Call of Duty: Roads to Victory continues the legacy of the series on Sony’s portable, and if you were to assume that being on lesser hardware and a smaller screen would take away from the excitement of its big brother PC counterparts, you’d not only be making an ass out of you and me, but you’d be wrong. Though obviously some concessions have been made, the game serves up a heaping helping of adrenaline mixed with equal parts capable graphics and excellent sound design.
Yeah, uh... You guys go ahead. I'll.. catch up...
Focusing on the Normandy breakout campaign, the game offers up missions spread across the American, British and Canadian forces, though the 4 missions we were given the opportunity to play were all from the American side.
The first mission, Altavilla, serves as an introductory level, where you follow your fellow soldiers through village streets and bombed buildings, while they banter amongst themselves and continue to remind you what country your enemies are from. On our first playthrough, we counted at least 10 instances when a comrade would shout “Germans!” upon sighting the enemy. Just once, in a moment of sheer whimsy, we hoped that around the next corner, our brother-in-arms would lament - “Jamaicans!” - just to spice things up. That said, this only occurred on our first playthrough, and NPC chatter seems varied enough to prevent monotony from setting in.
Sound effects also appear up-to-scratch, with everything from the gunfire of your Thompson submachine gun to the oh-so-satisfying explosion of a well-placed grenade painting a clear signal that if you haven’t invested in a good set of headphones, now is the time.
Well THERE's your problem...
The thorn in the paw for all PSP shooters is, of course, that the system has far from the perfect control layout. That said, developers Amaze have done as well as can be expected, though it’s recommended that new players test out the different control methods on offer. The default controls set the analog nub for movement (forward-back-strafe left-strafe right), with the face buttons used for looking up, down, left and right. Though similar in essence to other console shooters, using buttons to look around is awkward. An alternative method of control makes the game play less like a FPS and more like Resident Evil 4, whereby the analog turns you on the spot, and looking in any direction other than straight ahead requires the user to aim down the sights, giving full control over your view with the analog nub. This proved to be a quicker form of control, but of course opinions will vary. In any of the control methods, an auto-aim feature takes away some of the inaccuracy problems, allowing a certain amount of lee-way as you target your enemies. And, of course, these helps can be turned off/tweaked in the options menu.
Visuals are surprisingly good for the limitations of the PSP, though obviously not a patch on their PC brethren. Textures and polygon count are obvious martyrs, however the game runs at a mostly stable frame rate, with character models looking decent and the obligatory e’splosions sending dirt and mortar scattering to all four corners of your screen.
I am a leaf on the wind...
There was a decent amount of variety in mission objectives, with a highlight of the first level being a section where you are required to look through a pair of binoculars and relay co-ordinates for your artillerymen to target enemy Panzers. Within moments of beginning the first level, players will find themselves in the path of an enemy tank, rushing quickly into the perceived safety of a trench, before backing away in the path of an aircraft that plunges into the trench, sending chunks of dirt and blistering shrapnel hurtling towards you. In short, it’s unlikely the game will fail to hold your attention.
The game is also set to include 2-6-player multiplayer modes, including Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and King of the Hill (no Family Guy mode, unfortunately), though we have been unable to test these as yet.
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