Hour of Victory Multiplayer Hands-On
Midway's upcoming World War II shooter will feature a single-player campaign, as well as let you battle online in three team modes.
Midway will make its entry in the World War II shooter genre next month with Hour of Victory, a first-person shooter that puts you in the boots of three Allied soldiers caught up in the European theater of the war. The twist is that each of the three main characters has a unique way of playing through a level, which gives you a lot more replayability and gameplay options. (You can check out the recent single-player demo for yourself.) However, World War II shooters are also valued highly for their multiplayer content. In this arena, Midway and developer Nfusion are focusing on team-based gameplay.
Hour of Victory's multiplayer mode will feature three modes. There's team deathmatch and capture the flag, which are fairly standard multiplayer modes. Then there's devastation, Hour of Victory's variation on the bomb mode found in other games. Devastation requires both teams to battle for control of a bomb, which can be used to destroy a generator. Each side has three generators, so the first team to wipe out the opposing team's generators wins. To win, each team must work together to capture the bomb and escort the bomb carrier to an objective. But the team must not get too close to the bomb carrier because one of the nastier features of devastation is that if the bomb is hit by gunfire, it could explode in the bomb carrier's hands.
All this mayhem will unfold on six maps that are basically inspired by the levels in the game. We saw Trenches, a smaller North African map that features two fields of trenches; Cathedral, a German city level with an old cathedral at its center; and Fortress, a level inspired by the classic Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood movie Where Eagles Dare. Fortress was set amidst a German fortress in the mountains, complete with working gondola cars that can actually play a role in the game because they'll convey you to a gondola house, which may be the site of some of your objectives.
Hour of Victory will support up to 12 players, and because it's a team-based game, that means there will be up to six on each side. The three main characters or their abilities won't be available in multiplayer because you'll battle under generic Axis and Allies armies. Depending on the map, the nationalities may change. For instance, in North Africa, the Allies are represented by the British, while the Western Europe levels feature Americans. However, the Berlin-based level will have the Russians represent the Allies because it's the USSR that captured Nazi Germany's capital.
The gameplay is fast-paced and intense, as you'd expect it to be, but one of the interesting aspects of multiplayer is that there are no grenades whatsoever. It's a bold decision, and it certainly gets rid of the grenade-spamming problem that can afflict these types of games. This problem occurs when battles are nothing but a constant hail of grenades, resulting in lots of easy kills. So if you're going to take someone out in Hour of Victory, you're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way and shoot him, which isn't as easy as it seems because the modeling recoil with these firearms seems to do a decent job. For example, if you fire a burst of a submachine gun at someone, you'll watch as the shots ride up the more you fire. You'll spawn with a standard submachine gun, such as the Thompson, but you have the opportunity to pick up other types of weapons on the battlefield that range from rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, to even bazookas. Of course, everything is World War II authentic, from the Browning Automatic Rifle, the Springfield rifles, and the MP-44 machine pistol.
The game's devastation mode provides a couple of unique twists on the bomb mode seen in other games.
Even without grenades, this is a game that's unforgiving; it doesn't take too much to take someone down. The health system in multiplayer is identical to the one found in the single-player campaign. There's no health meter, but if you are grievously wounded, your vision will constrict and your eyes will become heavily bloodshot. To recover, you have to not move for a few seconds (and not get shot again); then you'll shake it off and return to full health. And if you do die, you'll respawn in a safe zone that's impervious to enemy camping.
Hour of Victory's multiplayer isn't as full-featured as other games, but it does represent a solid first step, especially as Midway enters one of the most congested genres of all: the World War II first-person shooter genre. With that said, it's such a crowded genre because it has an incredibly large and diverse audience. How Hour of Victory strikes a chord with that audience will be found out next month when the game ships.
Hour of Victory Quick Links
Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | DLC & Expansions | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum | Check Prices
- GameSpot Score2.0terrible
Check Prices: $21 – 57.99
Related Content
Matches based on text similarity.
Images
- Midway
- Nfusion
- Historic First-Person...
- Release: Jun 25, 2007 »
- ESRB: Teen
Games you may like…
-
Battle for the Pacific
(X360) -
Turning Point
(X360) -
Bomberman: Act Zero
(X360) -
The History Channel: Civil War - Secret Missions
(X360) -
The History Channel: Civil War - A Nation Divided
(X360)
Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.
See More Similar Games
89 Comments