Call of Duty: Vanguard Review: ‘One of the weakest games in the series’

CALL OF DUTY: VANGUARD REVIEW FOR PC, PS5, PS4, XBOX SERIES X|S, AND XBOX ONE. 

Call of Duty: Vanguard takes the franchise back in time to World War II. Developer Sledgehammer Games clearly isn’t done with this period after Call of Duty: WWII, creating a campaign that further explores the battle between Allies and Axis forces, though on a more intimate scale. There’s also a zombies experience that attempts to push beyond the traditional horde format, aided by zombies experts Treyarch Studio, and a multiplayer that ramps the chaos up to 11, for better or worse. On paper, it’s a triple threat with the potential to satisfy all types of first-person shooter fans. In practice, however, Vanguard is a mess.

Campaign by numbers

I blasted through the Call of Duty: Vanguard campaign in just over five hours. The plot focuses on Task Force One, a small group of soldiers who must work together to take down the Third Reich. There’s a flashback mission for each teammate that provides a backstory. Players take part in key battles of WWII and locations are rendered in exquisite detail, especially on PC.

The tight gunplay, shiny blockbuster set pieces, and polished animations and dialogue are a constant reminder that you’re playing a Call of Duty campaign, but so are the linear on-rails paths through missions, with little to no attempt at innovating that structure. It’s unfortunate that Sledgehammer Games didn’t choose to buck the trend a little, as Vanguard’s single-player is little more than a serviceable introduction to the game’s world and weapons, in preparation for multiplayer. I’m still waiting for a CoD dev to match the excellent Infinite Warfare campaign.

Zombies interval training

Before we get stuck into the competitive PvP, let’s talk zombies. Unfortunately, this is another underwhelming component. Though Treyarch Studios was involved, the Der Anfang map fails to capture the essence of what makes murdering countless undead so enjoyable.

The unique aspect of this zombies iteration is the hub area. I suppose it’s intended as a break room where players can upgrade without worrying about the undead threat; as you progress through the different levels accessed through the hub, it opens up and permits access to more areas.

At the time of writing, there are three different objectives for players to complete and then repeat until they die, choose to extract… or grow bored and quit out. These objectives all involve killing zombies in some fashion, with the highlight being a mission where you have to escort a floating undead head and stay within its range while zombies attack from all angles.

The available upgrades and presence of the Mystery Box and Pack-A-Punch do help boost the sense of progression, but the broken-up battles against a limited number of enemy types weaken the experience. Hopefully, this mode is eventually expanded upon but, at launch, it’s in a disappointing state.

Multiplayer madness

After warming up with the campaign and a few rounds of zombies, the multiplayer is where I, and most other players, will be spending the bulk of our time. In a word, Call of Duty: Vanguard’s multiplayer is chaotic.

Vanguard introduces two new key mechanics for multiplayer. The first is pacing, with players able to pick between the traditional Tactical player count, slightly increased Assault player count, and too-busy Blitz player count. The second new mechanic is destruction, with maps featuring more destructible items than ever before.

Pick your poison

When it comes to pacing, Sledgehammer Games has fully embraced and implemented the chaos that many diehard fans have grown to love. While previous games kept the chaos locked to dedicated playlists like Nuketown 24/7 or Face-Off 6v6, where players entered the fray knowing full well that they could be subjected to a vicious cycle of spawning and instantly dying, Vanguard has bottled that insanity and distributed it across all maps and all modes.

Players can try to dodge the madness of overpopulated multiplayer maps by filtering by Tactical or Assault (but not both, weirdly), but this leads to longer-than-you-expect matchmaking times and, when you do load into a map, they often feel empty. The devs have created maps that need to work across all pacing types, which regularly leads to an imbalance between map size and player count.

