Ever since the series' launch in 2003, Call of Duty has been one of the most popular, prestigious and arguably superlative WWII franchises on the market. The uniquely realistic feel of the title has earned it plenty of fame, and it has since spawned a pair of sequels and several spin-offs, spread across most gaming platforms in existence. Now Sony's sleek portable has been graced by the franchise, in a new take on the famous conflict, entitled Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. However, while the original title has received abundant public interest and fame, this portable outing is a mere imitation of the original games, sadly not following in the celebrated footsteps of its elder brethren.

Roads to Victory follows several different storylines while never forming an actual plot. Despite a written introduction shown in the style of a letter and the various pieces of dialogue between the soldiers on each mission, no characters are developed or even have personalities, preventing us from getting emotionally involved with the story. The missions jump back and forth between 1942 and 1945, sometimes following a group of soldiers for a few missions, but mainly just focusing on letting the player loose in historically accurate battles. Playing through the campaign you should just ignore the absence of a proper storyline - that's certainly what the developers did!

Instead, they focused on creating proper gameplay and in that area they were more successful. As is customary with first person shooters on the PSP, you use the analog stick for movement and looking around is handled using the face buttons. This has never worked particularly well, but with the lack of a second analog stick it is an acceptable surrogate. To make up for the imprecise controls, the developers have added a function that allows you to 'lock on' to your enemies - basically, the game engine targets the nearest Nazi for you and all you have to do is pull the trigger. This system switches between being a praised lifesaver and a pesky impediment, as it doesn't target who you want to hit, but rather who you can easily hit. This aspect of the game could have easily been avoided by equipping everyone with a better AI; all enemies are supplied with the smarts of a rubber duck, making them little more than cannon fodder.

Each time you take a bullet, the screen turns red for a while, prompting you to take cover behind anything solid. If you do, just for a few seconds, then you're completely back to normal, with all injures miraculously healed. This, coupled with the fact that you can take an abundance of fire before dying, means that you can walk through battlefields of havoc and despair like a Terminator, practically immune to anything the enemy might fire at you. So much for the 'dangerous' tasks you're presented with - even planting a bomb on a moving tank, flanked all the way by machinegun nests, is about as harrowing as crossing a street wearing yellow spandex. [Is it just me or isn't that actually pretty harrowing?! Ed].

Despite the seeming abundance of weaponry on offer, the game neatly falls into the trap of making just a few standard weapons - machine guns, rifles, snipers and bazookas. It doesn't matter that they go by different fancy names - a German machine gun works, in every way, as well as the ones used by the Allies, which is a huge drawback. Designing the weaponry is a great opportunity to add some diversity to the game, but it ends up as another basic and slightly boring aspect of the gameplay.

This gameplay is actually backed by a quite solid graphical engine though, with detailed sprites and explosions surrounding you at all times. The reddish, foggy haze that surrounds you when you're shot looks very good and your enemies act convincingly (when they're not stuck in a dilemma over how to walk through a doorway at least!) Unfortunately, the graphics are also fraught with glitches; guns sticking through brick walls and cars being as solid as steel, yet later, after they've blown up, revealed as made from papier-mâché. On the whole, though, the graphics are effective and add to the overall atmosphere of the setting and the gameplay. As for the sound, right from the first menu you hear the kind of grand yet slightly melancholy music we're all used to from basically every WWII game. The audio is arguably the most polished aspect of the game - the voice acting is excellent, capturing the frantic desperation of the battle perfectly, while the explosions, gunfire, tanks and battle cries all come together in joyous unity, capturing the feel of the battle vividly. You might get tired of hearing the same sounds over and over again, but the ringing in your ears when you've been shot, coupled with hysterical cries from your dying comrades, nearly drowned out by the racket of a passing aircraft, comes together very well indeed.

Although the presentation is most definitely up to scratch, I cannot recommend Call of Duty: Roads to Victory. The absence of a storyline to get you invested with the characters, the lacklustre gameplay and the limited controls pull the gameplay down so much that it's impossible to reproduce the quality of its kindred on other platforms. The fact that it you can complete it around five hours, and that it becomes tediously repetitive long before the end, just gives it the final nudge into mediocrity. If you're a diehard fan of the Call of Duty series and you certainly can't miss this outing then I suggest renting it before you buy it. If you want a great WWII shooter for your PSP then get Medal of Honor: Heroes instead, because this battle-hardened veteran is far better suited for the PSP than the wet behind the ears new recruit that is Roads to Victory.

Reviewed by Niels Jakob Kyhl Jørgensen for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).