Call of Duty: Roads To Victory is the first installment for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) from Activision's Call of Duty series. It is a first person shooter (FPS) set during World War II. This particular installment takes place in the perspectives of three Allied forces, United States 82nd Airborne, Canadian 1st Army, and the British Parachute Regiment. There are fourteen campaign missions that take place in Operation Market Garden, Operation Avalanche, Operation Detroit, Battle of the Scheldt, Operation Infatuate, Operation Blockbuster, and Operation Varsity.

"Roads To Victory" supports single- and multi-player gaming modes. The former is comprised of a fourteen mission campaign and the latter an ad-hoc wireless mode with six game types. Together, the single- and multi-player gaming modes offer a decent amount of game play that is sufficient for gamers looking for a decent first person shooter. However, the game itself is pretty limited and does not have high replay value. There are too many shortcomings to make a really strong game.

The single-player mode is a small fourteen missions. It is played from three allied perspectives, United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The United States campaign has seven missions, Canada four, and Great Britain three. Each campaign mission plays out pretty quickly, but it is also easy to die and you'll probably have to replay certain parts over and over again. In general, the goal of each mission is to move from point A to point B to point C to point D... all the while killing as many Nazis you can find.

There are additional goals that require you to blow up Panzer tanks (and anti-aircraft artillery and other things) or snipe specific targets such as the gunman in a Hanomag. When it comes to blowing stuff up, the process is cut and dry: get up close to the object and press X, run like hell, and watch it blow. A slight deviation is the United States campaign "Lucky Thirteen". In this mission you are on a B-24. You have to move to different parts of the aircraft and man different guns and shoot down enemy fighters. The difference from the regular campaign mission is that you are on a plane shooting at planes.

All in all, the single-player campaign missions are not terribly difficult, nor do they have a significant amount of depth. These missions play out quickly. The good news is that there are three different difficulty levels. There is also a benefit for getting better scores and replaying missions. By achieving better ratings you can unlock bonus material such as videos, details about weapons, vehicles & armor, artillery, PSP wallpapers, and game cheats. While unlocking the bonus material and getting all gold awards on the fourteen missions may seem like fun, replaying "Road to Victory" is not terribly fun. After completing a mission, there is little depth or reason (beyond unlocking the not-so-very-interesting extras) to it. Plain and simple, the missions aren't exciting.

Another not-so-good point about this game is the controls. For lack of better words, the controls are somewhat unintelligent. I spent the majority of the game blasting away and hoping that I would hit something. Like most shooters on the PSP, the fine-grain control necessary for this genre is difficult to achieve with the PSP's analog joystick. And the primary reason somewhat random shooting worked out for me is that there is an auto-aim option. On the flipside, when using guns like the sniper rifle auto-aim doesn't help and it is important to steady your aim and hit the target dead on to achieve a kill.

On a somewhat similar note of unintelligent, the game's artificial intelligence is not very intelligent. The bad guys tend to be more unintelligent than anything. Despite having three levels of difficult, the bad guys do not get any smarter with increasing difficulty levels. This lacking quality is also something that gives the game limited depth and reason to play it.

The multi-player mode supports ad-hoc wireless (which means you can only play people physically near you; there is no Internet play) and supports up to six players. The game modes are "Deathmatch", every man for himself, "Team Deathmatch", team with most kills win, "Capture the Flag", capture the opposing team's flag for points; team with most points win, "Hold the Flag", player who can hold the flag for the longest wins, "King of the Hill", hold the zone around the flag for the longest period of time, and "Team King of the Hill", team that holds the zone around the flag for the longest period of time wins. The matches can be further customized by defining time limits, kill limits, level, and a few others.

The technical aspects of "Roads To Victory" offer decent visuals and sounds that fit the needs of the game, but nothing really spectacular. Like most PSP games, the visuals are really watered down when compared to the standalone console counterparts (if any). The non-portable version of Call of Duty have much better visuals and stronger audible dynamics. This PSP version offers somewhat plain character models -- reusing the same ones over and over again -- limited sound effects and a decent music track. But the look is fairly common to PSP games of this caliber.

Overall, Call of Duty: Roads To Victory is a decent game that could have been better. There are significant issues associated with limited game play and less than average controls. When considering it for on-the-go gaming, it makes for decent entertainment. "Road To Victory" is easy to pick up and play and does not have a difficult learning curve. On that note, this game is probably best reserved as a rental while on vacation because you probably won't want to play it when you are finished with it.