Call of Duty: Vanguard (2021)

FPS - Follows a group of elite soldiers from different Allied nations during World War II, who form Task Force One to take down a secret Nazi project called Project Phoenix.

PROS:

++ Solid campaign. Although I think the overall narrative was weak and cliched, I did enjoy the individual flashbacks of the main characters, especially Polina's. The opening mission was solid with the surprising death of Novak, missions often had great atmosphere like Operation Tonga, the Stalingrad mission was especially great and memorable, and I really liked the missions that focused on Polina. There was enough variety in locales and setpieces that the campaign didn't feel tiring. Definitely would be interested in a sequel that focuses on this core cast of characters and if their unique gameplay mechanics/abilities were more fleshed out and built upon.

++ Graphics & visuals. Graphics are once again phenomenal. Great lighting. Atmosphere was solid in all the missions. Graphical effects look nice. And the cutscenes looked amazing once again.

++ Solid soundtrack. The music was frequently noticeable (in a good way).

CONS:

-- Online connectivity. The game always connects online even if just playing solo. This caused a few issues. First, I couldn't leave my game on rest mode while playing the campaign because when I pick it back up, it has disconnected from the servers. Secondly, I was lagging while playing zombies solo. And when I go offline and play zombies, none of my activity and progress is tracked. I'm essentially forced to play while connected and tolerate the lag (of my bad internet).

-- Zombies mode. A big downgrade from Cold War's zombies mode. The core gunplay still feels solid, but the gameplay loop is incredibly boring. Instead of being a round-based map, they changed it so that completing objectives is what progresses the rounds. This could have worked if the various objectives were fun, but they're not. Within 4-5 rounds, you've experienced all the objectives this game has to offer. On top of this, pack-a-punch is unlocked from the get-go, no doors have to be opened, and zombies give less points when killed, which all add up to a very uninteresting and repetitive experience. The cherry on top is that all the maps are just very forgettable in design and visuals, even more so than Cold War's maps. The best of the bunch was just a remaster of Shi No Numa. There's some fun to be had, but it's definitely the worst zombies mode in COD history.

-- Gunplay. A lot of the guns sound like peashooters, and sound very weak. And at least with the campaign, gunplay was unsatisfying because movement and aiming felt so slow compared to past entries.

The game feels like a tribute to "Inglorious Bastards". The Nazi antagonist resembles Landa a lot. Transitioning from the closing days of WWII to the D-Day, the game manages to avoid clichés like Omaha Beach, opting instead for a thrilling paradrop sequence. However, it's more of a cinematic experience than groundbreaking gameplay.

In Call of Duty Vanguard, the introduction of the mounting mechanic brings a reminiscent vibe of Battlefield, paying homage to its legacy. Surprisingly, this addition actually adds a layer of orderliness to the campaign, making it less chaotic. It's interesting to note the ability to mount corners, providing more tactical options.

Stealth mechanics make a return, albeit with the typical Call of Duty simplicity. Nevertheless, the introduction of shooting through wooden floors adds a layer of realism to the stealth segments. The level of violence might catch some off guard, reminiscent of the graphic nature seen in early 2000s titles, a far cry from the sanitized depictions of combat in recent games.

Stalingrad is portrayed effectively, showcasing the game's storytelling approach through multiple character perspectives, a refreshing departure from the typical Mary Sue protagonist. The absence of tedious sniper battles in this segment is a welcome relief.

Midway introduces aerial combat, a staple of the series that may not be to everyone's taste. The transition to the jungles of Papua New Guinea brings unique challenges, with character-specific abilities and exotic weapons adding variety to the gameplay experience.

The return to Stalingrad brings with it intense sniper duels, reminiscent of classic Call of Duty encounters. The inclusion of stealth segments akin to Modern Warfare 2020 adds a new dimension to the gameplay, along with formidable adversaries reminiscent of the iconic foes from Wolfenstein.

The Libyan episode offers a selection of enjoyable firearms, though nothing groundbreaking. The ability to briefly wield the Warmachine adds a satisfying touch to the missions. Berlin '45 marks a significant narrative shift, showcasing the game's willingness to experiment with character perspectives mid-mission, a commendable deviation from the norm.

The game's length feels just right for me; I won't complain about it being too short. Unlike Call of Duty Cold War, Vanguard presents a complete story without the need for additional multiplayer seasons or supplementary materials like comics.

