New Environment Project: Roman Milecastle

I've started a new environment art project this week. I'm going to be creating a Roman "milecastle" environment. A milecastle was a small fort, placed roughly every Roman mile along Hadrian's wall in Northern England during the Roman occupation of "Britannia" in the 2nd century onwards. I've started preliminary research and planning of the scene and I aim to start 3D modelling next week.

I've created a Pinterest board for the project, click here to see it. I've also watched a few documentaries and read about Hadrian's wall, milecastles and Roman Britain in general.

And here's some pictures of my notes/research, list of items and a few sketches.

Just an extra note, I probably won't be doing a Spontaneous Sunday this week because I'm in work on Sunday and I'm getting the train back home for a few days afterwards so won't have time. So I'll either have to skip it or I might do it on Monday instead, time permitting.

That's all for now!

Spontaneous Sunday: Dishonored

Welcome to another week of Spontaneous Sunday, this week I have played Dishonored (2012, Arkane Studios, Bethesda, Xbox 360). I've wanted to play it for a while and I have heard it mentioned  a lot recently due to the recent release of Dishonored 2, so I picked it up cheap from Cex.

"Dishonored is a 2012 stealth action-adventure video game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It was released worldwide in October 2012 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Set in the fictional, plague-ridden industrial city of Dunwall, Dishonored follows the story of Corvo Attano, bodyguard to the Empress of the Isles. He is framed for her murder and forced to become an assassin, seeking revenge on those who conspired against him."

- Wikipedia on Dishonored

What do I expect from the game?

I had a pretty good idea of what to expect from Dishonored because it is a game that I've heard and seen a lot about due to its popularity with critics and gamers alike. I expected a first-person action adventure game with stealth elements. I expected its strengths to include the environment art and world design. I also expected it to have good level design, because during my time as a Games Design undergrad, we did a brief about level design and how to white-box a level and the tutors used it as an example of good level design, with multiple routes for the player to take to complete missions. Thematically, I expected it to be heavily steampunk themed and draw influences from Victorian Britain. I expected it to be a good game because of the positive reception and good reviews.

First Impressions - What do I think of the game its first few minutes?

The game's front end is very nicely done. The front end menu features an area of Dunwall - the heavily London-inspired city in which the game is set - and when selecting a menu option, the camera flies/pans over to a different part of the environment. This is pretty cool and was a good decision on the designer's part, as the environment art is a major strength of the game, so it makes sense to showcase them from the very beginning. I checked out the options menu and saw that there is a huge amount of options that you can change in terms of gameplay and UI. I started a new game and selected normal difficulty.

The game begins with the player-character arriving back to Dunwall via boat after a long journey. The player meets with the Empress, who is then assassinated and the player is framed for it by corrupt officials. The boathouse and palace environment was really attractive with interesting architecture and a view of the city over the river. One thing that I noticed from the very beginning of the game is that the graphics, or rather the art style, were not what I expected. I expected it to be photorealistic (or as close as you can on a 4 year old 360 game) but in fact it features a lot of low-poly modelling and lower-res textures. The result is an interesting stylised game world and some very attractive environments.

Having been framed for the Empress' murder, you are imprisoned and scheduled for execution. The first level of the game is your escape from the prison, aided by unidentified "friends" who provide you with a key and equipment needed to escape. Again, the environments are very well made. The gameplay, however, was not equally appealing. I found the movement and stealth clunky and awkward. I felt like the game encouraged stealth, so I decided to try and be stealthy, and reload if I was detected and forced to fight. As the prison level went on, I got increasingly frustrated with the stealth and movement which culminated in me failing 4 times to sneak across a courtyard. Finally, I decided to just fight and I destroyed all the enemies in seconds and had a lot more fun doing it, and also got a combat-based achievement... I decided then to disregard the game's subtle nudges in the direction of stealth.

