When bringing a popular console franchise to the handheld realm, one of the biggest challenges developers face is successfully translating the experience to more limited hardware. For most franchises, this means that some sacrifices must be made, and that’s especially true of a cinematic FPS franchise like Call of Duty. While developer Amaze Entertainment did do a decent job of miniaturizing the Call of Duty experience when it comes to graphics and controls, unfortunately the rest of the game feels rushed and unfinished.
Like its console counterpart, Call of Duty: Roads to Victory presents World War II from the perspectives of three different Allied forces: the American 82nd Airborne, the Canadian 1st Army, and the British Parachute Regiment. Residents of the latter two countries may feel slighted however, as the campaigns for Canada and Britain combined roughly equal the size of the American campaign. Whereas Call of Duty 3 weaved its storyline amongst the four different Allied factions (Poland also got a cup of coffee in the game), the player is forced here to take them in order, with the Britain campaign finishing up the game. This game’s 14 different missions (seven of which are American) are also only tangentially related to the other Allied campaigns in the game. On the whole the game’s storyline simply feels unfinished, and the short Canadian and Britain campaigns hint at a game whose development was cut short by a tight deadline.
One thing Roads to Victory does do right however is capture the cinematic feel of its console counterparts. Throughout the game you’ll see plenty of intense scripted moments, from tanks bearing down on your position to planes flying low overhead. It’s roughly comparable in scope to the PS2 version of CoD3, slightly toned down of course for the smaller screen. Going hand in hand with that is the constant chatter from your fellow allies and enemies, as they’ll constantly bark out enemy positions, random comments, etc.
Amaze did a good job with converting the controls as well. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect of course, because the game definitely suffers with no access to a second analog stick. The default control scheme maps the look functions instead to the four face buttons. As you can imagine this isn’t nearly as fluid or precise as a second analog stick would be, but I found it to be adequate, particularly since the game has a pretty generous (and welcome in this case) auto-aim feature. Things like reloading and changing weapons are mapped to the D-pad, while the L & R buttons control zooming and firing respectively.
Even though I preferred the first control scheme, I’m sure some gamers will appreciate the fact that Amaze included three others. These others eliminate the look buttons, instead moving strafing to buttons. Two of them find the player strafing left and right with the analog nub when the strafe button is held, while another moves strafing to the L & R buttons. The game also frequently places you on turrets and in other situations where a minimal amount of control is necessary, and these sections of the game are some of the most intense.
Unfortunately, what really hurts Call of Duty: Roads to Victory the most was completely under the developers’ control. There are a number of bugs in the game; for example, on several occasions the next sequence of events in a level simply wouldn’t trigger, or did so only after a lot of maneuvering. For instance, in the Hunner Park level I fought my way through towards the end of the park, only to enter an area with no way to proceed and no soldiers to fight. I spent the next 15 or 20 minutes running back and forth in the level trying to trigger the next sequence of events, eventually restarting from my last checkpoint. The events that were supposed to happen then did, with a soldier kicking in a door (after we killed a few Nazis of course) to finally allow me to proceed. Other times, I was often forced to stand on one exact spot for the next sequence of events to occur, and many of those spots didn’t seem to match up exactly with the big star noting their location on my radar.
Another knock against the game is the soldier A.I. While Call of Duty isn’t exactly known for it’s ultra-realistic A.I., this PSP outing features some of the worst I’ve seen since the 32-bit days. Although soldiers will sometimes take cover and do the other things soldiers should do to preserve their lives, all to often I saw them simply stand around and wait to be shot. It was not uncommon to see an enemy in the same room as myself completely oblivious to my presence, even though there was nothing between us. For the majority of the game my allies seemed virtually useless as well, firing in the general direction of enemy soldiers but rarely contributing to the cause of wiping them out.
Level design is a little odd as well. I can understand the need to streamline things on the PSP, so I’m fine dealing with this game’s levels that often don’t represent what you’d expect a particular area to look like. What I do mind though is that the game will occasionally put you in situations that force you to get hit with multiple bullets. The Halo-like health system (hide for a few seconds when you’re hurt to recharge) means it’s possible to get through these areas with a little trial and error, but they’re still frustrating and definitely take away from the feeling that you’re fighting in a real war. In real life, I’d be dead if I attempted to run across an open area in front of a mounted turret, plain and simple. Here though, I’m forced to do so on several occasions with no rhyme or reason.
The game also supports multiplayer, but sadly no online play like its console brethren. Instead, the game has Ad Hoc support for 2 to 6 in modes including Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and King of the Hill. Although I was unable to test this, removing the dull A.I. controlled soldiers could only make the experience better as long as it’s stable (and I haven’t read any reports that it isn’t). However, this is yet another example of why PSP developers’ general lack of support for Infrastructure play is a real shame. In my case, I don’t even know someone locally that owns a PSP, much less has a copy of Call of Duty: Roads to Victory to play against.
Bottom Line:
Call of Duty: Roads to Victory succeeds in doing the hard things right, but wastes all of that effort with poor A.I., odd design decisions, and bugs throughout. I definitely had some fun with the game, but this could’ve been so much more than it is.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
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| 5.9 |
Posted: 2007-04-28 12:01:58 PST