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Don’t make time for ‘Hour of Victory’

“Hour of Victory” apparently does not refer to the rollout of Midway’s new World War II shooter of the same name, because there is very little to celebrate here.

Too bad, really, considering that the game’s designers attempted to shake up the cluttered historical shooter genre by offering something slightly different. Set during the height of WWII, “Victory” puts a three-man Allied team on the hunt for a secret German nuclear weapons program.

Each man has different skills — commando, sniper and stealth — which supposedly open up the map to various styles of game play depending on the character selected. Pick a lock with the stealthy guy and sneak in the back door, take to the rooftops with the sniper or charge straight ahead with the commando, your choice.

Sounds great so far, right? Not so much. No matter which character you choose, the game’s flaws eventually ruin the experience and make it virtually unplayable.

Yes unplayable, as in, once we had to shoot a guy three times at nearly point-blank range with a M1911 .45-caliber pistol to kill him. Didn’t anyone crack a book? We’d challenge any bad guy to keep charging after taking a single .45 slug to the gut, much less two or three.

But then, we’re a little surprised the computer-controlled baddies even knew where to run, considering how terrible the artificial intelligence is here. Once, we ran right up to a guy and shot him in the face and although he was staring at us, he never saw us coming. Perhaps it was shell-shock, but more likely, it was just bad design.

Despite being powered by the hot Unreal Engine 3 — used to great effect in “Gears of War” — “Hour of Victory” looks and plays like a last-generation game instead of an Xbox 360 exclusive. It’s possible that the game would have been terrible even on the last-gen consoles, such is the lack of plot and depth, but we won’t argue that either way.

The game does have a sprint button — sparing us from one of our most common complaints in shooter games, because people run when being shot it— but that doesn’t earn it many points. We suffered through the first two lengthy, boring, tedious missions using all three characters before finally raising the white flag.

Don’t buy it, don’t rent it. Don’t even play your buddy’s copy. Stringing three patriotic words together — think “Call of Duty,” “Medal of Honor,” “Brothers in Arms” or “Company of Heroes” — isn’t enough to make a great war game.

Hour of Victory. 1.5 stars. Xbox 360. $59.99. Rated “T” for Teen.