Call of Duty: Vanguard - Review
V is for Vendetta, V is for virgin which you will be called at least 1000 times in the multiplayer component of this game usually by 12 year olds who are actual virgins but claim they are not because they have had sexual relations with your mum, V is also for Vanguard which is apparently “a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas” or “the foremost part of an advancing army or naval force” according to the Oxford dictionary, in this case though Vanguard is the subtitle of the latest installment of the Call of Duty franchise. This time around it is developer Sledgehammer Games turn in the weird developer roulette system that Call of Duty runs with Treyarch stepping in to develop the games zombie mode. With the Battlefield series looking to the future for its main stage this year Call of Duty looks back to the past and revisits the well-trodden timeline of the conflicts of World War 2, a timeline I have a lot of interest in, but I must say as far as video games are concerned it is a period that I feel has been done to death. Can Sledgehammer inject some new life into a WW2 based FPS game and make Call of Duty Vanguard explode into the charts or will it sink harder than an aircraft carrier riddled with torpedoes?
Whilst I find World War 2 to be one of the more fascinating times in our history, to say that the video game landscape – at least where WW2 is concerned, is overcrowded is an understatement, it seems like just about every developer that has created an FPS has had a shot at the WW2 period. Having said that, I was kind of interested to see what Sledgehammer had up its sleeve where the Vanguard campaign was concerned, as they surely must have a truly special spin to put on the story to get us all interested in playing through a game during this time period again. The narrative that revolves around the games main campaign is shaped around a spec ops team named ‘Task Force One’ and consists of war heroes that have been sourced from various allied nations such as the United Kingdom, Australia and America. The campaign kicks off towards the end of WW2 with Hitler dead and the Nazi forces all but defeated, however still very dangerous and desperate to win the war and see the Third Reich dominate the world. Of course it up to your band of heroes led by Sergeant Richard Kingsley to pick up your guns and grenades and other implements of destruction to stop the Nazis from succeeding in their plan. The majority of the campaign this time around is told via flashbacks from each member of your teams past which I found to be a really interesting way of fleshing out the backstory of each character and helping you to know them and their personalities a bit better.
The best mission of the bunch in my opinion is the story of Russian sniper Polina Petrova as there are quite a few interesting mechanics that make up her level, even including some parkour! I was excited to also find that there was a Battle of Midway themed level that involved dogfighting mechanics and bombing runs on enemy aircraft carriers, however this ended up being a bit of a disappointment due to mainly running on rails rather than giving you the freedom to play the level however you would like to. Graphically each of the missions in the campaign are close to jaw dropping and I would go out on a limb to say this is one of the most gorgeous Call of Duty campaigns I have ever seen and so it should be given that developers are now starting to come to grips with the PlayStation 5 hardware. No matter how gorgeous the dressing is though it can’t help hide that there is a bit of a pig hidden underneath, a pig that seems to infest every Call of Duty campaign and that is linearity, whilst a few of the levels contain some interesting new mechanics like the ability to order your unit to fire at certain targets or clear certain areas of the map each mission can still really only be completed in one particular way and in all reality that’s a fair bit basic when it comes to today’s standards of game design, no matter how great the narrative is I think it is always more important to give the player the choice to tell their own story, within reason, and going forward it will be interesting to see how the problem of linearity is tackled in future Call of Duty campaigns.
Another change this year comes with the cut scenes as they don’t use the game engine so it can be a bit jarring as the game leaves its engine and skips to a cut scene but I can kind of understand why they might have done this as having enhanced cut scenes that most likely wouldn’t of been possible using the games engine helps add extra dramatic effect to the narrative especially where facial emotions and speech are concerned, and the speech deserves the best visuals it can get as the cast of assembled voice actors are all utterly fantastic especially the voices of main Nazi antagonists who deliver utterly enthralling and absolutely chilling passages of speech and racist tirades throughout the story. Eye popping visuals and excellent voice acting aside there is nothing gameplay wise here that really elevates this above any of the other Call of Duty campaigns over the years and while you will enjoy playing your way through the visual and aural feast you probably won’t ever find a reason to touch it again once you complete it, this is quite disappointing since I felt like Black Ops Cold War took some steps towards solving the problem with linearity in Call of Duty campaigns only for all of that progress to be tossed aside and not extended upon. One thing that must be said though is the story is absolutely brutal and has bucketloads of gore so steer clear if that’s not your thing.
Call of Duty Multiplayer! It’s a thing of beauty right? The land of squeaky voices, virgins, sexually promiscuous mothers and gamer words! Love it or hate it you can’t deny there is nothing quite like the magical mix of unwashed gamer odour, Cheetos dust and magical Mountain Dew potions that permeates through my mind whenever I think about the multiplayer portion of this game. It is one of the most toxic, yet also entertaining gaming environments one can get to experience on the internet, well there is also Rainbow 6 Siege but that’s a whole ‘nother story! Traditionally Call of Duty has always put up a pretty solid offering where multiplayer is concerned, and Vanguard is no exception and neither it should be I guess seeing as the Call of Duty franchise seems to have the formula to a successful multiplayer franchise locked down. A new year of course not only brings a new era of history that the game is set in but also usually some innovation and new game modes in the multiplayer arena.
