Call of Duty Vanguard | Will you purchase ?

Ethan
Updated on 2023-06-29
Call of Duty Vanguard (PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S/One) is the latest FPS once again set during WW2 with a fictional story, over the top characters, and more multiplayer options. How is it?

Yo what's going on guys? Here is your old friend. I believe lots of you guys can not wait for trying the NEW "Call of Duty Vanguard" this year. I just simplificed some useful contents for any one who want do buy it or will buy it in the future. Let's start the topic of today --- "Call of Duty Vanguard" things you need to know before you buy.

Review Of Call of Duty Series

As we all know "Call of Duty" releases every year. It's an endless product at this point. If you're not interested, does not matter, you're still not going to be interested. I still think they should have taken a year off and focused on their other projects. Activision is pretty messy right now and needs to get their stuff together. But you know, "Vanguard" feels like an in-between game (you can enjoy two games at the same time). It's not the strongest entry. It's got some lame stuff, and it's got quite a few nice things worth pointing out. It's still fun to play, but we're mixed. You might like it if you are looking for some more World War II stuff, at least. Let's get into it, however. For us here, and me specifically, personally, it's pretty intense. You guys know I say it every year: I love playing through the campaigns. I try them all. Because they're always just fun little popcorn roller-coaster rides, like kind of just quick action movies, and this one has some good standout moments and a couple of boring, bland missions in between. The story revolves around a group of unique, quirky soldiers from various countries, working together on a big conspiracy at the end of World War II involving Hitler's fictional successor. Each soldier is unique for different reasons and is a little more over-the-top than your classic World War II thing, helping this all feel a little fresh.

Storyline of Call of Duty Vanguard

There's Paulina Petrova, AKA Lady Nightingale, the bloodthirsty Russian sniper badass whom I think is loosely based on a real-world Soviet sniper who killed like 300 people in the war. Then there's Lucas Riggs, the quirky, funny Australian explosive guy. Then there's the American guy, Wade Jackson. He's kind of just like a stereotypical hotshot ace pilot. And the English Arthur Kingsley, the type of leader who is super crazy smart and knows many languages and is also pretty badass. They all have their unique tricks along with the campaign, like carrying more explosives and swapping between them or whistling and waving and drawing fire. There are lovely little shakeups to the campaign shootouts here and there that do wonders because some of the actual encounters and areas are pretty straightforward. 

Now, on the ohter hand, these characters, not only are they all involved in the plot together. However the game also jumps back to their time in the middle of the war, and giving them a little character development and setting up the overall plot. While also, of course, giving you kind of like a minor most significant hit of World War II, featuring these fictional characters in it. Some incredible Ariel battles like Wade, who eventually crash-lands in the jungle and fight off Japanese forces. Lucas is in the desert campaign, giving you a little bit of desert Nazi action, and these can feel a bit bland at times, but the standout is Paulina by far. Many World War II games have given you Stalingrad stuff, and "Call of Duty" has done it twice. I can't think of all of them. It's pretty cool, but this stuff takes the cake. It's good sniper encounters, a personal mission involving taking out a Nazi general, and it's all cold. It's bloody and pretty gory, and the game gives you a few environments where you creep around buildings super quick, hiding under tables, going through vent shafts, popping out. It almost feels like a "Batman: Arkham" stealth environment, just fast and deadly. It's a nice new spin. Is it realistic? No. Is it fun? Yeah. "Vanguard's" campaign isn't going to change the world, but the people who worked on it gave a damn. It's not perfect, and there are a couple of lame missions, but the story and characters are surprisingly memorable. They even got Merry from "Lord of the Rings" as an ambitious but slimy and nervous Nazi, and he's perfect onscreen, as well as all the other characters. 

YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU BUY Call of Duty Vanguard

There's a couple of moments like the Stalingrad bit that is up there in my list of best "Call of Duty" campaign mission moments, maybe not number one or anything. However, they're up there, you know? Like many other Call of Duties, the campaign is not very long, and it's not enough to ultimately justify the total asking price, of course. However, it's still primarily worth experiencing in some way or another. Now, on the multiplayer side, it's pretty much what you'd expect. There's plenty of stuff to keep you busy. First of all, the gunsmith weapon thing is back, and it's pretty much as excellent as usual.

There's something about the way it all flows, how it all looks, and how satisfying it is to change stuff and just how the stats work and change. It's something I've always really enjoyed. Now, this time around, things are once again operator-based, so in short, in layman's terms, just kind of meaning you can choose a character and then customize within. There's all the stuff you'd expect. There are skins, levels to grind out, load-outs to tweak and customize with different perks, swap kill streaks. It's just the right amount of stuff to feel like you can still really tailor things to your preference. Now, multiplayer is chaotic and as fast as usual. 

