Gun Shoot : Call Duty War

Gun Shoot: Call Duty War lacks many of the aspects that have made the console games so much fun. It's entertaining for a few levels, but it quickly grows dull thanks to predictable, uninspired gameplay and a smattering of game-crashing bugs.

Over the course of 14 levels, you'll lead American, Canadian, and British troops into battle in an effort to rid France of those oh-so-pesky Nazis. Weaving a strong narrative has never been one of the strengths of the series, but the story here is even less engaging than usual. There's a brief black-and-white newsreel clip that plays before each country's campaign and a short text intro before each level, but other than that, the story is completely nonexistent.

There are four different control schemes available in Roads to Victory, but the default scheme works well. You move with the analog stick, look and aim with the face buttons, raise your weapon with the left shoulder button, and fire with the right shoulder button.

Because the auto-aiming function is forgiving, it's easy to use the face buttons to aim. With your weapon down, all you have to do is look in the general vicinity of an enemy to lock on to your enemy. When this system works, it's great. But it doesn't always work. Some weapons have a very short lock-on range, and you've got to be super close to target an enemy soldier. It can also be quite difficult to lock on to moving targets, and sometimes the buttons don't seem to respond.

This means you'll use the same weapons and take part in the same sorts of missions during the game's 14 levels. You'll take retake bunkers, plant bombs, find and deliver documents, man large machine guns in an effort to fend off waves of soldiers, and use rocket launchers to take out more than a few tanks.

You know that when you kill one soldier, another will spawn and take his place, and that as soon as you climb a stairwell, you need to turn and fire because there's a guy waiting to shoot you. You'll even have a good idea of where soldiers will be placed before you walk into a room.

Each level is painted in a drab palette of brown and gray, which--had it not been overdone--would have been fine because after all, you're in bombed-out French cities, not Hawaii. Unfortunately, with everything so dark, it's difficult to pick out enemies, even when they're firing at you.

The Gun Shoot: Call Duty War games so enjoyable are watered down or missing..