Official Website

Platform: PSP

Genre: First Person Shooter

Number of Players: 1 (2 - 6 via AdHoc)

First person shooters have become a hit and miss (no pun intended) situation. The limitations as far as only one analog stick being present has often made what could have been a fantastic game has often marred a title while others have lacked in just about every category all together. Activision’s Call of Duty franchise has been a big hit across the home console universe, and with the game now making a transition, but can a war on a smaller scale be successful?

The Call of Duty series may have received some jabs from a few members of the press (such as a rather flippant review of the latest entry I saw on G4) but for us here at Underland, we’ve rather enjoyed the series. Sure, World War II based FPS titles have become all the rage, but the CoD series managed to outdo what EA did with Medal of Honor and still remains a viable franchise, at least in my opinion.

The PSP Call of Duty title, Roads to Victory, may not be nearly as intense as what it’s bigger, home versions have been, CoD3 in particular, but it’s not necessarily a bad game. As always, you’re put in the front lines during the closing days of the Second World War There are three different soldiers you will control starting with the good old United States of America and the 82^nd Airborne. Once you’ve completed these missions, you’ll join forces with the Canadian 1^st Army before finally becoming a part of the British Parachute Regiment, but no matter who you’ve taken up arms with, the objective is still the same; stop Hitler and his army.

Roads to Victory marks the first appearance of the Call of Duty franchise on the PSP, although portable versions have in fact appeared in the past, and while you might be familiar with the concept of the game on other systems, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to be thrown in blindly. There are tutorials and pop-up messages to help guide you on your missions. The game actually does manage to come across quite well such a small scale. Initially the game sets the main four buttons as your movement while the analog is used for movement and strafing. The D-pad meanwhile acts as your means to change weapons, reload, duck, and even throw grenades while R is to attack or melee and L lets you zoom in on your target.

Since the game is on a smaller screen, you can’t expect aiming at enemies to be quite as easy. Call of Duty 3 really tried to replicate the look and feel or war, but Roads to Victory doesn’t rely on having you point and shoot without any assistance. When you’ve come across and enemy, a red circle will appear in the direction of your foe and you can fire at will. This does make the game a bit easier, though the one drawback I found is that somehow, no matter what weapon I have, it’s now a magic weapon. I could have an enemy way off on my right, but since the game has located him, I can still shoot and somehow hit him. It could be that this was one of the secret weapons the government was working on that we never found out about and the only thing lacking is the ability to lock onto a target and face the opposite direction and have the bullets still hit him much like in The Fifth Element.

The WWII games though have gone in a different direction than many FPS titles. You will have a unit to work with and you’re constantly getting new orders. This isn’t a game that’s about simply trying to shoot everyone you can without consequence. Your orders are specific and you will need to follow them. Each of the missions also will reward you based on performance, and prior to its start, you can take a look at the requirements necessary to earn yourself a gold, silver, or bronze medal (or none at all if you do poorly.) The end of the missions will unlock artwork from the game while completing the different campaigns will reward you with wallpapers for your PSP and even cheat codes.

The closed quarters combat seen in Call of Duty 3 returns in Roads to Victory, though not nearly as intense and there’s definitely no way to utilize motion sensitivity. However, you will find some very cool air-based missions, but not something where you’re necessarily controlling an aircraft. Instead, you’re still in first person mode manning machine guns and taking out the Nazi’s in the skies over Europe. There are also required sniper segments and these prove to be one of the more difficult aspects of the game due to the controls being just a touch too sensitive at times and you’ll find yourself overshooting your target as you try and get off just one good shot.

My last “tour of duty” with the CoD franchise of course was with the leap onto the next generation consoles, and taking a step down as far as the graphics are concerned isn’t quite an easy thing. Roads to Victory though looks extremely good on the PSP, though there are a few minor annoyances. Soldiers with the ability to leap and hover (though certainly not intentional) is frustrating, but can be forgiven. Besides, they make easier targets and their floating carcasses soon disappear. The game also uses the same “cutscene” style where you’re a part of the action and have the ability to look around at your surroundings. Ultimately, when compared to many of the other FPS titles out there, Call of Duty is probably one of the best looking, and while it may not be CoD3, the PSP certainly shows its stuff with this game.

Roads to Victory also offers players a multiplayer mode, though there isn’t much here that you haven’t seen before. Capture the flag, king of the hill, the never forgotten deathmatch are all available with slight variations with the ability to include up to six different players. While it’s not nearly as fun as the console online versions, I suppose that it’s at least something, though the surprise is that there’s no option for game sharing, something that has become hugely popular recently.

Some might claim that the Word War II first person shooter has been done to death, and maybe it has, but the fact of the matter is that as long as the games are fun to play, they’ll still keep coming out. Let’s face it, the wrestling games have been overdone as well as just about every sports game possible, and fighting games rarely offer something new. Sure, maybe we’ve seen WWII through the eyes of a virtual character too often, but Call of Duty: Roads to Victory is one of the better first person shooters on the PSP and that’s reason enough to take up arms once again and relive a fictitious slice of history once again.

-mike-