really dislike about the game other than the whole familiarity of another World War II game. I don’t think the game is going to win any awards for originality but will offer gamers another slice of decent first person action.
Hour of Victory is due out on the 18th of next month stateside and on the 22nd in Europe.
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