Incredible single player, like any PC/console Call of Duty. Typical, uninteresting multiplayer.
Call of Duty: Roads to Victory is exactly the opposite. In fact, it balances out Medal of Honor: Heroes perfectly. Roads to Victory has a rather uninteresting multiplayer. It's Ad Hoc, supporting up to six players, with no bots. It's like the multiplayer of every other PSP shooter. The only way you can enjoy it is if you get six people together, all of whom have PSPs and their own copies of Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. Such a setup is rare, unlikely, and doesn't last very long. Basically, it's useless.
There's no co-op mode, either, not that any Call of Duty game in existance has ever had a co-op mode. I'd like to see ONE Call of Duty game with a co-op mode, or better yet, multiplayer bots. Oh, well. Roads to Victory doesn't have to raise the standards of the Call of Duty series, as it has already done a great job of raising the standards of portable shooters in general.
Unlike the multiplayer, the single player is incredible. It's the kind of stuff that makes the PC and console versions so awesome. Everything is script-driven, where the player will constantly run into vehicles on the attack, big battles raging with buddies dying, and scripted dialogue sequences to accompany various enemy encounters or special events.
Amaze Entertainment made my favorite live-action Gameboy Advance game ever, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and they did a damn fine job with the Call of Duty series.
The graphics department isn't MIND-BLOWING. Everything looks quite nice, but sometimes, it looks like everything is trying to look better than it is. Levels are often full of blocky, empty segments. The environment does have its shining moments, but often levels that have really nice-looking areas will also have really crappy-looking areas scattered within them. These vaguely designed environments seem like laziness more than anything else, because there are some big, great-looking bombed out streets in the game, but they're linked by cardboard boxes with holes on the end so people can walk through.
Special effects are just dandy. Character models look GREAT, and there will often be a large number of them on-screen with no framerate loss. Vehicles have high polygon counts, complimented by nice-looking textures.
Framerate hardly ever drops. When it does, it's usually only enough to be noticeable, and only for a second. The game employs "slow motion" (as opposed to frame skipping) when things become too graphics-intensive. The game can handle nasty firefights and tank battles with no slowdown at all.
Levels will have a lot of ambient motion, such as the first level. On the first level, a big battle is taking place (the player can't see it, of course), but while the player runs around in the trenches, bullets will fly overhead, and in the sky ackack guns fire while smoke billows. For some reason, though there's a lot of anti-air action going on in many levels, there are never any actual airplanes flying far overhead.
The HUD looks kind of funky. It looks a little too lo-rez, like it wasn't designed for the PSP. It's hard to see the names of allies, because instead of having the name appear on the side of the screen while the player's crosshair is on top of an ally, the ally's name appears directly above his head, and is most often "above" the screen. The font in the game is also very thin, so the names above the characters, being in motion, are hard to read in a split-second. Not like names are at all important, though like I said, the thin font is the reigning font throughout the game.
Reloading isn't terribly impressive, because the weapons will just go low on the screen and tilt to the side, a sound will play, and TADA! Your weapon is reloaded! Magazines and clips don't actually move around. It's just like reloading in Goldeneye.
Getting hit is like a big secret. The only thing to suggest the player is even taking damage is the "red-around-the-screen" effect that started in Call of Duty 2, and the red hit direction notification. There's no twitch. Getting shot is a lot more annoying without a twitch or a sound effect because you just absorb bullets and die rapidly without knowing it until it's too late.
The sound is terrific. Guns and explosions make satisfying bangs and booms. There's plenty of ambience, and rather than just being a sound file playing in the background, it goes perfectly with the action. German half-tracks do make a weird, wavy-water-like sound when they fire their machine gun, but it's rare and not actually annoying.
The voice work is great. Definitely not half-assed, crappy voicework done by hobos picked up out of the street and paid five bucks. Sometimes, the battle chatter will suddenly become annoying, like two guys will say the exact-same thing one after the other. Nothing too bad, but kind of funky.
There's not all that much to the music. It doesn't play very often, and when it does, it won't capture your attention beyond the sudden realization that there's actually some music playing.
The controls are bad. Not nearly as smooth or comfortable as the controls of Medal of Honor: Heroes. Yep, I made a comparison between two completely different games! Shame on me, I usually look down on that. At least I'm being realistic.
I had been fearing that the Call of Duty controls would make the player rely too heavily on "auto-aiming" or something. Luckily, the controls are almost exactly the same as Heroes. The button placement in the default control scheme is identical to the button placement of the Heroes control scheme.
