Call of Duty: Vanguard marks Sledgehammer Games’ return to World War II after their 2017 game, World War II. It’s not a sequel, but is in fact a brand new story, where players form and become part of the very first super-secret task force ever assembled to take down the Nazi war machine. It’s peak Call of Duty, where you get exactly what you expected from a COD game – and it doesn’t disappoint.
Vanguard’s campaign harks back to older COD games, where you play the campaign from the perspective of different soldiers. Here, you’ll play as different members of the squad as they go about their journey in a world torn apart by World War II. Each of these members has a distinct speciality – and this is reflected in some of their missions. Polina Petrova, for example, is the group’s sniper and her missions involve stealthy infiltration or long-ranged battles. Other group members don’t feel as diverse, but you’ll always have their special abilities like slowing time down or commanding your squad to mix things up.
Vanguard’s campaign is structured like most COD campaigns over the past decade, and this isn’t a bad thing. These campaigns are linear but entertaining blockbuster romps with plenty of loud set pieces that’ll make Michael Bay blush. Vanguard is uncharacteristically low on the set piece action, but that probably has something to do with the fact that the game was developed remotely during the pandemic.
After the campaign, you’ll drop into the meat and bones of every COD game –multiplayer. Given that Vanguard has been developed using Modern Warfare’s engine, this game feels more methodical in its approach compared to the fast-paced Cold War. Don’t get us wrong though; this is still a COD game at the end of the day and offers up frantic, kinetic action across a bunch of diverse maps. Vanguard introduces two new game modes to the mix – Patrol, a hardpoint-esque mode where the objective itself is always moving; and Champion Hill, a last-man-standing mode where eight squads of two or three battle it out for victory. Both modes are good additions to the usual modes, but we have to point out that Vanguard has perhaps the worst spawning system in recent COD games. You have been warned.
If you’d like some co-op action to accompany the multiplayer mayhem, Vanguard offers that too in the form of Zombies. Just like in the Treyarch games, Zombies in Vanguard has you fighting off waves of zombies while upgrading your weapons and abilities. However, where Treyarch expanded upon the Zombies formula with Outbreak, Vanguard does no such thing and instead offers a fairly barebones experience.
Vanguard may not be one of the best COD games out there but it certainly is a more than capable experience, with a solid single-player campaign, fast-paced multiplayer and a co-operative zombies experience. If you love COD games, you’ll enjoy Vanguard. Just don’t go in expecting it to reinvent the wheel.
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