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!