THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR CALL OF DUTY: VANGUARD. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!
It’s the year 2021, and we got ourselves another new Call of Duty game. This time it’s set during the events of WWII. Only this time it’s called Call of Duty: Vanguard, a new installment in the Call of Duty series. Sledgehammer games choice to return to the WWII setting is respectable, however, it does nothing exciting as very earlier games used to be.
Playing Vanguard feels boring as it doesn’t have any wow factor. I feel like every Call of Duty game’s main focus is Multiplayer, cause the campaign ain’t that great when compared to Modern Warfare for example. You’ll probably be thinking or struggling to get excited about this game.
The game story revolves around WWII heroes from different nations who came together to form one army that acts as a special force. The story begins near the end of WWII with the heroes getting captured after you killed some of their men and then the villain of this game Hermann Freisinger kills the character you just played named “Novak.”
The characters here are all inspired by real-life World War 2 heroes. These characters’ leader is British war hero Arthur Kingsley who leads them in the war against the Nazis. The story of the campaign here is told through flashbacks. These flashbacks are all conflicts that happened during WWII which also acts as an origin story.
Arthur Kingsley’s origin story is ‘Operation Tonga’ in which things go wrong in the air and Arthur lands in Water and has to regroup with his group where he becomes the Sergeant that leads his team to finish the mission D-Day Invasion. The Russian sniper Polina Petrova who I feel is the main focus of this game has her flashback mission ‘Battle of Stalingrad’, where after Nazis killed her father after the explosion leads her to take the sniper and kill every one of them and also help the captured group escape and become the Lady Nightingale.
Wade Jackson’s flashback mission is ‘Battle of Midway’ an expert in flying planes with his mate Mateo Fernandez, but things obviously would go wrong later in the mission. Lucas Riggs, an Australian, flashback mission is ‘The Rats of Tobruk’. We also got to see ‘Numa Numa Trail’, and ‘The Battle of El Alamein’, and of course, the final mission, ‘The Fourth Reich’ but we’ll talk about it later.
Every mission looks gorgeous, especially with the detailed environment created by Sledgehammer games. When playing as Arthur, you can order your team to attack, or remove obstacles in your way, which happens occasionally. When playing as Polina Petrova, occasionally, you can ask Misha Petrova to draw the attention of the snipers away from you so you could kill them. When playing as Lucas Riggs, you can carry 4 throwables at once to throw, not occasionally, if you could find all 4 throwables to throw at the enemies, then it’s not occasionally, otherwise, it is.
Finally, Wade Jackson can use Focus to find out, or more like you can see the enemies through the jungle so you do a takedown or escape them without struggling much. That’s all these characters unique abilities you can use in the game. I think the mission which should be considered the worst in the game should be “Battle of Midway.” I thought the Battle of Midway will the best mission in the game with getting to pilot the plane, drop bombs on enemies, and fly high as possible, but you know what, the game is very restrictive. There is no freedom, if you go a little high the game warns you to get back to the mission.
In fact, the story isn’t unique here. We have seen or at least knew about the campaign would in these Call of Duty games. Like the last year’s Black Ops Cold War, it was a choice-based game which was something new in this game, but ultimately didn’t work, cause the campaign wasn’t that good. If I have to talk about the best or a better campaign in the Call of Duty series, for me, it has to be Modern Warfare 1, 2, and 3.
The game also has a Zombies Mode and Multiplayer Mode. Now look I don’t spend much time when it comes to Multiplayer mode, but I did end up trying the mode, and just like the previous Call of Duty series, this one is satisfying too. There is this new mode called “Champion Hill” which is a mix between Battle Royale and Team Deathmatch with either eight squads or duos with final surviving team wins. It rewards players for teamwork, communication, and, gun skill, all while being played across four different maps at once.
In the end, Call of Duty Vanguard remains to be the same Call of Duty game, just like its previous game Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. It didn’t get me excited and only felt like I have already played the game before.
“CALL OF DUTY VANGUARD STRUGGLES TO STAND OUT BECAUSE OF THE FAMILIAR SETTING AND NOTHING NEW TO EXCITE THE PLAYERS”
GAMERTIMES 
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