There are some other control schemes that, instead of using the face buttons to look around and the analog nub to move/strafe, the player can punish himself by having to hold a button to strafe or look around. Oddly enough, no control scheme lets you move around with the face buttons and look around with the analog nub. Which is fine for me, because I HATE moving with the face buttons, but some people are used to the face button movement in other PSP FPSs.
The thing that kind of displeases me is the auto-aim function. Rather than doing the more common auto-aim method of slowly tracking an enemy in the center of the screen, the crosshair jumps to targets that are just ON the screen, but the player doesn't actually have to look around. This can easily be turned off, but thanks to the terrible control mechanics, it's impossible to run-and-gun without the auto-aim function.
When aiming with the sniper rifle, it jumps around insanely, even if you're prone and lying perfectly still. Also, even with auto-aim turned off, aiming through the scope (or down the iron-sights with other weapons) will automatically snap the crosshairs onto an enemy, which is kind of annoying, because it's more fun when you actually have to aim at enemies. It wouldn't really matter for the sniper rifle, because the screen flies around, but I'd be aiming at an enemy high up in a window, and it would snap onto a completely different enemy once I zoomed in. Surprisingly, though the screen flying around sounds like it'd be annoying, it's actually kind of helpful. I could never hit anything with the sniper rifle in Heroes, but because the rifle in Roads to Victory moves around by itself, proper timing can make killing enemies pretty easy. You can press the "Use" button to steady the rifle, but it's stupidly difficult to do that.
On the default controls, the "Use" button is the same button for weapon-switching, so sometimes I'll want to switch to a different weapon but instead I'll pick up another weapon or grab a machine gun or something annoying.
Grenades are really easy to throw. With the default controls, the player only has to press the up button, unlike in Heroes where grenades have to be selected. By holding the grenade button, the player can also cook the grenade before throwing it. The only problem with this is that it means the player can't really move around because he has to take his thumb from the analog nub to the top of the D-Pad, or he can awkwardly try to use some other finger. Still, since the grenade button doesn't have to be held as it always throws the same distance, it's nothing too bad.
There are a few bugs, none of which are really problematic. The player can reload his weapon, even if it has a full magazine, and if he for some reason reloads even when the weapon doesn't actually need reloading, it'll stop him from shooting his weapon. Also, when the player changes stance while reloading, the reloading will just stop as if the player had not reloaded. This becomes a tiny problem for me because, in Heroes, I'm used to hitting the reload button, then following it up by pressing the crouch button.
Those are actually the only problems in the game I've seen. A problem with the machine gun moving the screen, and a mildly messed-up reloading system is nothing to whine about in the face of the game's superiorities.
The game itself is pretty cool. The player is usually accompanied by at least one teammate, though there's no lack in battles where the player will be given quite a number of additional teammates, often generic ones that die quickly but are soon replaced by reinforcements. Enemies come in big numbers and take just the right amount of effort to kill. Basically, just because this is a portable game doesn't mean that you'll fight alongside less allies, or fight less enemies than you normally would in a PC/console Call of Duty.
Believe it or not, there are even some semi-epic battles where guys will be running around and fighting in the background, like on the last American level where the player and his buddies have to make their way up a beach. I definitely hadn't been expecting it, and it was pretty neat for the few seconds that the "epic" part lasted.
The AI is ridiculously predictable. They do all of the stuff you'd expect good AI to do, like throw back grenades and use cover and whatnot. They do an excessive amount of hiding behind cover and shooting walls at point-blank range when they think they're shooting at enemies, and their heads will be clearly exposed. Such problems could've been avoided if the AI would just stand up whenever their guns can't target enemies. They also love running out into the open, crouching and firing repeatedly at the player without moving themselves an inch.
The placement of enemies is a little too predictable. They always spawn in the exact-same place. When one dies, another will appear in the same place, or a bunch of enemies will flow out of a single opening and run to replace their fallen allies. They're always asking to be mowed down before they actually start fighting and using their intelligence. Still, despite all that, they can be fun to fight.
The scripted sequences are great. Crazy explosions, planes strafing or crashing and burning, lots of dialogue and any of that other cool stuff. There are even segments where the player gets to fight alongside tanks, and he acts as a gunner in a bomber plane fending off enemy fighter planes. Just like any good Call of Duty game, it's nonstop awesomeness with a lot of variety.