I escaped the prison and entered a sewer that, while a very well-made environment with a lot to see and do and different routes to take, went on for too long and left me wanting to just get to freedom.

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

Dishonored is full of really nice environment art.

Having escaped the prison and sewer, I meet my new allies and get to explore their HQ - a pub in a run-down district of the city. Again, it's a truly beautiful and well-made environment. Dishonored has possibly some of the most attractive scenery and environments of any Spontaneous Sunday title (defeated only by Metro: Last Light). Dishonored nails pretty much every aspect of environment art including lighting, layout, architecture, models and textures. Theres also a lot to do, see and collect. I spoke to a few new characters and explored the pub area. I found a lot of books dotted around that helped to add to the lore of the game world, which is another of its strong suits.

The Distillery District was a particularly interesting environment and level, with different routes and ways to complete objectives, people to interact with, interiors to enter and side-quests to pick up. The games level design is good and the routes are interesting. I can't think of many other games that offered such varied routes through a level.

The game world and backstory are well thought out and interesting. The similarities to Victorian London and the British Empire and the steampunk theme make for are apparent, but the developers really put a twist on it and made it their own and it makes for a very interesting virtual world. It's also delivered well through books to read, people, environments and environmental storytelling through such things as graffiti, posters and items.

The upgrade system.

I should, of course, mention the game mechanics. Theres an interesting inventory and upgrade system. Soon after arriving at the pub, the player enters a dream world where they gain supernatural powers. These turn out to be some very interesting mechanics that add a whole new dimension to the gameplay - but having these powers when escaping from the prison would have really helped to make it a less frustrating experience. The Blink power, which allows the player to dash forward small distances or teleport within a short distance, is a particularly interesting and unique mechanic, which made navigating levels feel pretty interesting.

The audio was good, especially the voice acting. The game features some pretty high profile voice actors and this is apparent in the quality of the voice acting. SFX and atmospheric audio is also good and the music, while not terribly memorable, serves its purpose and suits the game well.

The game's overall aesthetic/look and feel is one of its best assets. The aesthetic is consistent and every element feels well-considered and like it all ties in together, from the UI to the environments, weapons, audio and everything else.

What don't I like about the game?

I have a very mixed opinion of Dishonored - it ticks almost every box: attractive environments, rich game world, interesting mechanics, level design, audio, voice acting... but it leaves one very important box unticked. The gameplay is not good.

I have already mentioned my frustration in the prison level. Well, this continued throughout the game. The stealth system doesn't work very well at all and the levels and AI seem poorly designed for stealth. Enemies ability to detect the player is unpredictable, sometimes they will see you behind cover from a good distance, other times they will be completely oblivious to your presence right next to them and this makes the stealth awkward. Its not easy to tell if a route is safe because the AI detection is so inconsistent.

The AI pathing/patrol routes make no sense and they don't make it easy for the player to slip by. Enemies walk around seemingly at random. I believe that a key element in a good stealth game is the opportunities to slip by enemies at just the right moment and feel a sense of accomplishment as a result. Dishonored just does not give you those opportunities. The stealth is messy and frankly infuriating at times and overall just not enjoyable at all. There's nothing fun about repeatedly being detected by an enemy while trying to sneak across an area that seems literally impossible to sneak across. Too often, I was detected and just ended up murdering a bunch of guards, which was much more enjoyable from a gameplay perspective.

The AI is also poor in other areas. One level required me to infiltrate a meeting between two officials and assassinate one of them while saving the other. While entering the building, I was detected and ended up having a fight in the meeting room which resulted in several dead enemies littering the room. The two officials entered the room for their meeting and did not react in any way to the multiple dead guards all over the room. While watching their buggy, ridiculous meeting, I was detected once again by an enemy who appeared seemingly from nowhere, and died fighting another hoard of annoying guards and decided I had had enough of Dishonored. Dishonored presents the player with an amazingly attractive and well designed city and then doesn't allow them to explore it, because they are constantly hunted and killed by guards and it ruins everything good about it. It's a huge wasted opportunity.

