Customer Reviews

Hour of Victory (DVD)

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Man, this game came so close to shooter heaven. First, I'd better tell you what I look for in a shooter, since my idea of a great game is likely not the same as yours. I love good environments. They don't have to have cutting-edge graphics, but the sense of place has to be there. This game has that. Nicely designed levels. At least for single-player. I don't do any multiplayer, so I can't speak to that. The levels are small-ish, probably due to the fact that it was designed first for consoles. Another thing I look for in a great shooter is great sniping. I love to snipe. In this game, at the beginning of each mission, you can choose from a Commando-type, a Sniper, or a Stealth dude. When given the choice, I always chose Sniper, because...I could. The game will let you play with whichever one you choose at the beginning of the mission, but once you've chosen, you are locked in to that character right up until the next mission. And each map has different ways you can go, depending on which you've chosen. Which does allow for some replayability if you want to see all the paths through. For instance, the Sniper is the only one that can climb ropes, and the Commando is the only one that can move heavy objects out of the way, and the Spy is the only one who can pick locks. The sniping works well in this game, which is the primary reason I love it. Lots of great places to snipe from, and high places to climb to.

Now for the problems:
The game does not allow for strategic management of weapons. For instance, in my favorite games, your inventory remains consistent from mission to mission. If you finish one mission with the sniper rifle and an MP40, you'll start the next mission with those same two guns and the exact amount of ammo you left the last mission with. This game does NOT do that! In fact, at every cutscene, some of which occur during mid-mission, the game will throw you back into the game with the default weapons and ammo that it started the mission with. So if you have carefully traded away one weapon for a better one, you'll lose the better one after the cutscene. Monumentally frustrating.

Checkpoint saving. Wouldn't be so bad, except there's generally one one save point during a mission. And some of the missions are tough. This is where I was thankful that the maps are rather small. Not tiny, but small compared with newer PC titles.

Respawning of enemies: I hate this. To be fair, the game only respawns a fixed amount of enemies per area, and then stops, so it's not endless, but spawning is definitely occurring. Look, game designer, if you're going to throw 20 enemies at me at a particular point, at least pre-place them all in various rooms or other logical places, so that if I want to, I can find ways of clearing them out. Spawning takes away an aspect of strategy from me, and allows the game to cheat.

But since the spawning is limited, I can live with it. This game probably fails when compared to other recent FPS games, but when looked at purely as a sniping game, I think it succeeds greatly. So, Snipers, go ahead and buy. Otherwise proceed with caution.

Game tested on Intel Quad-core 6600, nVidia 9800GT/512, 6 gigs ram. Ran very nicely and smoothly. Would run smoothly on much less, I'm sure. I was able to adjust the game's resolution to 1920 x 1200, which was nice, and got around 65 frames per second. Very few other video options, however, so not much tweaking allowed, other than resolution.

Its better than the 360 version but still no Call of duty or even call of duty-ish.

THIS IS THE UK VERSION: REGION 2