Lo intenta pero no despega.

Me enfocare en el modo historia.

La duración de la campaña es demasiado corta, en una sesión de juego de menos de 5 horas es posible terminar todo el modo historia en su dificultad normal.

Los personajes principales de la historia simplemente no terminan de encajar. Se siente demasiado forzada la manera en la que se juntan, el juego se centra en las historias individuales de cada personaje para al final hacer una suerte de descenlace en la que todos se juntan por un objetivo en común lo cual los unifica en batalla, de manera muy rapida y sin motivos reales.

Las historias individuales les falta desarrollo y no encajan con el objetivo general del juego.

Graficamente el juego esta bien logrado pero poco o nada aporta al juego en sí.

Uno de los peores modos historia de la franquicia, muy apresurado, facilmente podria pasar como DLC de otra entrega, en pocas palabras malo.

It offers 3 things: campaign, multiplayer and zombies. One huge problem I have with this game is that I cannot seem to play it well offline, which sucks.

Campaign is alright, it's mostly backstory on all of the team, plus 2 missions towards the end of WWII.

Multiplayer is multiplayer. I mean, I like that I can play with bots. The multiplayer/zombies progression from Cold War returns here, so hat's a plus.

Oh, poor Zombies, Activision desperately wanted that Treyarch quality zombie maps on Vanguard. And you can see the terrible decision.

Overall, this game was not good in any of its aspects and I hope the next games will be better in all of those areas.

Campaign:

The story of Vanguard, whilst not the worst CoD campaign out there, is a fairly generic one that hits most of the expected highlights of World War II (ex: Normandy, Stalingrad, the Pacific) but does little to differentiate itself from other WWII shooters outside of its framing device, and even that isn’t all that interesting, especially when compared to the likes of Call of Duty: World at War. The setpieces are as enjoyable as ever though & the score (composed by Bear McCreary of God of War (2018), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. & AMC’s The Walking Dead fame) is grandiose & epic in a way that suits a WWII story like Vanguard’s. The acting is good, but with actors like Dominic Monaghan & Laura Bailey, it shouldn’t be surprising.

Overall, Vanguard’s campaign is enjoyable enough, but is nothing remarkable, especially when compared to Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War’s campaigns.

Multiplayer:

Much like the campaign, Vanguard’s multiplayer is very by-the-numbers by Call of Duty standards & is especially very similar to Modern Warfare (2019). You have all the standard modes like Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed, Domination, & Search and Destroy, along with killstreaks and the same progression system seen in other recent CoD games like Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War.

Also carried over from Modern Warfare (2019) is the Gunsmith loadout system. This system allows players to customize their weapons with a set of attachments and see the changes to the gun in real-time. The problem with this system is that it necessitates a lot of attachments that didn’t exist during World War II and is ill-suited to an era where there was little in the way of personalization of an individual soldier’s gun like there is these days. Even in Black Ops: Cold War, it made some sense given that game’s focus was on elite soldiers & spies in a time when that kind of customization was already common amongst that group. But in a World War II game like Vanguard, it just makes no sense.

As for new stuff, there isn’t much here. The operator system from Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War has been expanded, with each operator having their own levels now. There are a couple of new modes, but none of them are that unique. Control is just Hardpoint but the Hardpoint moves & Arms Race (added post-launch) is just Sledgehammer’s take on Ground War or Combined Arms (from Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War, respectively).

Much like Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War, Vanguard integrates with Call of Duty: Warzone and with how consistently the guns from this game are powerful and amongst the best weapons in Warzone, people who are into that game and want to have all “meta” guns levelled will feel highly compelled to check out Vanguard.

Due to Vanguard’s connections to Warzone, it is monetized like a Free to Play game, with plenty of cosmetic bundles available for purchase via an in-game store (accessible in both Vanguard & Warzone, the latter of which also shows Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War cosmetics in its shop) that requires you to convert your real money into a virtual currency called CoD Points. The problem with this storefront is that there are a lot of cosmetics & even a couple of operators (ex: The Terminator, the T-1000 & Snoop Dogg are in the game due to limited-time events) that look and feel out of place in a WW2 shooter.

