Call of Duty: Vanguard Reviews
Despite its ups and downs, Call of Duty: Vanguard is a genuine Call of Duty game from start to finish and that means shooting is enjoyable, campaign is eye candy, multiplayer is still addictive and offers that feeling you rarely find in a competitive online multiplayer game.
Review in Greek | Read full review
Call of Duty: Vanguard's singleplayer campaign is simply too short to get a recommendation. The multiplayer fares better, however it doesn't really offer anything new. Unless you have to play every Call of Duty game ever released, feel free to skip this one.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Keeping up with the recent trend in the series, Call of Duty: Vanguard is a solid and fun shooter. The thrilling campaign and the multiplayer with many options are some of its qualities, and the same can be said for the beautiful graphics and good gameplay. More than a competent game, it offers a solid base that can be amplified and improved upon constantly during its life cycle. Unfortunately, some things come up short and limit the finished product, such as the restricted Zombie mode and the lack of polishment in some elements of the game. The result, however, is a title filled with challenge and pleasant to play, especially with friends. If the integration with the Warzone mode goes well and the updates are good, Vanguard can become one of the best titles in the franchise.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Call of Duty: Vanguard is mostly more of the same, for better or worse. Sledgehammer Games has brought fresh ideas to a formula that desperately needs a shake-up, but the execution only leaves us desiring more. The inevitable Call of Duty: Vanguard 2 may further explore the designs seen in their infancy. And we sure hope it does because Vanguard could signal a notable change in the future. But for now, we have a relatively amusing installment that ticks the required boxes and little else for the annual series.
Vanguard’s multiplayer offers only fleeting moments of fun right now, but its core issues can all be solved in time. Sledgehammer’s philosophy when it comes to maps and attachments means that, right now, you rarely get the optimum experience, but with dedicated spaces for competitive players it might well become the competitive Call of Duty game we’ve been waiting for.
Save for some small changes to each of the individual game modes, it’s obvious that most the effort in Vanguard went into multiplayer, which makes sense. Zombies has been brushed almost entirely to the wayside, and while the campaign is fairly lengthy and has a story that actually makes sense, not involving brainwashing, it’s a big win for Call of Duty this year. The hope now is that the season updates, new maps, and hopefully some new Zombies content, can help to fully flesh the game out effectively.
I think that the inclusion of cross-play will be welcomed by all gamers. This certainly guarantees that the wait time for getting into any matches will be all but gone.
Vanguard is exactly what anyone thinking about picking it up will expect it to be: a competent shooter that doesn’t do much new.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is a totally recommendable experience for fans of shooters and historical moments like World War II. The title establishes some new features that could have an interesting development in future installments, but fails in other modes such as zombies that remain in no man's land.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Now it's time for the final review and I'm extremely torn. I'll admit, I'm quite a fan of single player campaigns and I really liked this year's one. I thought the overall almost cinematic staging was great and it had some great moments. Being a sniper in Stalingrad reminded me of the great scenes in Call of Duty: World at War. But the other locations were great as well. Multiplayer is something I enjoy playing in phases. I liked Black Ops: Cold War quite a bit and found myself in battles there more often. The beta phase of Call of Duty: Vanguard put me off a bit, as I didn't really warm up to the multiplayer mode. Of course, what was shown was only an excerpt of the later scope. So this part could also win me over now in the weeks gradually more. In the end, the problem of Call of Duty is probably more and more the "egg-laying-willing-milk-sow" principle paired with the tight release procedure, which seems to be a challenge despite changing studios. With Call of Duty: Vanguard, Sledgehammer has shown some great ideas of how a good shooter can be presented.
Review in German | Read full review
Vanguard comes at an awkward time for Activision, and into a sea of competition. While the campaign is decent, it’s nothing to write home about, and the Zombies experience probably should have been delayed altogether. For Call of Duty, multiplayer is where it counts though and they’ve managed to put together a solid offering this year. Kudos to the teams at Sledgehammer Games and the other COD studios for managing to do so on such a tight deadline, in the midst of a global pandemic.
Ultimately, Call of Duty: Vanguard has some qualities to make this an enjoyable game, this is not an improvement to the previous Call of Duty games, by any stretch.
Call of Duty: Vanguard’s campaign, all told, is pretty much standard fare. It’s by no means the best nor worst, but while it strives to do something different, it inevitably continues to just play things safe.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is a first-person shooter set during World War II. The gameplay is exactly what you're used to from this series. Unfortunately, the multiplayer doesn't offer enough to keep everyone interested long enough. Zombies has the same problem: fun, but has less to offer than the previous versions.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
A bet on popcorn, action and fun. An ode to explosions, gunshots and getting up screaming from the couch. A formula that, despite not being liked by the current critics, continues to work perfectly
Review in Spanish | Read full review
It’s a longstanding truism that annual games are not well-suited to innovation. They tend to make only small, incremental changes but even these can thrill or displease the loyal year-on-year purchasers. Vanguard is exactly that kind of game in exactly that kind of series. What it does have is the extremely high production standards and level of polish that Call of Duty is known for these days. This looks and plays every bit like a game which cost many, many millions of dollars to develop. If you have ever enjoyed a Call of Duty game you will enjoy this one, too, and can expect to be kept busy until the next edition. 18 games in, that is about all we can expect.
There’s no denying that multiplayer is by far the biggest selling point for Call of Duty and the mode that makes Activision the most money through both sales and microtransactions - heck, Black Ops 4 launched without any single player offering whatsoever - but this showing is poor from Vanguard. It’s fun enough at surface level, but it fails to provide a captivating narrative or any stand-out moments that could attempt to elevate it as one of the greats. It’s also shockingly short with zero replay value, which means the Vanguard campaign only helps to stagnate the Call of Duty franchise. With that in mind, if we are to get Call of Duty Vanguard 2 a few years down the line, this has laid a solid foundation to build upon.
Call of Duty Vanguard is an exemplary multiplayer masterclass that bathes in chaos, creativity, and tactical prowess. It has all the making of a truly great esports title, backing the CDL and the competitive community, which will likely create a hugely entertaining season of gameplay emulated in the upcoming ranked playlists by their fans and aspiring talents – the omission of which is unforgiveable from an esports perspective. Whilst the foundations have been laid though, it comes as a year too soon for a full pathway between casual and competitive, although it’s the perfect stepping stone to be built upon. For a title with miniscule hope, Call of Duty Vanguard could go down as the game that revived esports, soon to be a game that we reflect upon as one of the greats.
Thanks to a surfeit of undaring options, solo and multiplayer, Sledgehammer Games' latest sports the most ironic subtitle of the year.
Call of Duty is always one of the biggest releases of the year, with Battlefield usually releasing just before it – but not this time. Call of Duty: Vanguard is the first in the series for a while to release beforehand, is it an improvement to the series? I’m here to tell you.