Call of Duty: Roads to Victory (PSP)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.0 stars Good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 6.2 (3.0 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Aaron Thomas
• Reviewed on: 03/16/2007
• Released on: 03/13/2007
• Originally published on GameSpot: Call of Duty: Roads to Victory (PSP) Review

Medal of Honor and Brothers in Arms have already found their way to the PlayStation Portable, so it was only a matter of time before Activision's WWII-based first-person shooter series Call of Duty made the trek to Sony's handheld. First-person shooters have had a hit-or-miss track record on the PSP, but for the most part, they've been misses. Chalk another one up for the "miss" column with Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. It's entertaining for a few levels, but it quickly grows dull thanks to predictable, uninspired gameplay and a smattering of game-crashing bugs.

Shooting down planes is the most fun part of the game.

Call of Duty: Roads to Victory follows the same basic formula established by previous games in the series. Over the course of 14 levels, you'll lead American, Canadian, and British troops into battle in an effort to rid France of those oh-so-pesky Nazis. Weaving a strong narrative has never been one of the strengths of the series, but the story here is even less engaging than usual. There's a brief black-and-white newsreel clip that plays before each country's campaign and a short text intro before each level, but other than that, the story is completely nonexistent.

Developers have had a tough time nailing down a solid control scheme for first-person shooters on the PSP, but progress has been made. There are four different control schemes available in Roads to Victory, but the default scheme works well. You move with the analog stick, look and aim with the face buttons, raise your weapon with the left shoulder button, and fire with the right shoulder button. Because the auto-aiming function is forgiving, it's easy to use the face buttons to aim. With your weapon down, all you have to do is look in the general vicinity of an enemy to lock on to your enemy. When this system works, it's great. But it doesn't always work. Some weapons have a very short lock-on range, and you've got to be super close to target an enemy soldier. It can also be quite difficult to lock on to moving targets, and sometimes the buttons don't seem to respond. Close-quarters encounters are made difficult thanks to the ineffectiveness of your melee attack, which is difficult to perform because it's mapped to the fire button. It's basically up to the game whether or not you're going to fire a shot or try to club the enemy with your weapon. Other actions, such as throwing grenades, crouching, and switching weapons, are mapped to the D pad. This works fairly well.

Roads to Victory is quite a bit like Call of Duty 3 on the PlayStation 2. In fact, it kind of feels as if the game were made using a Call of Duty 3 map editor. This means you'll use the same weapons and take part in the same sorts of missions during the game's 14 levels. You'll take retake bunkers, plant bombs, find and deliver documents, man large machine guns in an effort to fend off waves of soldiers, and use rocket launchers to take out more than a few tanks. The only new style of mission is one where you man the guns of a plane on a bombing run and are charged with protecting the squadron of planes from enemy aircraft. The missions are fun for a while, but if you've ever played Call of Duty games before, they start to become predictable to the point of absurdity. You know that when you kill one soldier, another will spawn and take his place, and that as soon as you climb a stairwell, you need to turn and fire because there's a guy waiting to shoot you. You'll even have a good idea of where soldiers will be placed before you walk into a room.

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