Another problem inherited from Modern Warfare (2019), Warzone & Black Ops: Cold War is matchmaking. The recent CoD games (Vanguard included) all use a system called Retention Based Matchmaking (RBMM), where the game looks at your last 10 matches & determines what kind of lobby you will be placed in, with skill & connection being minimal factors. Oh, and lobbies are disbanded after every match and you are put into new lobbies every time unless you just quit. This causes a situation where all it takes is a couple of matches of you performing well for the game’s matchmaking to place you into lobbies filled with tryhards who want to play in the Call of Duty League (yes, that’s a thing) someday. The community has complained for years about this, and yet it still persists, with no evidence to indicate anything will change in future games (although said community still calls this matchmaking system Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM), which I don’t think is really an accurate term for how this system works).

The last noteworthy thing Vanguard borrows from Modern Warfare (2019) & Cold War is the telling of a post-campaign story in multiplayer cutscenes that coincide with the beginning (and end in the case of Cold War) of every Season, with Vanguard having 5 in total. Problem is that Vanguard’s multiplayer story is incomprehensible. The opening cutscene claims that this is about hunting down the remaining Nazis after the end of WW2, but there aren’t that many Nazi deaths actually shown & the last two seasons give up on this thread entirely. Season 4 makes the decision to have all of the game’s operators turn on each other and split into disparate mercenary groups fighting over Nazi gold & season 5 just goes for nostalgia dollars by focusing on the returns of classic CoD villains like Raul Menendez from Black Ops II & Khaled Al-Assad from CoD 4. Meanwhile, Modern Warfare had a serviceable enough plot for a first attempt that did enough to keep the game interesting between seasons & Cold War actually had a pretty good multiplayer story that built off stuff from Black Ops 1 & its own campaign to tell an interesting story that really solidified Russell Adler as one of the most iconic Black Ops characters.

Apologies for constantly bringing up the previous CoD games in this section, but it is almost impossible to talk about Vanguard without mentioning just how much it borrows from them, especially given how much time I’ve put into Modern Warfare (2019), Warzone & Cold War.

Overall, if you’re into CoD (especially Warzone Caldera given how powerful Vanguard’s guns are in that game), hate modern military shooters & love World War II and/or Sledgehammer’s other CoD games, then Vanguard will probably be a fun enough time for you. Otherwise, I’d suggest skipping it. Especially with Modern Warfare II now released.

Zombies:

This mode, developed by Treyarch, is bad. It is a barebones mode that lacked most of the CoD Zombies staples at launch (ex: round-based mode, easter eggs that advance the story) and even now it is a lacklustre experience that is a step back from Black Ops: Cold War in almost every way except maybe visuals (and that’s just due to the engine).

Miscellaneous

The graphics are pretty good but fall short of Modern Warfare (2019) in terms of detail & the noticeable lack of real-time ray tracing support on PC when Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War had it (although I’d say that on the whole Vanguard is a slightly better-looking game). The general audio for the guns is good, falling between Modern Warfare (2019) & Black Ops: Cold War for me.

Conclusion:

Vanguard isn’t the worst COD game ever. But if you aren’t into COD already and/or a BIG fan of World War II shooters willing to swallow some out-of-place weapon variants and cosmetics, I’d suggest just buying Modern Warfare II instead of playing Vanguard at this point.

Ratings:

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 7.5 out of 10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 8.5 out of 10

Business Practices score: 4 out of 10 (respectable Battle Pass system, but out-of-place cosmetics & especially Activision-Blizzard’s general greediness and mistreatment of employees knocks this score all the way down here)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, doesn’t consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 7 out of 10

For the campaign, it's a B-tier Call of Duty campaign. It's good, but not among the best. It's held back by a lack of variety and one bad plane mission which was odd because I thought the plane missions in WW2 were really good. The story is solid and the characters are serviceable. Most of the characters get their own missions where they have special abilities. The abilities are nothing special or wild like Black Ops 3 though. One of my favorite levels were the final revenge mission for the Russian soldier as she's making her way to take out the man responsible for her father's death. It had me fighting my way through some tougher enemies with the focus on moving quickly and breaking line of sight to take the enemy by surprise. Another favorite is the level following the White American pilot who meets up with a African American squad of soldiers. There was some good banter in that level.