The usual Call of Duty offerings are here of course, Team Deathmatch, Kill Confirmed and Hardpoint amongst others so veterans of the series will feel right at home, new to the game this year is ‘Champion Hill’ mode, which is a round-robin tournament of sorts that can be played as duos or trios. The premise of Champion Hill sees teams of duos or trios competing in an arena to kill the other user controlled teams as many times as possible whilst trying to stay alive yourself in order to preserve the amount of lives you have (10 in duos, 18 in trios) and win the match, this all sounds incredibly simple and it is but sometimes simple things just click and that’s the case here, Champion Hill is a really fun and engaging addition to the series especially if you have a few competent friends to play with.
Patrol is another new multiplayer mode that is loosely based around Hardpoint except in this case the hardpoint actually moves around the map once captured, forcing your team to move around and guard it on its journey across the map, this is a fun and tense spin on the Hardpoint game mode and I really enjoyed it, though of course your enjoyment will vary depending on how competent your team is because as per usual in Call of Duty a lot of people seem to think every game is Team Deathmatch and they will refuse to help you capture and guard the point. The other interesting new innovation for the series this year is the ability to choose ‘combat pacing’ ranging from tactical through to blitz, effectively this controls the amount of players you will be playing against, tactical is 6 vs 6 whilst in blitz there is an endless amount of players on one map which results in total and utter chaos and a lot of rage when you get killed over and over again as soon as you spawn, adding the ability to effectively control the pacing of the maps you join to your likeness is a great feature and saved me from a lot of rage since I am more of a tactical guy.
There are no big innovations here but as they say, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” and never has it been more apt here as the gunplay is solid, as are the rotation of 16 odd maps and game modes. The multiplayer is more of the same, though with a few new and welcome additions, it doesn’t disappoint by any stretch of the imagination and is incredibly fun to play. Unfortunately, though the score streaks from Cold War have been dumped in favour of kill streaks, which does mean that focus once again drifts from capturing and holding objectives to camping and trying to kill as many players as possible without being killed, this is a major detraction from team based gameplay so it is puzzling why this choice was made. The gunplay is outstanding as per usual for Call of Duty and with the addition of being able to now add perks to weapons and have up to 10 attachments on some guns it will be interesting to see which loadouts become the meta for this year’s maps and game modes.
Zombies’ mode is back this year and subtitled ‘Der Anfang’, the game mode continues to tie into the Dark Aether storyline but there are some major changes this year, gone are the large scale massive maps of the past, this year the mode consists of a major hub world that has several different portals. You can choose to traverse and then complete objectives, such as collecting crystals from killing zombies, following a disembodied zombie head around the map, or surviving to the end of a time limit and once completed you are then teleported back to the hub world in order to upgrade your items and find another portal to traverse. Given this major change with the gameplay loop I think some veteran zombie fans may be a little more than pissed at this change, but sticking with the mode does reveal a lot more depth than the beginning gameplay loop and will eventually see you teaming up to battle some nasty major demons. I am by no means a connoisseur of this game mode and would never pretend to be well versed in all of its intricacies but I can say that I had much more fun in this version of zombies than I have had in some of the previous versions, it actually feels like they mashed up zombies with a rogue-like and I like it, so I can’t wait to jump back in and play some more of it.
Last year I rightfully gave Call of Duty Cold War an absolute drubbing in my review as it was an absolute mess at launch and I honestly didn’t think it was salvageable, thankfully it was and a lot of work was put in and Cold War ended up being a pretty good game, I would probably give it a much higher mark than I did when I reviewed it. Thankfully, there aren’t any major issues that I discovered within the thirty or so hours I have spent with Call of Duty Vanguard and whilst the game doesn’t push any new boundaries or stray very far from its usual formula, it really doesn’t need to. The multiplayer gameplay is incredibly polished, the campaign, though short, is still a great experience to play through, mostly thanks to its incredible voice acting and atmospheric story driven cut scenes and the grind to unlock new skills and attachments for guns and try them out is still as addictive as ever. If you like Call of Duty then rush out and buy it, you won’t be disappointed, if you don’t like Call of Duty then I really can’t see any major changes here that would instantly make you start liking it, but it never truly hurts to try new things.
The Score
8.0
Review code provided by Activision
The Pros
+Champion Hill, Patrol and combat pacing are great additions to multiplayer
+Voice acting, graphics and atmosphere of the campaign are top notch
+New zombies mode is more fun than previous, though veterans may disagree
The Cons
-Campaign has shed past steps towards innovation and become more linear
-Kill streaks are back which does little to encourage team based gameplay in modes that require it
-Not having the War Mode introduced in COD WW2 is a major misstep as this was a majority of players favorite game mode, I am still holding out that they add this in.