Final Thoughts

As you can probably tell, Dishonored and its terrible stealth system has frustrated me greatly. Overall, its a shame, because it does everything else so well and I really do enjoy the aesthetic, the theme and environments. Not to be defeated, I will probably play it again because I want to see more of what it does well, but I will probably take a much more combat heavy approach from now on because I found it more fun and I think the game works better like that than as a stealth game. I wish that it was a less hostile game because I want to explore the environments and the compelling game world without having to endure the constant frustration of being detected and attacked!

Granted, this is only my personal opinion, and I realise I'm not very good at stealth games and I don't often play them, but I can tell when poor design is compounding the issue. Also, I think the game is slow to get started, and I have only seen part of what it has to offer. Hopefully if I sink a few more hours into it, it might begin to grow on me, but I expect it be a painful process.

Spontaneous Sunday: Valiant Hearts: The Great War

Welcome to Spontaneous Sunday week 7. This week I have played Valiant Hearts: The Great War (2014, Ubisoft Montpellier, Ubisoft, Xbox One). This was one of the free games offered with Xbox Live's "Games With Gold" feature in October 2015 and had been sat unplayed on my hard-drive since then.

"Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a puzzle adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montpellier and published by Ubisoft. Valiant Hearts is a puzzle-based game which takes place across the course of World War I, the Great War, putting players in the role of four characters; the Frenchman Emile, his German son-in-law Karl, American soldier Freddie, and Belgian nurse Anna."

- Wikipedia on Valiant Hearts

What do I expect from the game?

Having downloaded the game for free with Games With Gold, I had a quick look at the screenshots and read the game's description and some user reviews before playing it today. I knew that it was a 2D puzzle game set in World War I but not much else, but I did have some expectations.

I expected it to involve a lot of combat, specifically shooting (but it turned out that is not the case and its much more puzzle-based than I expected). I expected it to be very story-driven, with multiple characters (which I was correct about). I didn't know whether I would actually be able to move the character or whether it would be a point-and-click, decision-based game. I expected it to be good because it has a lot of positive reviews on the xbox store and an average rating of 4.2/5 stars.

The art style is like nothing I had really seen before, so I was interested to see how it would look in motion. I was also somewhat curious of how the game would portray World War I, an often sensitive topic that must be approached with care, in a respectful way given its art style.

First Impressions - What did I think of the game in its first few minutes?

The game's front end shows one of the playable characters, Emile, standing amongst rubble with a dog, with the games logo shown and sombre, thoughtful music playing. It's simple but effective. I started a new game and a cutscene played, giving a short background on how WWI began and introducing some main characters; middle-aged French farmer and grandfather, Emile, his daughter, Marie and his German son-in-law Karl. As a German, Karl is deported from France and is enlisted into the German army. Emile is enlisted into the French army and the game begins with him arriving at the enlisting office. The cutscene is consistent with the games art style and is nicely animated. It also introduces the story and sets the mood well.

Following the cutscene, the player takes control of Emile and enters the enlistment office, coming out the other side in French army uniform, illustrating how rushed French conscription will have been in 1914. The game's tutorial level involves attacking training dummies with bayonets and grenades and the player is also shown how to climb objects. The player then raises the French flag to the sound of Le Marseillaise. It's representative of the morale, patriotism, optimism and bravado seen before first combat, and seems to be intended to contrast with the more grim mood seen later in this chapter of the game.

Emile arrives at the conscription office. This is the moment that
gameplay begins.

Training mission.

Raising the flag.

The player is then sent to a train station where they must solve a puzzle to stop some French soldiers hassling an African-American soldier, Freddie, who is a playable character and Emile's friend later in the game. The puzzle involves bribing an officer with wine, having a band play to get soldiers to dance and blasting some soldiers with smoke from a train. Through all of this, the player is only ever instructed through speech bubbles with pictures in them that appear over NPC's heads. It's all very charming and well-thought out.

