Disposing of the Nazis once again

You know what would be great?  If someone would make a FPS game set in the Second World War!  What a great idea!  Okay, maybe we've seen one or ten of those, but there's no denying their popularity and the fact that a good number of them are actually pretty good games.  The latest such title for the PSP, Call of Duty: Roads to Victory tosses a fragmentation grenade at the popular series' usual style by lacking a lot of the things that we would usually expect from a Call of Duty game.  In a way this is Call of Duty Lite; just a tiny taste of appetizer instead of the meaty meal that the console entries to the series usually offer.  This could be due to the limits of the PSP, but even some of the advantages offered by the handheld system are not taken advantage of (no online play, for example) and the disadvantages (why oh why is there no second stick on this thing) offer the same hindrances that have effected other FPS titles in the PSP's past.

Sounding like the start of a poor ethnic joke, you'll walk in the combat boots of an American, a Brit, and a Pole before this one is over, following each into battle in an attempt to once again get those gosh darn Nazis out of France.  Story has never been one of the series strong suits, but this time around there is less meat here than usual.  We are offered a newsreel before each separate country's campaign begins and there is a brief intro prior to each level, but that's really all it offers in terms of narrative.

The gameplay is definitely standard Call of Duty fare and feels a lot like a dumbed down version of the PS2 Call of Duty 3.  It's not as if it's a port of that game (which was, in my opinion, excellent), but the missions and weapons are so similar that if you've played this title's big brother you will be feeling a certain degree of deja vu.  The one standout that we haven't seen before is one in which you're tasked with manning the guns on a bomber.  Shooting the enemy aircraft out of the sky is definite good times and it's too bad that this mission doesn't last all that long.