Call of Duty: Finest Hour

Long before Warzone dominated the battle royal scene. Long before people were pissed about vertical movement and demanded less interesting game direction and innovation. Before nights spent with friends reaching high rounds in zombies and Special ops, Search & Destroy matches won by the amount of shit-talking delivered, and before killstreaks and perks were even conceived of, Call of Duty was a franchise in the making, which whether it be for better or worse, helped define the post Half-life era with its unique gameplay and level design.

There's a beauty in these earlier games in the franchise that stands absolute, even outside of the nostalgia-tinted glasses I wear and the relentless progression of time that tends to render older things obsolete and antiquated, the palpable charm that sprouts out of the spirit of these games keeps them preserved. These games engulf you through the well-crafted missions, soundtracks, and overall atmosphere which immerse you. While revisiting Finest Hour through PCSX2, an emulator for the PS2 console, I experienced a game that I hadn't touched in a decade and a half. It kicked ass. Elements of which you'd think would be rougher around the edges, like the gunplay which one would likely assume would reflect the zeitgeist of the earlier 6th generation console shooter era would be sub-par, but overall, until the Flecktarn soldiers in the American segment show up, it surprisingly feels punchy and fun. The game overall keeps the same joy I'd experienced as a child, well, up until the begging to god for a swift and fatal blow to the base of your neck begins in the latter half of the game.

Oh yea, this shit gets tough. It shifts form from a narrative-driven handholding sort of structure which would become signature of Call of Duty campaigns into a Medal of Honor Esque Run through this entire level filled with enemies with barely any ammo and low health, rare if any checkpoints, and try not to die when completing a variety of difficult objectives that come one after another. It starts around the latter segment of the British mission tree and goes into full effect for the final American section. An important note: I'd never beat this as a kid, in fact, I remember getting filtered by the final sewer section where the developers figured that having you charge into machine-gun fire to close off entry points to hordes of spawning enemies was a good idea. I'm surprised that as a child I even got that far as the mission: Sgt. Dehert and the insufferable castle of hellish misery and suffering which took multiple retries even as an adult. While brutal, the difficulty in the final missions was a welcome treat for me. My fucked up mind of which has come to enjoy the suffering brought on by games and experiences like playing HOI4 with friends and the jank of games like Warthunder found a pleasant brutalist challenge to overcome.

Replaying the missions and levels of Finest Hour that had left permanent imprints on my mind while younger left me in a content state of mind and affirmed the opinion I first formed when I was a child, which is: "For my money, this has got to be the best Call of Duty".