A cutscene plays showing Emile's unit being deployed to battle at the Marne. The player has to charge an enemy position, using careful timing to dodge enemy fire and bombing, and I noticed at this point how unlikely a hero Emile is - as far as war games go, I am used to playing as battle-hardened, infinitely capable super-soldiers like those seen in CoD and other FPS games - while Emile is an aged farmer and essentially a civilian. He is eventually wounded at the end of the level, and captured. I was surprised at how sad this was considering I had only taken control of this character a few minutes earlier - there's something about the game's art style and the way it presents itself and delivers its story that makes you feel invested in and attached to the characters - a certain je ne sais quoi. 

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

I played the game for about 3 hours and completed the first of 4 chapters that span the whole length of the war. The first positive thing that I noticed about the game, and surely one of its unique selling points, is its attractive, interesting art style. I've never really seen an art style quite like it. I was initially skeptical about how the game could pull off a cartoony/animated art style and still approach its subject matter respectfully, but I soon realised that it managed this very well, and in fact the game is endorsed by Mission Centenaire 14-18, as described on the game's website;

"Valiant Hearts: The Great War is endorsed by the Mission Centenaire 14-18, the French Commission in charge of the First Wold War commemorative program and creator of the "Centenary" certification which highlights the most innovative WW1-related projects. This endorsement certifies the accuracy of historical content in Valiant Hearts: The Great War"

...which is certainly an accolade that Battlefield 1 cannot claim! Valiant Hearts offers background on the events that it portrays and WWI life in general in a Historical Facts page in the pause menu, which I found to be fascinating and a valuable addition to the game. This page shows colourised real photographs which bridge the gap between the heavily-stylised game and the real world, grounding and contextualising the events on-screen.

The Historical Facts page.

There's also hidden items to find in each level such as British coins and Canadian dog-tags, all of which are accompanied with a bit of background information, so they encourage exploration, add replay value and educate the player all at the same time. The game also portrays and mentions the wide range of people and cultures involved in the war including British, French and Canadian forces and the Foreign Legion, Muslim soldiers and Indian soldiers. The developers approached the topic of WWI respectfully and with integrity and is education on a topic that is well worth knowing about.

The game's story is definitely a strong suit and the characters are interesting and charming. The story is emotional from the very beginning and engages the player in an emotional way that few games manage and attempt. The characters are likeable and easy to empathise with and root for. A particularly emotion moment occurs when Emile and Freddie meet again for the first time since the train station at the start of the game. The pair then free the dog from being trapped in barbed wire and make friends. This scene is accompanied by uplifting music, which brings me to the game's next strength: the audio.

Emile and Freddie free the dog.

The game uses audio incredibly well. The music is fitting and suits the game well. There are many changes of mood in the game, from the optimism of the tutorial level and the light-heartedness of band playing in the train station, to the sad moment when Emile is wounded and the suspense of stealthy sections, and the music keeps up with the mood at all times. There are also small musical flourishes that accompany puzzle-related actions, and they are a way of giving feedback to the player in that they sound positive when the player takes a step in the right direction, or negative if the player does the wrong thing. Another creative use of audio is in a car-chase scene where the characters are being attacked by planes and a zeppelin. The bombs and gunfire occur in time with the music. It took me a while to notice and I was really impressed with the developer's creativity in this feature. The ambient audio within levels is also well-done and sounds interesting and authentic.

Screenshot from the rhythm-based car chase section.

The gameplay itself is interesting and engaging. The puzzles are creative and the mechanics are nicely designed. One mechanic I enjoyed in particular is the dog, who you can command to interact with things in the environment to solve puzzles and access areas. He's also a charming character in his own right. I liked that the player is only ever instructed to solve puzzles through visuals (speech bubbles, things placed in the level etc.) and no text or vocal instructions are given, but its still clear what needs to be done. The developers pulled this off very well.

