(PSP) Call of Duty: Roads to Victory review

A solid portable Call of Duty (better than the Vita-native entry) that’s made infinitely more enjoyable by the additional of dual-analogue controls.

Developer	Amaze Entertainment
Publisher	Activision
Franchise	Call of Duty
Genre	First-person shooter
PSTV	Yes
PSN	NA only (via download voucher in copies of Black Ops Declassified)

 

World-building & Story

Following the American, British and Canadian armies during World War II, Roads to Victory delivers a sweeping narrative as it explores a variety of military operations over a number of years.

Each chapter is bookmarked by an FMV cutscene narrating the real-life events that took place during the war, which is a nice touch to add authenticity to everything. You’re also given maps showing the attack route and a brief note explaining each mission, which again helps you to feel immersed in the situation, even if it is fairly hands-off storytelling.

The big problem here – and it’s something that’s plagued so many Call of Duty titles and military shooters in general – is just that I never built up any rapport with the characters. There is a cast here who appear across multiple chapters, but I’d struggle to name any of them and what their personalities were (perhaps that’s part of the point to highlight how disposable men were during the war, but it’s somewhat disappointing all the same).

The same feeling spills over the plot – things happen during each operation, but there’s no real narrative thread and I couldn’t name much of what happened other than my team blew stuff up and shot some Nazis. Roads to Victory is gaming comfort food, delivering bombastic action without anything much deeper than that underneath.

 

Presentation & Sound

Decently accomplished for a PSP title, Roads to Victory attempts to keep the graphical spectacle of the home console entries on a slightly smaller scale. It definitely works, with just a few performance quirks keeping it from greatness.

Character and NPC modelling is surprisingly decent – mouths move when talking (although sadly not in sync with the conversation), your allies will duck and weave between cover and there’s a nice sense of scale in some of the encounters with lots of men on screen at once and background elements like planes and bombers flying overhead. Enemies do despawn after being killed (presumably to keep performance up) and a lot of the designs are fairly generic and repeated (stopping encounters feeling unique), but otherwise things here are solid.

You’ll be stationed in a variety of locations across the three campaigns, with many war staples such as small occupied villages and sprawling European forests included. There’s a few more unique ideas here though, such as one level has you running through a labyrinthine hedge maze – they all look good despite suffering from things like stretched textures, as impressive draw distances and an abundance of items that populate each environment leave them feeling like well-crafted, realistic locations.

Music is fairly absent, replaced instead by the yells of both German and allied troops as well as some decent gunfire sounds. I did encounter a couple of audio glitches that cut out sound altogether until I died – which were never critical and didn’t last too long, but were definitely a minor annoyance.

 

Gameplay & Sound

Following a standard FPS template, Roads to Victory is an uneventful but well made shooter that plays so much better on Vita thanks to the addition of twin-stick controls – turning it into a more enjoyable game in the process, but still not reaching the highs of the better Call of Duty entries.

Control is pretty intuitive – the left analogue moves while the face buttons aim, but this can obviously be remapped to the second analogue which feels natural. You can aim down sights with L and shoot with R, while the down button is used for ducking behind cover and up is for throwing grenades. Cover actually plays a solid part here and is instrumental in staying alive as it allows you to regenerate health and get your bearings – but the shooting still feels fast-paced enough in spite of this.

The Call of Duty series trademark snap-to aiming is here, although feels tuned-in to be even more aggressive likely due to PSP’s lacking control scheme. It’s accompanied by a targeting window that you can toggle on or off making Roads to Victory a very forgiving shooter, easier for newcomers while still offering a challenge if you want it.

Missions usually set you a particular task – reach a certain point, destroy a certain piece of equipment etc. and these objectives can shift in the middle of a level. Along the way you’ll encounter numerous Nazi soldiers who need eliminating – they have a basic level of AI and will do things such as shut doors or flip tables for cover, but beyond this it’s fairly easy to pick them off. Thankfully, they’re miles removed from the abysmal AI in Black Ops Declassified that would regularly shoot me from behind walls before I could even do anything.

You’ll also get computer-controlled companions in each level that come in two varieties – plot NPC’s open doors and other objectives for you and seem impervious to enemy fire, but are capable of doing little damage themselves. Conversely, you will get a conveyor belt of comrades who join you for shootouts and are actually a pretty good shot, but drop like flies otherwise. It’s nice to have other people fighting alongside you and it adds some solid authenticity, I just wish a little more time had been spent programming them to be more realistic (and I wouldn’t have minded the ability to give them commands too).

At the end of each mission there’s usually a spectacle set-piece – things like manning a gun turret and repel an invasion, or call in artillery strikes on tanks using binoculars. These are very well done, easily the highlight of each level offering a fun new mechanic each time that feels in-keeping with the rest of the design. There’s also whole missions dedicated to gimmicks like this, such as one where you have to run around a plane using different turrets to defend different parts of the vehicle – it manages to capture the claustrophobic feel of the inside of a military machine while still being fun.

All of this comes together to make a tense, fun shooter even if a lot of it feels like things we’ve seen before. That said, there are problems – for example checkpointing can be erratic meaning if you get caught without any cover and killed, you’ll have to play whole sections again which is frustrating and unnecessary. It’s also easy to get lost as there’s no mini-map or directions, meaning you’ll have to keep a close eye on your comrades as they’ll guide the way, but watching them means you’ll likely miss lots of the action.

The other issue comes down to what’s actually here – the missions have a decent amount of replayability thanks to a survival mode that removes regenerating health, but there’s only ad-hoc multiplayer beyond this. The lack of an offline botzone mode is disappointing or any peer-to-peer multiplayer servers, especially given that direct competitors such as Medal of Honor Heroes were offering this at around the same time. It stops Roads to Victory from being a game I’ll keep coming back to, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable while it lasts.

 

Conclusion

Despite being offered as a nice bonus for buyers of Black Ops Declassified, Roads to Victory is actually the better game – a sweeping WWII shooter featuring some solid gameplay and enjoyable mission objectives. It suffers from a lack of modes and a lack of focus in its storytelling, but you can do a lot worse than what’s on offer here – and it’s a lot more playable on Vita than it ever was on PSP.

7.0/10