Call of Duty: Finest Hour Preview

Epic moments …

Fighting with allies …

The “ultimate” character perspective …

Those were just some of the attributes that Call of Duty brought to fans of World War II first-person shooter titles. But Activision didn’t want to leave console gamers out of the mix, and come November, GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox owners can immerse themselves in the frenetic combat and eye-popping action that is Call of Duty: Finest Hour.

On a recent trip to the Activision headquarters in Los Angeles, tucked away in a conference room, an Activision producer and Spark’s own Scott Langteau, the CoD: Finest Hour producer, showed off a very early build of the game.

The game will have Russian, British and U.S. campaigns and players will have the opportunity to jump inside a tank and blast German supply planes from a depot in Russia, while shooting or running over German soldiers that attempt to stop them. The game is mission-based, and players may find that tank mission evolving into a foot mission to clear the control tower.

Using the first-person perspective, the game also will allow for zooming, and players can switch to the third-person for controlling the tank. Targeting allows sighting along the barrel, or with a detached reticule, and you can lean and use stances to improve accuracy.

This is all pretty standard stuff. But the game takes a big departure the way it renders lip-synching and facial expressions, using the Jim Henson group to work with the skeletal structures of the character models, and attune the dialogue and reaction to the high facial bone count.

The game’s only true correlation between the PC title and the console version comes in the Stalingrad battle. Players take on the role of a young Russian conscript who is dumped into the war, unarmed, raw and with little idea of what to do except what his sergeant has reiterated over and over – “Kill the German!” If he doesn’t, there is a very good chance that his sergeant will shoot him. The graphics of the fires burning throughout Stalingrad as night falls, the chaos of war and soldiers working through the rumble is rather amazing.

With more than 15 levels, some with multiple mission within the levels, and more than 200 soldiers onscreen simultaneously, this title looks to take the war genre to places never before experienced on the console systems.

The game also has more than 30 weapons in the game, and while primarily a single-player storied experience, players can indulge in deathmatch or team deathmatch in multiplayer mode.

The reason for the limited multiplayer gaming really can be attributed to not being able “to do justice to the cinematic presentation with the co-op mode.”

Extensive research went into developing this title, from visiting locations to calling in technical and military advisors to offer suggestions with the intent of making this game as realistic as possible, while still keeping the game challenging and entertaining. As for the tremendous sound that CoD fans have come to know, the musical score was just recently tracked using an 80-piece orchestra and a 50-person choir.

Call of Duty: Finest Hour is shaping up to be an incredible console experience, one that may drive the genre to new levels on the platforms and raise the standards by which others are judged. In other words, it will carry on the Call of Duty tradition admirably.