The first chapter concludes with a dramatic boss battle against
a German zeppelin.

What don't I like about the game?

Valiant Hearts is another of those Spontaneous Sunday titles that puts me in a tricky spot, because I fail to find anything seriously wrong with it! There wasn't really anything design-wise that detracted from the gameplay, though there was an instance where I broke a puzzle and caused a progression-stopping bug that forced me to restart the level and reminded me of my stint as a QA tester at Tt Fusion.

Another minor thing that I didn't like is that, while the voice acting was generally good, the characters didn't have accurate accents in the cutscenes. Emile's daughter, Marie, was voiced with a posh English accent rather than French.

Finally, there is the fact that the gameplay wasn't as I had expected. I expected it to involve more combat when in fact it was much more puzzle-based, and the gameplay was therefore a bit more slow paced than I had expected. The gameplay is fun but is not particularly thrilling, and the game's stand-out moments come in the form of plot-points rather than gameplay. When recommending the game to someone else, the gameplay wouldn't be the first thing that I think to tell them about; I would instead focus on the story and concept in general.

Final Thoughts

Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a unique, charming and well-executed game with an interesting concept and nice art style. The story is engaging and the historical facts feature appeals greatly to me. It's education and feels like a sensitive, well-executed portrayal of WWI. There should be more games like this, that seek to bring sensitive themes and knowledge to players in an entertaining but respectful way. Ubisoft Montpellier did a good job of this.

It has some interesting ideas such as the clever use of audio and the visual instructions for the puzzles. I think it is probably the most charming Spontaneous Sunday title yet and it has cemented its place on the list of games that I will be playing again soon.

Gathering Books! (DE4101 - Design Research 1)

Gathering Books! (DE4101 - Design Research 1)

Regular readers of my blog (if such a thing exists?) will have noticed that its been a bit quiet - thats because I have been busy gathering research material for a piece of work for one of my modules; DE4101, also known as Design Research 1. The piece of work is a Literature & Contextual review and it is due to be submitted on December 9th.

Basically, I have to gather a load pieces of research material on a topic within the field of games design, and write a critical analysis of this material and the ideas they present. I have to gather 10 books, 10 web articles, 10 journal/magazine articles and 10 "contextual" pieces (anything besides a written piece) that contains useful information on my chosen area of focus. I then have to narrow the written pieces down from 30 to 5 and write a review on them. For the contextual review, I have to narrow it down from 10 to 5. I have chosen to research into 3D environment art and the methods used by environment artists to make atmospheric/engaging/realistic 3D environments.

I won't go into too much detail as it won't be terribly exciting to read about, but so far I have gathered all my books and the research is well under way. I got more than 10 books that included things such as game design books, game art books and some film/TV and stage set design books.

My next step is to find the 10 web articles and 10 journal/magazine articles, then I will decide which 5 I want to focus on for the write-up. Here's a list of the main books;

The art of Halo: creating a virtual masterpiece
By Trautmann, Eric S, 2004

Film: a critical introduction
By Pramaggiore, Maria, 2011

Game level design
By Byrne, Ed, 2005

Scene design and stage lighting
By Parker, W. Oren, 2009

Building interactive worlds in 3D: virtual sets and pre-visualization for games, film, and the Web
By Gauthier, Jean-Marc, 2005

Creating emotion in games: the craft and art of emotioneering
By Freeman, David, 2004

Game design for teens
By Pardew, Les, 2004

Challenges for game designers
By Brathwaite, Brenda, 2009

Game development essentials: game level design
By Castillo, Travis, 2008

Game Design Complete
Book by Patrick O'Luanaigh, 2006

Designing virtual worlds
By Bartle, Richard, 1960, 2004

Level up!: the guide to great video game design
By Rogers, Scott, 2014

Spontaneous Sunday: Hour Of Victory

Welcome to Spontaneous Sunday week 6! This weeks game is Hour of Victory (2007, N-Fusion, Midway Games, Xbox 360). I picked it up from Cex last week for £4.50 along with a few other games.