Players are very picky, and everybody has their preferred "Call of Duty" multiplayer. But so far, everything here feels fine. It just feels a little bit too familiar, but I'm curious to see how the community takes to it. Some people will prefer the World War II-style weaponry and stuff in their multiplayer, and you got that here. But you get the usual modes you'd expect, nothing quite game-changing, but there are 16 multiplayer maps, which is pretty nice. Many of them are tight and amount to much short chaos, but there are a few standouts. What we liked is that there are a couple of maps from "Call of Duty: World at War" remade here, and they're fun to jump into. It's almost like we didn't quite realize how iconic some of them were. I can't believe we've been playing these "Call of Duty" games for like a thousand years now. But still, "World at War" feels like just yesterday.

Shout out to "World at War." Anyway, I might seem a little cynical here, but there's still plenty of fun to be had with this multiplayer if you want it. These games play like well-oiled machines at this point. It's "Modern Warfare" from two years back in feel, but with World War II. It's fast, smooth, and with the fun, more recent additions started in "Modern Warfare," like mounting your gun and stuff, all with a little bit more noticeable destructibility. 

Now, you will level up, and you'll learn, you'll get your adrenaline going, and you'll have some fun. How long it lasts, that's up for debate, but it's fun as usual. And there are some excellent presentation things they do here. It's just slick as hell. Now, the Zombies side of the item is the negative of this package for us. The one map available right now is called Der Anfang, and it's pretty weird. It's a combination of the Outbreak mode and the standard round-based Zombies game. It's objective-based, so you go through these portals and complete just one of three different objectives. Each time you meet one, the round increases and more sections of the map open up. 

There are only three objectives: Harvest, Blitz, and Transport, and they get repetitive fast, unfortunately. Now, it also doesn't help that there's no storyline or Easter egg or anything like that. They're going to patch this stuff in later. There's no Pack a Punch unlocking. All that stuff, this whole thing feels unfinished and straightforward, compared to what Zombie players are probably used to. The changes made to gameplay in Zombies for "Cold War" are generally well-liked, I think, but this feels too extreme and just really lacking all around. The way it works by breaking up the big map with these more minor objective-based things is probably meant to make the game more focused and newbie-friendly. However, it just ends up giving the mode many downtimes. Too much time is spent just waiting around for objectives to start or for portals to get into. It's boring. 

The star map is very open, so it's straightforward to avoid the zombies. The smaller maps are so small that there's hardly anything interesting about them. Often, you just get teleported to a small section of the main Stalingrad map anyway. Also, it's worth pointing out that some of us here never really ran out of ammo, and using the starting shotgun, was able to breeze through many games. The challenge isn't quite there at the moment. Even the intimidating new boss enemies are just kind of a joke with the right weapon. And now for one of us here, the first game that they ended up playing, they played for like over 40 minutes and exfiltrated because of it just being kind of boring. It seems like you rarely feel like you're in any danger a lot of the time, which is crazy to say for a Zombies map, and it's a total bummer. 

We've spent more time with the mode since, but our opinion hasn't changed much for all of us here. If you love the Zombies mode in other "Call of Duty" games, I don't think you'll like what they've done here, and I think more casual players will get bored of this mode quickly, and it won't hook them. So with this "Call of Duty" package, if you can't tell, a lot of this stuff is subjective or down to your personal preference. The campaign, I thought it had some fantastic moments. You might love it. You might not. It's not the best campaign they put out, but it's fun. 

The multiplayer is very much "Call of Duty" multiplayer, but once again, with an excellent World War II spin and tons of fun unlockables. But maybe you're burned out. Perhaps you've been playing too much "Call of Duty." Perhaps you're sick of it. Maybe you're not. And the Zombies, unfortunately for us, was just a bummer. And the game does seem to be pretty divisive overall. Perhaps you might think we're missing the mark here. I spoke to two people who believe this is the best "Call of Duty" in years. At this point, the way we look at it is that there is so many Call of Duties that release, the fact that one comes out every single year, there's going to be one for everybody. Everybody's going to love one specifically. "Vanguard" might be it for you, or it may not. I'm saying the obvious here, and I've probably taken up too much of your time, but at least now you know what to expect jumping in. 

In The END

Here is a "Before You Buy." series. You know how it goes. I give you the pros, the cons, and personal opinions, and now we want to hear yours down in the comments. Did you jump in? What are you thinking so far, the multiplayer? Are you as down on the Zombies mode as us? And the campaign, I had some enjoyable moments. Do you have a favourite moment from the campaign? Let us know.