ame publishers seem to have a lot in common with Homer Simpson. Like our lovable buffoon repeatedly sticking his hand into a toaster in hopes of retrieving that half-piece of Pop Tart, suffering electrocution each time, publishers keep burning themselves by shoehorning first-person shooters into the ill-suited PSP. Call of Duty is the latest franchise to be sacrificed to this FPS meat grinder. As you would guess given the PSP’s poor track record in the genre, Roads to Victory is more akin to the mediocre Big Red One than to the superb PC and Xbox 360 offerings.

In an effort to navigate around the PSP’s lack of a second analog stick, Roads to Victory offers four different control schemes. Each compromises your ability to fight effectively in its own special way, and none of them achieve a comfort level that allows for twitch kills so necessary in FPS games. To correct this problem, developer Amaze entertainment has included an auto-aim supplement, but I found this created just as many headaches as the control scheme. There were times when I wasn’t locked on a soldier, yet his head was perfectly lined up along my iron sights. I would pull the trigger, yet he would not go down. Once he was auto-targeted, however, I could shoot aimlessly at him and he would fall. 

The controls are hardly the only problem facing this forlorn soldier. Anyone who has played a few WWII shooters will be all too familiar with this cookie-cutter list of tasks: take out anti-air artillery with bomb charges, counter-snipe Nazi snipers so troops can pass through an area, take out a few tanks with a Panzershreck, rinse, and repeat. The level designs are equally predictable for the most part, with narrow corridors to navigate with Nazis waiting around each corner. The only new action this game seems to offer is a Memphis Belle-like level played on board a bomber that has you moving from turret to turret taking out waves of Messerschmitts.

Even the multiplayer doesn’t escape this fiasco without suffering from a few shrapnel wounds. You can face off with up to six friends locally in your standard deathmatch, capture the flag, hold the flag, and king of the hill modes, but it lacks any online play. This is a huge sacrifice to make, as online multiplayer is such an integral element to the franchise’s success.
Because of the PSP’s inability to provide a home for a good shooter, we’re willing to give Roads to Victory an honorable discharge. Now if only the publishers would break the habit of recruiting these sorry excuses for soldiers.