At 9 pm pacific standard time, Call of Duty Vanguard will release in the pacific time zone on all systems PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. This will be the eighteenth Call of Duty (CoD) video game. This is also one of the most hyped ones, at that is saying something considering every Call of Duty franchise game is very hyped. I am also writing the first half of this article before playing the game myself. After I have played it for a few hours, I will then finish the piece to give my feedback and see if it matches the hype. Vanguard is going back to the franchise’s roots; World War II. While this isn’t anything new to the franchise, it is a fresh take on WWII. For the first time, the campaign will take you to four different theatres (or frontlines) of WWII: the Pacific War, Eastern and Western Front, and the North African Campaign.
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Campaign Mode
Not only does the game bring a first with the four different theatres. But it also brings a first with a destructible environment and a blind fire mechanism (which also carries over to multiplayer). The destructive element is something that fans (including myself) have wanted in CoD for some time now. We’ve seen that be a staple and a central selling point for Battlefield since Battlefield 4. Battlefield is CoD’s main competition in the first-person shooting (FPS) genre. In comparison, the destructible environment isn’t anywhere close to Battlefield’s ability to shoot down entire buildings. In CoD’s version, you can break down “breakable” areas such as wood and weak walls.
Vanguard will continue with Modern Warfare (2019) ’s gameplay engine, including tactical sprint, mounting your gun on certain surfaces, interaction with doors, and takedowns.
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Multiplayer
After last year’s divisive Black Ops: Cold War, which I would say the majority of the fanbase didn’t enjoy. Therefore stayed playing Modern Warfare (2019) or stuck to Warzone solely. This year’s multiplayer looks promising. It uses Modern Warfare’s engine, which I think fans enjoy more (I definitely do) over Cold War’s engine. Vanguard also comes with one of the most significant content drops on launch day since maybe Black Ops 2. With twenty full multiplayer maps, “combat pacing” means the gamer can choose to play either 6v6, 10v10, 12v12, and “Blitz,” which is 24v24 (similar to “Ground War” in Modern Warfare). Finally, for the first time in Call of Duty history, you can pick up to ten attachments onto your weapon! Which is a far cry from the “OG” Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where you could only pick one attachment.
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Zombies
As for zombies, I’m not a crazy fan of zombies (partly because I’m 23 and still get scared at times), but with Vanguard, it continues the Cold War zombies storyline. A new game mode blends classic round-based zombies with Cold War’s “Outbreak” and “Onslaught” modes. Which should be fun; I enjoyed “Outbreak” in Cold War. Unfortunately, this is all I know and what I could find about the new zombie mode. I’ll see you in a couple of hours after I try the game myself.
Initial Impressions
Alright, I played the game for the first time last night. I opened right at 9 pm, and I played until 3 am. Needless to say, I enjoy the game very much. First, I started with the campaign mode, then I played multiplayer for a couple of hours and went back to the campaign before I got too tired. So, I will cover the campaign then move into multiplayer since I played more of the campaign.
First thing first, this game looks fantastic. It looks like a movie during the cutscenes, and Arthur Kingsley’s narration during the cutscenes is excellent. Side note I have a powerful PC so that I can run the game in ultra settings. Suppose your PC can’t run ultra settings, don’t, since it can be very harmful. For example, my PC has a GPU temperature between 77-83 degrees while running at ultra, which is very high.
But back to the graphics of the game, the opening mission you’re in Hamburg, Germany, near the end of the war. It’s nighttime you’re on a train, but you can look straight across to Hamburg, and the city is on fire from being bombed, and it just looks incredible. The vibrance of the flames in the night is just so unbelievable.
Now onto the storyline; I enjoy it so far without spoiling anything. After the first mission, Kingsley narrates each of the team’s background stories and why he chose them. This was super cool, and this is where the four different theatres of the war come into play that I mentioned earlier. Kingsley and Webb are British and were a part of the airborne operations during the early morning of D-Day on the Western Front. Polina fights her way through Stalingrad the day it gets overtaken by the Axis in the Eastern Front. Jackson is an American pilot during the Battle of Midway in the Pacific War. This is about where I am in the story. I’ve done two missions of Jackson’s story, one of Kingsley and Webb, and about to start the second of Polina’s. So far, so good. I really enjoy the campaign.
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Playing the multiplayer has made me feel like I’m 13 again grinding the new CoD after waiting outside Walmart for the midnight release. It plays very smoothly, gunfighting is good, and all the maps are good. I’ve only played the “Blitz” mode so far because I enjoy the chaos of a higher number of players in a match. Still, I also think the lower player count modes would play well, especially with some of the smaller maps. But the quick pace is delightful, and the time to kill isn’t too long or too short.
The destructible environment, which is just wooden blinds and doors, will take time to get used to. For example, sometimes you try to run through a doorway that looks open, but there is a small fraction of the “door” left, and it blocks you, which can be annoying. The same goes for windows; you might try to mantle out and can’t because there’s a sliver of wood, and you need to open it. But I don’t have any complaints other than that.
All in all, I will say that Call of Duty: Vanguard has lived up to the hype so far. The campaign is top tier so far; the only thing that can ruin it is a terrible ending which I don’t see happening. I haven’t tried zombies yet, but I will because the three zombies’ mastery camos look very nice. The multiplayer is very good so far as well, it is better than Cold War’s, and it feels like a quicker-paced Modern Warfare (2019), which I like. So if you’re on the fence about buying it, I would tell you that it is worth it.