The one that is a side story.
Call of Duty: Finest Hour is a 2004 First-Person Shooter video game and a Spin-Off of the Call of Duty series developed by the now-defunct Spark Unlimited and released on GameCube, PlayStation 2 and the original Xbox. The game is neither a reimagining or a remake of the original game but an attempt to the bring the cinematic Call of Duty experience to consoles of the time, and unlike its inspiration, the game featured third-person cutscenes and more emphasis on characterization.
Like the game it was based on, the player controls a series of characters fighting for the Soviet Union during the Battle of Stalingrad, the British Empire during the North Africa campaign, and the United States of America during the push across Belgium and Germany in the final months of the war.
Due to the game going overbudget and having a Troubled Production, publisher Activision decided to cut ties with the developer, leading to the console sequel Big Red One being developed by Treyarch, who would go on to develop the popular Black Ops subseries.
This video game provides examples of:
- Action Girl: A female Soviet sniper (Tanya Pavelovna) is one of the player characters, and is the first playable female character in the franchise.
- An Ass-Kicking Christmas: The final two levels of the Soviet campaign involve Nikolai Badanov and his tank crew raiding a German airfield on Christmas Eve, 1942, during Operation Little Saturn.
- Anti-Frustration Features: If the player dies and restarts from a checkpoint, they'll be given a full restock of their faction's weapons, though the player loses any medkits from previous levels and this can be an negative if the player was equipped with better weapons.
- Artistic License – Geography: Badanov refers to Stalingrad throughout the Soviet campaign as "Volgograd", the modern-day name of the city. If this is meant to play at his Old Soldier status, then he should at least be calling it Tsaritsyn - the original name of the city before Stalin renamed it after himself in 1925.
- BFG: It wouldn't be Call of Duty without a few. Among the various weapons the player character can carry: the MG42 machine gun, the M1919 machine gun, and the Panzershrek rocket launcher. Played at least somewhat realistically, however, as with these weapons the player moves noticeably slower, can only aim down the sights of the two machine guns if lying prone with the bipod deployed, and the MG42 in particular is very hard to control when firing.
- Cold Sniper: Tanya Pavelovna cuts down dozens of German soldiers with no emotion whatsoever.
- Decoy Protagonist: A non-fatal example in Aleksandr Sokolov. While the first few Stalingrad missions focus on him, the real focus turns out to be his eventual superior Tanya Pavelovna, whom you play as not long after being introduced to her. Sokolov ultimately becomes an NPC and serves as her Target Spotter for the rest of the campaign.
- Desert Warfare: The entire British campaign takes place during the North African campaign, with British commandos fighting the German Afrika Korps in the sandy dunes of Tunisia.
- Epic Tank-on-Tank Action: The fourth mission of the American campaign and the entire second half of the Soviet campaign puts the player in charge of a tank and duking it out with entire fleets of German tanks.
- Escort Mission: Sgt. Walker spends most of the Aachen sub-campaign escorting an M12 self-propelled artillery piece and a couple of Shermans through the ruins of the city.
- The Faceless: Notably averted, as all of the playable characters are depicted visually and even have spoken dialogue in cutscenes.
- Heal Thyself: Normal medkits heal 25 health on contact, while larger medkits heal 50 and can be carried 4 at a time to use when necessary, either on yourself or on an NPC.
- Naïve Newcomer: Aleksandr Sokolov, a 20-year-old fresh recruit, has no idea what he's getting into. Since he's the player character in the very first two missions, a new player also has no idea either.
- Nightmarish Nursery: A secret Easter Egg features a creepy room located behind a stone wall, done up to look like a crude nursery. The room is lined with portraits of babies, has toys on the floor that move on their own, a giant rat in a cage, and a ghost child in a crib that will vanish if the player attempts to interact with it.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Walker makes mention of his participation in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and the Battle of the Bulge, but his campaign is solely focused on the final stretch of battles leading into Germany.
- Tank Goodness: The American and Soviet campaigns each have a few missions where you play as the commander of a Sherman and T-34, respectively.
- Target Spotter: Sokolov ultimately ends up serving this role for his superior Tanya in the later Stalingrad missions, helping her locate and kill German soldiers hiding in Stalingrad's bombed out ruins.
- Token Minority: Sgt. Sam Rivers is the only African-American player character in the game. Justified Trope, on account that the unit he's fighting in, the 761st Tank Battalion was made up of African-American soldiers, and that most of the US Armed Forces during World War II were segregated.
- Too Dumb to Live: In the opening cutscene for the first Aachen mission, Sgt. Walker orders his men to use the tanks for cover. As the mission starts, two American Red Shirts charge ahead of the tanks, ignore Cpl. Church's shout for them to stay behind the tanks, and are promptly killed by a German machine gunner.
- Unique Enemy: Unique Ally, in this case. A Tunisian man named Yusef appears as an NPC ally during the first pair of North Africa missions. Appearing to be a partisan with a sniper rifle, he has no dialogue, no other characters comment on his appearance, and while he is invincible in the first of the two Matmata missions, he can be killed in the second.
- Urban Warfare: Several examples in both the Soviet and American campaigns.
- For the Soviet campaign, there's the entirety of the missions set inside of Stalingrad, where Soviet forces defend the city against constant German ground and aerial attacks.
- The American campaign gives us the Battles of Aachen and Remagen, two major battles taking place deep within German towns and cities, where the 1st Infantry Division struggles to advance in the face of determined German opposition.
- Winter Warfare: The American and Soviet campaigns each have missions set in the dead of winter, with both infantrymen and tanks duking it out in the midst of harsh snowstorms.