Checkpoints are abundant and convenient. What's kind of trippy is that, when hitting a checkpoint, the screen will become faded and say "Loading..." and the player won't be able to walk, but he can still look around and everyone else moves just fine. The player never gets attacked during the process, so it's not bad.
I'm glad they use the Call of Duty guidelines of having an unseeable amount of health that automatically regenerates. I don't like health kits because my character could have one hit point, mercilessly slaughtering enemies, then a slight breeze kills him instantly. The regenerating health allows for some reckless fun, without making the player unstoppable. I've never quite understood why Call of Duty 2 started the magical grenade-awareness thing, though it's nice to not be hit by an unseeable grenade every five seconds.
The way teammates are deployed is quite ridiculous. Throughout the game, they'll start off perfectly normal, and when they die, they're immediately replaced. Unlike in other Call of Duty games, where the player usually gets at least one invincible teammate, the player will often fight alongside no invincible teammates. They're constantly replaced, which is good, but they die as easily as enemies and it eventually gets weird. Like, the player is often "behind enemy lines" more or less, yet there's always a fresh reserve of suicidal, easily-killed buddies waiting right behind him. They come out of nowhere, when it really feels like they shouldn't. At least they're there. This gets especially weird when it comes to scripted dialogue.
Like, you have to get from one side of an area to the other. You get two guys. You might lose TWENTY guys before you get to the end, but for some reason, your army keeps sending out two at a time. It's especially weird because allies will have scripted dialogue. So, at the beginning of the area, one of your allies will say something in one voice. You get through the area and you lost a crapload of your soldiers, including the talking guy, at least ten times. However, when you get to the end of the area, one of your allies will talk in the same voice as the first ally in the beginning of the area, as if he hadn't died at all.
Also, teammates that are standing right next to eachother will have the exact-same head. In fact, nearly every teammate will have the same head. And it's not even a vaguely generic head, but rather, a distinct one with noticeable stubble.
Y'know, the player APPARENTLY has a name, and changes characters throughout campaigns. There's at least three or four different Americans. However, the only suggestion that the player has a name and changes characters is in the extremely brief, overly-well-written-and-proper journal at the beginning of every level. Nobody ever actually says the player's name (and they rarely say anyone else's), and no matter what his rank is, even if he's supposedly a Sergeant, lowly privates will boss him around. It's pretty obvious that they didn't take name or rank into consideration when making the dialogue. Though the game is full of well-done dialogue, don't expect any character development of any sort, and the only time you'll see the same guy twice is if he uses the same character model (very likely) and is coincidentally given the same name.
A lot of people whine about the PSP just getting lots of ports, and how ports are the devil. Nobody seems to realize that ports aren't bad. It's just that companies only decide to port really crappy games.
I wouldn't have minded if some Call of Duty game had been ported to the PSP. I would've killed for any Call of Duty game on the PSP, because they're all so good, and the PSP can do a lot better than the crappy shooters that have been released for it.
Surprisingly, Roads to Victory has much of the quality of any other Call of Duty game, but it's not even a port. It was built from scratch, which allowed them to make a great game without having to lower the quality as a part of the Call of Duty series. Had it been a port, they would've no-doubt had to remove large numbers of AI so that the player would only get one teammate and two enemies or something horrific like that. You know how ports are. A PSP port isn't a PSP port unless a devestating, terrible change is made that ruins the game entirely.
Anywho, Roads to Victory is awesome in many respects. Rather than being a shameful piece of crap, it's a nice addition to the Call of Duty series as a portable game. Much like the way Medal of Honor: Heroes is the best portable multiplayer shooter of all time, Call of Duty: Roads to Victory is, dare I say, the best portable single player shooter of all time (only because portable shooter standards are really low).
The only flaw of the single player is that it's pretty short. And I don't mean "Ten hours, boohoo" short. I mean, "I just got this game and it's already over" short. Well, maybe it's not THAT short, but in several hours, a player might just breeze through the whole game. The game does have three different difficulty settings (though you have to make a new profile to play a different difficulty), and you can even try to do better on a level to get a shiny gold medal, though I have no idea what getting a gold medal unlocks, as opposed to a bronze or silver medal. Despite the rather brief single player game, Roads to Victory is the kind of game I could enjoy after beating it ten times over.
Since the multiplayer has no online capabilities and the Ad Hoc has no co-op or bots, you can only enjoy the Roads to Victory by yourself or with a big group of rich friends. If you have one friend you can play with, it'd be a repetitive one-on-one. If you have two friends with you, it'll be an unbalanced handicap match. Ultimately, the multiplayer, though coming with quite a bit of variation, isn't all that worth it.
