Grenades are also present and tossed by the A button, but are hard to aim especially within buildings, and often end up bouncing back at you. Out of the 16 guns available, they all handle relatively the same, with rifles having better down the sight or zoom functions using the L-button and automatic weapons being less accurate and having a lot more recoil. Crouching also makes your shots more accurate, so there is little reason to stay standing up, other than to move quickly. A Finest Hour exclusive is the ability to change your stance, from crouch to lying down, which is useful to move through bunkers and avoid German gunfire. As is the trend with all first person shooters on the GameCube, the C-stick is used to aim your gun, and the analogue to move. Vehicle sections include riding tanks through cities and manning the machine gun on the back of a jeep. The action ranges from street combat, sniping sections, escort missions, and clearing buildings, moving from room to room. Even the voice acting is of a decent standard however they could not resist and did stereotype the British. Luckily actual WWII guns were recorded for Finest Hour, and even if the differences are not that obvious, Thompsons and Panzerschreks can all be found with real sounds. The constant gunfire and explosions round off the WWII feel and an orchestra accompanies the charge of several troops excellently, however there are times when these grand pieces cut out abruptly, not creating a tense atmosphere, but merely confusion as you are left with only water dripping as noise. Slightly irritating when you have to watch the already long reload animation before you can shoot again. Despite these problems some nice effects are present, for instance getting caught in a mortar blast will make everything enter slow motion. Invisible walls also become far too noticeable and make the game feel more linear that it should be. Shoot a German several times and they may start to keel over as if dieing, however they are actually reacting to the shot, so it becomes hard to tell when someone is dead, even with red crosshairs appearing on successful shots.Д¬lipping is also ever present, while walls sometimes become invisible and Germans sometimes glide quickly over the ground without leg movement, in a very strange way. Enemies die in a number of ways helmets fly off, fingers stick to triggers, officers spiral to the ground, however all the animations seem delayed. When you can see your enemy though, the character models are varied to suffice complete with a large amount of animations on offer. Constant darkness is not appealing, and even if there are rats on offer, the lighting problems and dark colours make it extremely difficult to see your German enemies, who seem to have no trouble seeing you. Sadly this is all let down when the fighting moves to tunnels and sewers. Unfortunately the constant gray and brown colour palette in the Early Russian levels grow tiresome, but this is broken up with impressive desert ruins and undamaged German cities that look vibrant and elaborate. The experience of war is increased by the attention to detail Finest with rubble and rocks actually flying around, bombed buildings, constant flames and scars of war all over each level. Also in a change from the EA way of doing things, the soldiers have some sort of background, and before each mission you are introduced to each soldier each with their own desires and motives. This larger look at the war is greatly appreciated, and not only offers relatively different levels and locations such devastated Russian cities in a snowy backdrop and ancient ruins in the desert, but also gives a wider view of the war itself, broken up by clips of war footage and narrated by 24's Dennis Haysbert. Unlike EA's trend of focusing on one campaign in World War II, Finest Hour takes the player from the Eastern Front, playing as the Russians, to the North African campaign, with British desert rats and to the invasions of Europe by the Americans.

Call of duty finest hour