Call of Duty: Roads to Victory (PSP) (gamespy)
- gamespy -
The best World War II games are filled with sound and fury, their own special storm und drung, with which they relentlessly bombard us as they throw breathless players into heart-pounding recreations of terrifying, real-life conflicts. A good World War II game is loud and brash, exciting and disorienting, and feels real and spontaneous despite being heavily scripted. Most of these features rely at least partially on graphical horsepower, which is why there weren't many memorable World War II simulations for the NES. The power just wasn't there.
There are some interesting challenges, then, in shrinking this larger-than-life, sensory-overload experience into a portable console. How do you cut corners in the graphics, sound, and general scope while still retaining that true-to-life shock and awe that players crave? Just last week EA gave its answer in the form of Medal of Honor Heroes; this coming spring, Activision will answer back with Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. Just like Heroes, Roads to Victory will attempt to capture all of the action and excitement of a popular war series and bring it to the PSP. How it'll go about this will be just a bit different, however.
Solo Ops
Unlike Heroes, Roads to Victory looks like it'll focus on the single-player side of things, featuring an all-new campaign that'll take you through 13 separate battles. Between these you'll take the role of an American infantry soldier in the legendary 82nd Airborne, a Canadian First Army rifleman, and an elite British Parachuting Regiment commando. As for specific conflicts, so far only Operation Market Garden has been revealed, which fans of the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers should be familiar with. Mission objectives sound like they'll be pretty varied too, which was a sore point in Heroes.
The best World War II games are filled with sound and fury, their own special storm und drung, with which they relentlessly bombard us as they throw breathless players into heart-pounding recreations of terrifying, real-life conflicts. A good World War II game is loud and brash, exciting and disorienting, and feels real and spontaneous despite being heavily scripted. Most of these features rely at least partially on graphical horsepower, which is why there weren't many memorable World War II simulations for the NES. The power just wasn't there.
There are some interesting challenges, then, in shrinking this larger-than-life, sensory-overload experience into a portable console. How do you cut corners in the graphics, sound, and general scope while still retaining that true-to-life shock and awe that players crave? Just last week EA gave its answer in the form of Medal of Honor Heroes; this coming spring, Activision will answer back with Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. Just like Heroes, Roads to Victory will attempt to capture all of the action and excitement of a popular war series and bring it to the PSP. How it'll go about this will be just a bit different, however.
Solo Ops
Unlike Heroes, Roads to Victory looks like it'll focus on the single-player side of things, featuring an all-new campaign that'll take you through 13 separate battles. Between these you'll take the role of an American infantry soldier in the legendary 82nd Airborne, a Canadian First Army rifleman, and an elite British Parachuting Regiment commando. As for specific conflicts, so far only Operation Market Garden has been revealed, which fans of the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers should be familiar with. Mission objectives sound like they'll be pretty varied too, which was a sore point in Heroes.
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One of the big issues whenever a first-person shooter comes to the PSP is the lack of a perfect control scheme. The developers of Roads to Victory (Seattle's Amaze Entertainment) have anticipated this and designed four unique setups, at least one of which should be useable enough to support the game's fast action. Further assistance will come in the form of extensive auto-aiming, which will let you line 'em up and put 'em down without too much overt crosshair twiddling.
To compensate for the increased ease of blasting, there will actually be a good deal more enemies to shoot -- think the original DOOM instead of DOOM 3. Not an unwelcome change. Why else do we play these games but to shoot?
Win Some, Lose Some
Roads to Victory will also feature the expected multiplayer bits, with game modes such as deathmatch, capture the flag, and king of the hill. However, the scope of the multiplayer is much less impressive than in Medal of Honor: Heroes, with no true online support and only six players supported via Ad Hoc networking. The action will probably prove fun, but this looks like one of those Monster Hunter: Freedom situations where a game is just crying out to be online, but isn't.
On the other hand, Roads to Victory looks to have the edge in the graphical arena, which is no small feat considering how nice Heroes looked. So far, it appears that Roads to Victory has a darker, grittier, and more detailed look, and you only need to look at the screenshots to see that it's quite nice for the PSP. Throw on a decent pair of headphones and you'll be that much closer to that coveted full-powered console experience.
Call of Duty: Roads to Victory is still surprisingly far off, not due until sometime in spring. Outside of its glaring multiplayer deficiencies, it looks like it'll be a very solid World War II shooter that'll cover some single-player ground that EA's Heroes couldn't quite manage. It's definitely a trade-off, but that doesn't make the rest of the game look any less promising. Look for more when we get a chance for some hands-on action.
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