Microsoft
Hour of Victory
By George Damidas
Jul 20, 2007, 7 :31 am

I just beat Hour of Victory, and it felt like it lasted an eternity, regardless of how long I actually took to complete it. I can comfortably say that Hour of Victory is, if I may be a bit verbose, a steaming pile. Coming soon to a store near you: Hour of Victory: Depression at the Midway.

This is truly a Phyrric victory, friends: my accomplished goal of completing the game has cost me hours of my life that I cannot get back…or hours of my life that I could have spent playing Call of Duty 2. Despite winning, I’m nothing but a loser at this point.

Where to begin?  Well, let’s start with the fact that the game is so thoroughly broken that it’s just a mess. Fundamental issues that have been worked out in previous releases are prominent here. Wait, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

There are three troops to choose from for most missions: an SAS commando, an Army ranger, and an OSS operative. The commando is stronger and is armed with a Thompson and revolver; the Army ranger has a sniper rifle and pistol; and the OSS operative has a silenced stern and throwing knives. Throughout the levels there will be sections tailored to each soldier: a large object to be pushed (commando), a lock to pick (operative), or a wall to scale (ranger). Each soldier can pick up weapons and ammo from fallen enemies – though, strangely, allied weapons are excluded – as well as handle grenades and engage in melee combat. It’s pretty standard stuff.

From most screenshots and the general description, Hour of Victory sounds pretty solid. Midway is not a small publisher and this puppy has the Unreal Engine 3 under the hood, so it’s not exactly having to make do. The idea of splitting levels up among three specialists is also an interesting novelty, and it seems as if it should make for a nice change of pace. The thing is that while the idea sounds cool, the execution is absolutely horrible.

None of that is apparent from the get-go. All you know is that there is a war going on and you’ve signed on to do your duty, so you pick your soldier and begin your task of pushing back Nazi Germany. You pick the ranger because you always fancied the mystique and one-shot-one-kill method of the sniper. Let’s do this.

It doesn’t take long for you to realize that being a sniper means scaling buildings, and that’s pretty much it. The glowing rope along the sides of buildings doesn’t mean there’s an actual rope there but that you can throw a grappling hook onto a ledge, an action which is accompanied by a cutscene every single time. The invulnerability these few moments offer is nice, but the result isn’t that great; instead of taking a unique path and honing your sniping skills, you simply shot a few guys and went a room around the branching paths for the other two soldiers. There’s no gauging wind, holding your breath, or steadying the rifle; you simply have a rifle with a better view. The sniper unit isn’t so much unique as it is just there. That’s how it is for the commando and operative as well. The only really unique ability here is that the operative can perform a stealth kill whenever an unsuspecting enemy is knifed in the back. I’ll wait for the amazement to finish washing over you.

There are some levels that force a soldier on you, though. These are few, but they can be particularly painful, especially during the operative’s mission where he has to sneak inside of a castle using the game’s subtle-as-a-hammer stealth features – little sewer grate enclaves acting as cloaking devices – and then (ugh!) escort a prisoner out. You get to control a tank towards the end, but it also controls like a brick.

That stealth-cum-rescue mission begins the longer-mission portion of the game. Up until that point, some missions can be finished in a matter of minutes. With each soldier having a healthy amount of stamina to run, some of the missions can actually be breezed through by simply running around much of the combat. But it’s this mission and the last that really drag things out. The last mission is especially grating, as if it wasn’t bad enough that you’re playing through this, it’s like nFusion gave you the bird by making you wade through a horribly designed endgame with an ending so lackluster it might have well just been a stark Game Over (Sucker) screen.

The problems that plague the last stage are the same ones that are prominent throughout the game; it’s just that it’s in one really long set piece so that all the ugly becomes really apparent. The biggest problem I had was the sense of chaotic futility in each level that was fueled by the ridiculously abused spawn feature. In most games, enemies spawn inside of an object or a secluded area, but not here: if an enemy wasn’t going to spawn in a tiny side room, even if it that meant right behind you, they would just appear in plain sight in the middle of a room. Poof! New Nazi. The result of this is that no matter what you did, it never felt like enough and it never made much sense. Once I clear an area of 20-30 soldiers, let me move on. When I could do that, the game was at least in line with standard design, but more often than not the game would simply plop down another half dozen or more soldiers in front of me, behind me, on the sides, or just all around. Despite the fact that the enemy is so stupid they often turn their back to you, shoot each other, reload without seeking cover, and never figured out that the crazy Brit barreling down on them with the butt of his gun could be stopped with a bullet, I often died in the end due to the sheer number of enemy soldiers.

Sept. 1, 1939, Poland awakes to a beautiful dawn. 8:00 am: All clear. 8:01 am: Surrounded by Germany. Ah, shit!

It all makes so much sense now.

Enemy troops will also do incredible things like levitate and shoot through walls. If soldiers popping up all around you doesn’t put you on edge, the fact that you will be shot through floors and concrete certainly will. Not only that, but there were times when enemies weren’t even pointing at me and I was still being hit. The most startling of these  were the moments when the enemy wasn’t even facing me: they shot me through their own backs.

The best way out of being hemmed in isn’t to rely on the random assistance from your brain-dead allies or to hope that you have enough rounds to kill the waves of enemies, but to charge. Charge like a crazed animal. By running through an area, enemies will finally stop respawning after another wave or two. This isn’t that big of a hassle in the smaller levels, but in the larger ones, where the checkpoints are spread out, and particularly the last level, it quickly becomes infuriating.

All of this isn’t even touching on things like haphazard level design – “That hall is blocked by a chair, man! Are you mad, to test fate like that?!” – or the fact that your bullets seem to be made out of rubber at times or that the enemies die in a hilarious Mortal Kombat 3 way (completely unrelated to the injury). Even at its best, the game is sub-par.

You can forget multiplayer, too. If you can find anyone to play this, the matches are laggy and as erratic as the single player portions. It’s a blast unloading a full clip two feet away from someone and spraying everything but the target with lead. Blargh. There are a handful of new weapons to use, but, as you may guess, that’s not nearly enough to warrant playing this thing.

And finally, I give one gift to all of you out there unfortunate enough to play this. Here’s a hint to beating the final boss, Shecter: immediately go to your back right and hide in the corner, where you are impervious to grenades and have a great vantage point. Kill officers and take grenades off troopers to attack. When Shecter runs behind you, step out for a second and he will flee to the other side, right in grenade territory. Enjoy the crappy ending.

Overall: 1.5/10

It’s easy going into Hour of Victory thinking that it’s just getting a bad rap. A game can’t be that bad. Some can be, however, and this one is. Whenever I thought, “It’s not so bad,” I would immediately realize that, yes, it is that bad, but I had just gotten used to its overwhelming technical and design flaws for a passing moment. Those moments didn’t last long. To be blunt, buying Hour of Victory is akin to taking $60 and lighting it on fire just ‘cause.