My grandfather never liked to talk about his WWII experience. He'd discuss his life as a police officer for hours, but there was something about the war that got to him, and I was a little saddened by this not only because of the pain he must've felt, but also because I desperately wanted to hear about what he went through, which I assume must've been extremely intense. Unfortunately, "intense" doesn't exactly describe my experience with Activision's Call of Duty: Finest Hour. It's a fun WWII shooter that's hampered by glitches as well as its own linearity, making it a good purchase if you intend on battling other players on Xbox Live, but best experienced as a rental if you could care less.

Call of Duty is one of Activision's flagship PC titles, but Finest Hour is a console exclusive adventure that attempts to make the WWII experience a little more intimate and almost succeeds. Throughout the game's single-player campaign you'll play as Russian, British, and American soldiers who all play a different part in the conflict. One of them is a sniper, another is a tank operator, and another is simply a grunt, among others. There's not a lot of chatter during gameplay to move their stories along, but there are cut scenes in between that go into detail about their backgrounds, and the voice actors did a fine job so all of the accents sound authentic. Because of the culture switch you'll play the war in various locales such as Russia, Africa, and a host of others, which breaks up the monotony of other shooters where you're always in the same place. Unfortunately, while this is a cool idea, it's hampered by the game's length. I finished the game in less than 13 hours, and because the game swaps characters so many times I failed to make a connection with any of them. When all is said and done, you're still seeing the war through the same pair of eyes.

Thankfully, this doesn't really undermine the gameplay experience. Finest Hour is packed with different types of missions that'll see you running about on foot or inside a vehicle, most notably a tank, and there are TONS of Nazis to kill, planes to blow up, and other tanks to destroy. Plus, there are well over 10 authentic weapons in the game (each culture has its own set), and they supposedly fire just as their real life counterparts do, which is both cool as well as problematic. Rifles such as the M1 Garand, Mosin-Nagant, the Lee-Enfield, and my personal favorite, the Springfield are very accurate and fun to use, but most of the machine guns are all over the place and are very difficult to keep steady. For example, it's possible to unload a full clip from the Bren LMG and fail to kill anything, even at twenty feet away. However, this really isn't a complaint. Rather, it adds a layer of strategy, especially during multiplayer, which I'll get to in a bit.

The weapons in Finest Hour are only a small sampling of the game's quality presentation. There's black and white war footage peppered between levels, and the game manual is littered with WWII factoids and is worth reading. Topping it off are the game's pretty graphics. While not spectacular, they're certainly respectable. The game suffers from being a multiplatform title, so programming for the PS2 has left the Xbox version looking a little lackluster, but the environments as well as the character models are detailed. Tanks tear chunks out of buildings, bullets zip through the air, and well over twenty soldiers storm the screen at once. However, where the game falters is with its explosions. They don't look realistic at all, which makes chucking grenades and launching rockets a little underwhelming.

The saddest thing about Call of Duty is for every bright spot there's a problem that hampers the overall experience, and I'm going to begin with the AI. Finest Hour is advertised as a shooter where you never fight alone, and that's largely true. Fellow comrades are always close in large or small numbers. Sometimes you'll go into battle with a large group (as in the first mission), or it'll just be you and two fellow soldiers storming a control tower. The AI is good but not great, so while it's okay to let them go clear a room (they'll eventually kill everyone, though it may take them 5 minutes to do so at point blank range), you shouldn't rely on them to get you out of a jam. If you're being shot at by four Nazis, you're dead. Also, you can toggle a friendly fire option on or off so you don't accidentally maim one of your brothers in arms, but this proves to be problematic because they often times get in your way. This means that you'll either pop them in the head or be unable to shoot because they're in your line of fire. However, what really doesn't make sense is why, if you can't shoot them, you can still lay them out by attaching sticky grenades to their heads.

As for the enemy AI, the Germans are a mixed bag. They'll certainly duck and take cover, but they'll also blindly run into your tank as you roll across a wide open space. To their credit are their rifle skills, which are a lot more accurate than yours will ever be, so despite the fact that they're too stupid to notice that they're about to get run over, they more than make up for it with their sniping ability.

Despite the fun I had with the game, I was put off by how linear everything is. You're always on a path and the game never makes you forget it. In a battle at an airfield outside Stalingrad I had to destroy a set number of planes, and when the last plane blew up, a cut scene played where a hanger door opened, which just so happened to be the place that I needed to reach. In another example, I was storming a control tower and there was a truck about thirty feet away. Being able to see underneath it, I could tell there wasn't anyone on the opposite side, but no sooner did I get twenty feet away than a Nazi popped up from behind it. If you're willing to deal with the game's old school design this isn't a problem, but this sort of thing just seems archaic to me.

When I first saw the game at Activision a few months ago I had reservations about the tank levels, but they turned out to be pretty enjoyable. You can see your ride in first or third person views, and you maneuver it with the left thumb stick, so it controls sort of like Metroid Prime, but this is one big and clunky Metroid Prime. The right stick is used to aim the cannon, and if you're really daring, you can pop out of the hatch and unload some machine gun fire onto enemy troops, though this isn't encouraged.

The tank is fun but the experience is marred by poor gameplay design. You can destroy some structures but not all, and Activision didn't explore the best thing about a tank, which is running over things. Sure, you can roll over train tracks because it's scripted that you can, but you can't crush debris or even run across barbed wire! There's also the funny glitch where enemies will drop dead about five feet from the tank as it passes, suggesting you hit them when you really didn't.

The single-player campaign is good but it's the game's online play that really gives Finest Hour its medals. Up to 16 players can duke it out in several highly detailed environments that are all expertly designed. Featuring numerous nooks and crannies to hide within, snipers can take aim and pick off the fools charging the wide open spaces, though you'll always need to keep your wits about you, partly because you'll eventually be figured out, but also because the game is stupid and re-spawns people in the lamest of places. I was re-spawned in the middle of the battlefield, right next to someone else who had also re-spawned, or in the same exact place over and over. In fact, one time I racked up close to nine consecutive kills just by watching the same area. As soon as I popped one poor sucker in the head another would appear, and so forth and so on. I, of course, found it to be a lot of fun, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that for my opponents, that was anything but enjoyable.

In addition to that, players often glide across the field instead of run, making the game look more like a WWII ice show than anything else, you sometimes can't shoot through barbed wire, and head shots don't always kill. Most likely, you'll be screaming, "I just shot you in the head!" Also, some dead players have delayed reaction syndrome. You'll hit them right between the eyes, they'll sit there for a moment, and then keel over. While this is somewhat comical, it requires you to keep an eye on them longer than you'd like, and if another player (or players) saw where your shot came from, more than likely they already have a bead on you and you'll be dead in a hot second.

As for multiplayer options, Finest Hour only comes with the basics: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Search & Destroy (you have to work as a team to destroy objectives the other team is defending). However, though skimpy, online play is still a lot of fun, and everything runs very smoothly. The only time the frame rate takes a dive (and this also goes for single player), is when you pass through or target someone in a smoky area.

Finest Hour is definitely better than EA's console Medal of Honors, but that's not saying much. Its glitches took me out of the experience way too many times, and the gameplay is too cookie cutter. When combined with its limited multiplayer options the game provides a different experience than what we've been used to, but Activision's mishandling of the final product is simply embarrassing. I expected this game to be the definitive WWII shooter on the Xbox, but as it stands, it's barely competent.