"Hour of Victory is a first-person shooter video game developed by N-Fusion Interactive and published by Midway Games for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. It was the first World War II game to use the Unreal Engine 3. The game features multiple settings from Europe and North Africa. Players can assume the roles of three different soldiers each with different skills: Ross, a British Commando and brute fighter, Bull, an Army Ranger sniper, or Taggert, a stealthy covert operative."

- Wikipedia on Hour of Victory.

What do I expect from the game?

Hour Of Victory is a last-gen WW2 first-person shooter, which is a very familiar genre to me, having played many old Call of Duty and Medal of Honour games and other standalone games. I remember being interested in the game when it first came out in 2007 and I think I read a few magazine features on it at that time. It has been on my "to play" list for nearly 10 years! I expected it to be pretty good because it was published by Midway which is a fairly high profile company, and the box art is high quality and looks promising.

This genre became very saturated in the mid-noughties so I expect this game to have many similarities to others of the genre, specifically, the use of cover, stealth, vehicle sections and "reach point X!" objective types amongst other tropes. A big factor in whether I see it as a good game or not will be how well it sets itself apart from its contemporaries.

First Impressions

The game's front end looked promising and like a lot of effort had gone into making it look nice. I started a new game and chose from normal difficulty. An intro cutscene played in which a high-ranking officer penned a letter to each of the 3 playable characters enlisting them on a mission to stop a Nazi atomic weapons research programme and summons them to "Al Shatar" in North Africa for a mission brief. While there, the town comes under attack and the player has to defend it. This serves as the first mission and the tutorial section of the game.

The intro cutscene is short but effectively introduces the story and characters. The game's graphics are lacking somewhat which is slightly surprising considering it's made in Unreal Engine 3; plenty of very attractive games have used this engine. The 3 playable characters are introduced - Ross, Bull and Taggert. Before gameplay begins, you are made to choose a character and shown an image and short description of each character and their abilities. Their abilities seem sufficiently well-thought-out to provide variety and tailor to different players approaches to the game. After much deliberation, I chose to play as Ross - the all-guns-blazing SAS commando.

The game features 3 playable characters with different strengths
and abilities

The whole of the Al Shatar campaign levels feature British soldiers in North Africa which I found interesting. The British war effort was often under-represented in WW2 games from this era. Also, North Africa is an interesting and uncommon setting.

The first missions take place in British-controlled North Africa -
an interesting setting indeed!

The structure of the missions was just as I had expected; go to this point, meet this NPC, defend the HQ from a wave of enemies, secure a machine gun nest, gun down a wave of enemies with it, reach AA gun, shoot down enemy planes and so on. The Al Shatar campaign concluded with a tank battle segment that was one of the best bits of the game - several buildings collapsed when shot which was a nice touch. The first mission was hectic, if at times a little too difficult. Hour Of Victory is not particularly innovative in terms of level content but it can't be accused of lacking action!

The game features plenty of action.

The tank section was one of the best bits of the game.

What do I like about the game? What does it do well?

There's a few things that Hour Of Victory has got going in its favour. You can definitely tell that the developers tried hard to make it stand out from the other dozens of WW2 shooters around at the time, with some success. The settings and concept in general are quite interesting. Fighting in North Africa and a snowy castle/fortress was more interesting than the generic ruined French villages seen in many other WW2 shooters.

The game features some interesting and attractive environments.

The idea of having 3 playable characters with different abilities was definitely a step in the right direction and one that I think sets it apart from other games. The characters have different weapons and can perform different actions with the levels. Taggart, for example, can pick locks and cut wire fences to create new paths through levels. However, the differences between the character do not go deep enough. All the unique paths that each character can unlock lead to the same objective in the end. One instance in which I found the unique mechanics to be genuinely useful was when I used Ross to pull a heavy object out of the way, opening up a side-room containing a new weapon. I would have liked to have seen more moments like this, in which the unique abilities made a greater difference. The 3 character feature is also good because you can change character upon death and approach a difficult section differently.