Step backward in time

The chaos is exacerbated by the presence of killstreaks — no, not scorestreaks, which would have helped lessen the urge to camp and avoid objective play — that frequently blast the map with bomb strikes and fire. In my lobbies, where skill-based matchmaking has presumably skewed who I’m up against, a player is almost always calling in dogs. Couple that with a Dead Drop exploit that I discovered, which gives me unlimited Local Informants (aka Advanced UAV/Blackbird), and the match quickly descends into Battle of the Killstreaks. Oh, and there are no lock-on launchers, either, so destroying them is extra tedious.

It’s a shame that there’s so much getting in the way of straight-up gunfights. Call of Duty has always had solid gunplay and I find it most enjoyable when it’s two players facing off and trying to get the better of one another. Instances of that more honorable combat are much rarer here, with killstreaks, bad spawns, no ability to ping, and unpredictable map layouts resulting in more backstabbing than is usual.

But after putting 20 hours into the multiplayer, I’ve grown to appreciate the destruction. Competitive esports players will no doubt hate it, but the uniquely destructible levels act as an aid for a game that otherwise fails to stand out.

The destruction helps to spice up Champion Hill matches, too. Here players fight to keep their pool of lives while reducing the life pool of their opponents. Do well in a round to get a bunch of cash to buy more weapons, equipment, streaks, and even additional lives. It’s a fantastic game mode that expands upon the intense Gunfight 2v2 game type introduced in the Modern Warfare reboot.

Champion Hill is the winner

In the same way that Gunfight acted as a safe haven from the madness of Modern Warfare multiplayer’s launch state, Champion Hill is where I go when Vanguard’s multiplayer proves too frustrating. Players all start on a level playing field and have access to the same upgrades, so there are fewer instances of players rocking a still-OP-and-not-nerfed MP40 two-shot kill class. Killstreaks have to be purchased and so are rarer, too.

I really do enjoy Call of Duty in these more refined modes where the spotlight is focused on gunplay above all else. It’s just a shame that these have become the exception rather than the rule.

Twin brothers in arms

When it comes to progression, the main draw of the Vanguard grind is unlocking weapon camos and soldier outfits. The weapon camos look great and are a big improvement over the free skins in Black Ops Cold War, but the soldier outfits are lacking in both quantity and quality.

The weak soldier personalization makes the absence of clear factions for the two sides an even bigger problem, as there are multiple clones running around on both teams. The only way to differentiate them is the red dot and name above their head, which can make close-quarters engagements confusing.

Lesser evils

A Battle Pass will go live in December, which will sync up progress with other Call of Duty titles. This will hopefully add plenty of other soldier outfits, along with the inevitably better-looking paid-for skins in the store. Free updates should also bring new maps and modes, as well as additional weapons and other surprises, which is always nice.

Pacing options, destruction, and Champion Hill are what make Vanguard’s multiplayer unique. If you’re excited by higher player counts, maps splintering apart as bullets tear through them, and/or Gunfight’s evolved form, then there’s something to like here. However, the chaotic formats, balance issues, bugs, glitches, and need for additional polish tarnish the launch experience.

Call of Duty: Vanguard Review: Is it worth buying?

In a month where both Battlefield and Halo have released new installments, there was pressure on Call of Duty to pull out all the stops. It’s the Year of the First-Person Shooter and these don’t come around very often. Unfortunately, aside from Champion Hill, Vanguard is a thumb-twiddler of a game, useful only as a distraction until the big Warzone update.

Vanguard is more of the same when it comes to the campaign, with very few sparks of innovation. It’s inoffensive, yet bland. Zombies tries something new but goes all-in with a single map that just doesn’t work well at launch. Multiplayer moves the focus away from the brilliant gunplay, pushing chaos above all else and making fundamental errors that shouldn’t be present in the 18th iteration of Call of Duty multiplayer.

Sledgehammer Games is no stranger to righting wrongs, as seen with its previous Call of Duty entries, but even with additional balance tweaks and new content, I’m certain five years from now that Vanguard will be looked down upon as one of the weakest games in the series.

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Call of Duty: Vanguard was reviewed on PC with code provided by the publisher.