The multiplayer is great, but it is buggy. The most common issue I've had is where one or more of my friends and I would disconnect from the lobby even though the game shows us still in the lobby. Other issues I've encountered several times are matches crashing, hackers, and play of the game or MVP voting not show up. The MVP voting feature is fun. It's always interesting to see who had the most meaningful stats in the game and voting on which I valued more. The only issue is that some of the stats players are nominated for don't seem to matter such as "Most time near team" or "Most time near enemies". I wish there were more objective focused stats to vote on like "Most Kills Confirmed" or something like that. None of the issues stopped me from having a great time playing with my friends and alone. I love the new match filter settings where I can choose which game modes I want to play and how many players I want in the match. We mostly stuck to Blitz on Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed.

I've been playing multiplayer in this new CoD a lot since launch. The game seems to be built off of Modern Warfare (2019), a game that theoretically I liked, but in practice... map design, low time to kill, and wonky spawn points combined to cause a total plague of camping with little way to fight back, which was deeply frustrating. While Black Ops Cold War was a step back in several ways, particularly in content and technical polish, I still had more fun with that one thanks to (in my opinion) more fun maps and some slightly slower gameplay.

These asides are relevant because the game has Modern Warfare's great gameplay with less camping AND fixes Cold War's biggest issues, with significantly more maps, and a really smooth experience for me so far free of bugs in-game (just small cosmetic stuff out of game). I enjoy almost all of the maps, with only a couple of the 16 main multiplayer maps being a bit annoying to play on. The "operators" you choose from don't have annoying abilities like in Black Ops IV, and killstreaks feel balanced and never totally overbearing like I've felt sometimes in the past. Besides some rare spawn issues, I think they kinda nailed most aspects of this game in terms of what I would want.

To add more variety, you can also get one of three different "paces", Tactical, Assault, or Blitz, which adjust the player count for each map for a different experience. This is an excellent addition—some packed Blitz rounds really capture that Rust/Nuketown feel, while Tactical matches of 8-12 players can be a totally different type of match. Probably one reason why camping feels so reduced, besides less nooks and crannies to hide in, is that it's just harder to get results doing it in Assault/Blitz-paced lobbies due to their faster pace with players running around more in the open and in groups.

As for the rest of the modes, these are never really my thing. I tried some campaign and I can say it looks amazing at times, particularly in the opening mission, jumping between train cars in the rain with a burning city in the distance. I'm not too into CoD campaigns generally, and this was another one of those, so I fell off it pretty quickly—just a bit boring and occasionally frustrating for me in its level design. If you like them though, it seems relatively polished. Zombies has never been my thing (honestly, I actively dislike the mode) so I can't really judge it and didn't even bother playing it after an un-fun experience in prior games.

While as usual I only really care for one part of the package, it's a dependably fun time that I have found to be as good as ever this year. While I give it the same rating as last year's game, I find it to be a significant improvement and can recommend it to those who may have fallen off the series in recent years or skipped last year's game. Bonus: for all the jokes about CoD's install size, on Xbox Series X, my install is under 35GB!

Multiplayer:

• Still buggy.
• Not as much variety of game modes as its predecessor, but you can select your favorite style of play: Tactical, Assault and Chaotic.
• More experience with shooters is required to win. Matches are even more frantic.
• Many more maps than in 'Cold war'.

Zombies:

• Only one map for now. It is based on challenges that allow unlocking new zones containing upgrades and makes it possible to escape from the hordes.

Campaign:

The script is bad. It doesn't engage. Stories without emotion.

First impressions of multiplayer — CoD games are not exactly known for great launch days, and after having loads of technical issues from the start in last year’s game, I entered this one with some trepidation. I’m pleased to report, though, that in my personal experience so far, the game is running completely issue-free and looking really smooth and sharp on Xbox Series X.

This game is launching with 16 maps in the core multiplayer modes, which I believe is around double last year’s game. I haven’t played every map, but I have been impressed with the fun of these maps and how visually distinct they are. Some of the lighting is really nice, particularly shining in transitions from indoor bunkers to outdoor open areas.

Of course, being up to technical standards, being bug-free, and having a good amount of content, this is all what’s expected of a big-budget AAA game, and what really matters is whether the game feels good to play. On that front as well, I am definitely happy with this game so far. The feel of gunplay and time to kill, to my tastes, is spot-on. The game offers a range of lobby sizes which so far for me have all felt good in their own way, and it’s good to know that you can filter for a more hectic or a more tactical match if you want to.

My expectations were very much in check, even though I did enjoy Sledgehammer’s last CoD effort, but I can say they were definitely surpassed so far—here’s hoping that experience continues.