Hour of Victory Demo Review

When I saw on Wednesday there was a FPS demo out I immediately downloaded it because I was looking for something new to play. After playing the Hour of Victory demo yesterday I just hope the demo is a very early build of the game because it sucked. Before I get to the suckyness there were a few things I liked. First, they give you three characters to play with; each of which has their own unique strengths. Second, one of these characters gets to drive a tank. Tanks are always a plus! OK, that is about it on the good parts now to the bad.

The reason I think this could be an early build is because the graphics are terrible. If this had been a game for the original Xbox the graphics would still have been iffy. Even my wife made a comment about how bad the game looked when she saw me playing it. The other reason is because the controls feel very clunky. Not sure how else to describe them. When I would move or shoot I felt like I was a robot moving. When I was trying to snipe I would zoom in and then it would turn so slowly that I could not keep the enemies anywhere near my sites, but when I was not zoomed in I could turn 10 times faster. I found it easier to just use the sniper without zooming.

I could probably stop right there since graphics and controls are two main gameplay elements, but there was a third area I found annoying. They give you three characters to play with a strong machine gun carrying guy, a sniper, and a cover ops guy. Each of these guys has a special thing they can do. The cover ops can pick door locks and cut fences. The sniper can throw a grappling hook and climb buildings. I never did figure out what the other guy could do. However, instead of letting me pick any door's lock or climb any building they only let you perform those actions in pre-specified spots. I only found one place to actually climb and snipe from and when I got up to the top there were no enemies anywhere that within my view to shoot at. With the covert ops guy I never did find any doors that I could pick the lock on. I did find some fences to cut through, but after I did there was never any real benefit from doing so. It felt very much like these additional attributes were added on and then they went back through and added a few spots where you could use the on the map to try and trick you into playing through the game with each character.

Unless this game gets a major overhaul I'd stay away from it. There are plenty of other WWII First Person Shooters out there that are a lot better than this.