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
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