Ever since Wolfenstein 3D hit the market in 1992, game designers have been wetting themselves with excitement trying to conjure up the greatest WWII epics on the videogame scene, although it wasn't until EA released their own take on the catastrophe that the industry started the infamous mass-production of WWII titles that we have by now become accustomed to. Along with Half-Life and Quake, EA's Medal of Honor series has helped shape the world of first person shooters into the million-dollar business it is today, and the success naturally spawned a host of sequels, stretched across a host of platforms. Now the series has returned for another piece of the cake, as Medal of Honor: Heroes makes a grab for the portable market.

Historically set in the middle of the chaos, you control a couple of military handymen undertaking missions in Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium. Your objectives include blowing up enemy strongholds, recovering critical stolen papers, capturing Nazi-controlled settlements and generally just plugging down Nazi soldiers whenever possible. The story is really quite shallow and the soldier we follow has no lines whatsoever; he is simply put there for you to have someone to move around the map and nothing more, which is a shame. Games are striving to create a better atmosphere these days and it's a waste that Heroes doesn't follow the trend and develop its characters. Of course, deep relationships with your team would make it very hard for them to respawn all the time, so the game does work fine without it.

Developing an FPS for a portable device is something developers that have been struggling with for years and aside from the DS I doubt it'll ever be done completely satisfactorily. In EA's latest you look around you with the triangle, square, circle and cross buttons, using the analog stick to walk. This method of steering, while admittedly working well, also has the drawback that turning around takes an awkwardly long time, allowing your enemies to shoot you in the back without you ever noticing them. The other buttons are chosen well though and everything from changing your weapon to firing, zooming, sprinting and firing feels very effective after the first few missions.

My initial impression of Heroes is that it seems like a bigger version of the N-Gage's Call of Duty. Of course, the graphics are far better than that particular game and are actually surprisingly detailed at times. However, they can be a bit grainy at times too, giving this the look of an updated PSOne game, which is clarified by the annoying drops in frame rate that occur periodically. Visual tricks do pull up the experience though, such as blurred dizziness when you're hit by a grenade, making the experience feel a lot more real and keeping the overall impression of the graphics aloft. The audio is every bit as grand as is befitting a videogame epic, from the rain of bullets all around you to the strangled cries of wounded comrades. Although there is very little music to be found in-game, the menus are accompanied by beautiful military music that sets the atmosphere perfectly.

But it's not the presentation that causes thousands of Medal of Honor fans to storm down to their local game store, battling for a copy of the latest instalment in the series - it's the gameplay, pure and simple. Containing very few frustrating moments, the game is stressful and tense at certain times and wonderfully simple at others. Heroes was my first real try at Medal of Honor and I can easily see why it has become as popular a franchise as it is; even though the missions greatly vary in quality, a solid effort has been put into making it unique, and that effort really paid off here.

Online gaming has become an integral part of shooters and Medal of Honor has a devoted fanbase constantly raging virtual war in its past games. With Heroes the game moves onto a portable device, allowing fans to wage war anywhere, and already the servers are filling up. Allowing for up to 32 players to compete wirelessly at the same time, EA Games have provided a well-crafted multiplayer experience for you to enjoy. Featuring a range of different weapons, game modes and maps, online gaming plays a very important part in the overall experience. The single player campaign is essentially the multiplayer maps in a set game mode where you won't respawn. This means that gamers won't have any trouble learning the multiplayer maps by heart, because they just blew through them in the single player.

Medal of Honor should receive a warm welcome to its new, portable home, as Heroes, despite a few faults and bugs along the way, is a great addition to the series. Even though it's not quite a stunner, Heroes is an engaging and interesting addition to the PSP's expanding library. The unfortunately short single player mode is made up for by brilliant online play, with several unlockables to keep you coming back for more. I am glad to have had the chance to play it and discover what I've been missing, and I look forward to seeing more chapters of the series on Sony's sleek portable in the future.

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