The game features some fairly attractive environments and interesting locations. I played the Al Shatar campaign which showcased tightly packed North African streets and houses, and most of the second campaign in a snowy castle that had cablecars, tunnels, sewers, views of mountains and the castle interior. There was also some nice textures in the game. The environment artists made good use of UE3's material editor, with specular and normal maps that looked pretty good.

The SFX and ambient audio was decent, particularly in a level in which you had to sneak into the castle through a sewer and free a valuable prisoner. I have realised that the quality of a game's SFX/ambient audio can often be judged by how good the audio is in its sewer levels. Hour Of Victory had echoing water drips and the sound of rats. In the Al Shatar campaign, there were planes flying over head, explosions and anti-aircraft fire, all with the appropriate accompanying audio. It sounded pretty authentic and the environments are atmospheric as a result.

The sewer/prison section had some very nice ambient audio.

The game plays out pretty quick and it feels rewarding. I got a lot of achievements in my 2 hours of playtime (and in fact I completed well over 1/4 of the story.) It's always nice to feel rewarded when playing a game. Separate achievements are awarded for completing levels as each different character. This surely adds replay value to the game. 

What don't I like about the game?

Hour Of Victory has its fair share of negative points. While the environments looked good for the most part, some of the graphics look dated, even for 2007, particularly in the cutscenes. The games looks can be best described as "hit and miss".

The gameplay was also hit and miss. It took until the stealthy sewer section of the second campaign, after about an hour of gameplay, for me to really start enjoying the gameplay and appreciate its frantic shooter action. After that, I was lobbing grenades and running and gunning and having a great time. The castle missions are definitely stronger than the North Africa missions and I think having the North Africa missions at the start of the game was a questionable decision. The game is also pretty punishing and difficult, and the checkpoints are infrequent.

While having the option 3 different playable characters was included with good intentions, it wasn't terribly well implemented. The character aren't very well balanced. There is a lot more intractable objects for Taggart to use within the levels than there is for the other 2 characters, and it feels like the player is meant to play as Taggart and that levels were designed with him in mind. The game is indeed more engaging and fun when playing as this character and the other two seem to be pushed aside. The 3 character system is a big unique selling point for the game, but it often falls flat.

The music suits the game well enough, but is often overly dramatic, obtrusive and not terribly memorable.

Finally, there is the controls. When gameplay began on the first level, I was immediately thrown into a firefight with Germans. I soon noticed that the controls were a bit clunky and felt dated. Literally the first thing I did was press LT to use iron sights, which is almost universal in more recent FPS games, but in Hour Of Victory it is the button to throw a grenade, and I ended up having to run for cover so as to not get killed by my own grenade. I eventually figured out that you press the right stick in to enter iron sights, and reminded myself that this game pre-dates the FPS revolution that was Call of Duty 4 and the other much more polished games that followed.

Conclusion

Hour Of Victory is an average game in many senses. It feels dated even considering that it is nearly 10 years old. Call of Duty 4 was released only a few months later and marked a turning point in the FPS genre and is, in fact, a metaphor for the state of the genre at the time; the WW2 shooter had begun to reach stagnation and COD4 quite literally brought the FPS into the modern day. Hour Of Victory feels like one of the last of the old school of FPS games. It does take steps to set itself apart, such as the 3 character system and the interesting settings, but by mid-2007 this was probably not enough to make any real waves in the genre.

With all that said, I did enjoy the game once I had gotten used to the dated controls and was having fun with it towards the end of my play session. The gameplay isn't perfect but its fast-paced and challenging and it was cheap, so I am willing to overlook its flaws. I nearly reached the halfway point in the story so I will definitely return to it and complete it soon!