Call of Duty: Roads to Victory

Call of Duty: Roads to Victory is a portable entry in the series, developed by Amaze Entertainment, a studio specializing in handheld adaptations of major franchises. The game offers three short campaigns from the perspective of an American, a Canadian, and a British soldier, and takes the player through the battles for Guadalcanal, Villers-Bocage, or Operation Market Garden – settings from both the Pacific and the Western Front that the series' contemporary main entries on big consoles hadn't yet covered much. As with other entries, it's a linear, scripted shooter built on the simple, straightforward pace of its individual missions.

This is an exclusively portable version made directly for the PlayStation Portable, not a shrunken port of an existing console game. The controls respect the PSP's limitation of lacking a second analog stick – aiming and looking around are handled through a combination of buttons and tilt, or by touching the directional pad, which is noticeably less smooth than on home consoles with two sticks. The campaign is significantly shorter than in the main entries and focused on quick, separate missions suited to playing on the go; local multiplayer for several players over an ad hoc network is also available, without needing an internet connection. The weapons and equipment match the period arsenal of World War II, and the game tries to offer a feel of combat similar to the console entries, just in a more compressed and technically more modest form adapted to the handheld's performance.

Compared to the series' big console entries of the time, this is a more modest experience both in scope and in audiovisual execution – the PSP's lower display resolution, simpler character and environment models, and shorter individual missions. Within the PSP's lineup at the time, though, it ranked among the solid representatives of the war shooter genre and showed that even a portable device could offer a cohesive campaign with its own content, albeit in a shorter and technically more modest form than on big consoles.

Why play it: For PSP owners looking for a cohesive war campaign to take on the road, this is a solid representative of the genre, albeit more modest technically and in content than the series' big console entries of the time.