The single player is the kind I could play several times over, as I do with the other Call of Duty games. I really dig linear, script-driven games, even though the enemy placement is a bit predictable after a while. I mean, I can play an open-ended game for quite a bit (such as MMORPGs), but they get so boring because there's no way to really get things done like you can do in a linear game, and once I put an open-ended game down on my first day of playing it, even if I enjoyed it, I don't have much of an urge to pick it up again because I won't have a clear objective that's enjoyable to achieve. More like "Kill eighty orcs to make some beans for Farmer Joe!" or some crap like that, which is supposed to give me an excuse for mercilessly murdering orcs, then figuring out where in the Hell Farmer Joe is supposed to be.
Anyone who's ever slightly enjoyed the single player portion of any Call of Duty game would like this game to an extent. It's a great portable single player shooter. The PSP is riddled with shooters that are extremely dull. The multiplayer isn't all that great, especially because there's no Infrastructure mode, but if you're looking for some awesome shooter multiplayer for your PSP, Medal of Honor: Heroes is perfect. Call of Duty: Roads to Victory and Medal of Honor: Heroes are incredibly similar, and owning them both basically combines them into the best portable shooter you can get.
But of course, this isn't a review for Medal of Honor: Heroes. If you're looking for a good portable single player shooter, look no further than Roads to Victory, as it is one of the greatest portable shooters money can buy... Which sadly isn't saying a lot.
The game isn't anywhere near perfect. Like any first for the portable, there's a crapload of stuff that needs a-fixing, and I'm not just talking about bugs. I'd hate to talk about Medal of Honor: Heroes AGAIN, but it's a good example alongside Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. Even the amazing online multiplayer of Heroes could use some touch-ups like friendly icons, more gametypes (primarily team deathmatch) and proper friendly fire where explosives can't kill allies. Bots and a co-op mode, too.
In fact, it'd be perfect if the Medal of Honor series would concentrate on online and offline multiplayer, and the Call of Duty series would concentrate on single player, with some sort of co-op to make for good multiplayer irrelevant of the small amount of players.
Roads to Victory has its many flaws. Like I said, the levels often look God-awful, and even the greater-looking areas don't meet up to the environments of Heroes. The game is also really unpleasant to control.
Scripted sequences are awesome, but often sparse. Like, levels start out really cool, where you have a bunch of buddies and they say some stuff and vehicles are driving around and it's neat to see. However, the vehicles drive away, most of the teammates leave (or die suddenly), then it's you and your uninteresting comrades who die all of the time. The utter lack of any character development at all makes allies feel empty. Other Call of Duty games get characters like Sergeant Moody, Captain Price, and lots of other characters with fun dialogue, often in the middle of battles rather than before and after them. However, there's not a single character in Roads to Victory that lasts more than one scene, and none of them have names that have any memorable importance. In such a linear game, interesting characters to fight alongside is, for obvious reasons, more fun than fighting alongside generic people who die constantly and immediately respawn with nothing interesting to say or do beyond just running around and fighting.
Without a doubt, the worst thing about the game- the real killer of the game's fun and quality- is the uncomfortable controls. The one thing that makes the single player of Medal of Honor: Heroes interesting as a quick, short-lived distraction is that the controls are great, and fighting enemies is satisfying. Even Coded Arms has more pleasant controls than Roads to Victory.
Hit detection is awful. You can often be aiming right at an enemy and shooting him with a rapid-fire weapon and you won't hit him at all. Also, the game has a hit notification feature that tells the player when he hits an enemy. I find this to be EXTREMELY annoying, unnatural and distracting.
All of the mechanics of the game are just plain unpleasant. Getting hit, trying to hit enemies, moving around (levels are ridden with invisible walls that shouldn't be there), trying to move fast enough to escape instant-kill grenades (which is sometimes impossible), aiming, changing stance, it's all unbearably unpleasant. The fact that enemies and allies spend almost all of their time crouching, sitting completely still and firing away at anything they see without actively moving themselves (unless a grenade lands nearby or they decide to change to another cover node) doesn't help.
Despite its many awful problems, I think Roads to Victory is great. It's often amazing, a bar-raiser for portable single player shooters if ever there was one. However, there's an awful lot of room for improvement, which will hopefully be fixed in any portable games the Call of Duty guys plan on making in the future.