Call of Duty: Vanguard Reviews
Call of Duty: Vanguard is certainly a good return to World War II by Sledgehammer, especially in terms of multiplayer modes: many maps, customizable weapons with numerous options and a progression system to applause. On the other hand, the single player campaign is just enough, far from being considered epic, while the Zombies mode needs to be expanded as soon as possible.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Call of Duty: Vanguard's campaign is meaty, the Battle Pass will keep you going a while, and Zombies is wonderfully addictive.
All in all, Call of Duty: Vanguard is a solid yet unremarkable entry into the long-running franchise. On a technical level, it's one of the most impressive games out there right now. On a gameplay level, it's nothing you haven't seen before.
Its narrative is fractious and slight, compared to Sledgehammer’s previous work, but the chance for a chaotic, target-rich experience with friends exerts a stronger pull than usual.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is a balanced game across the vectors of historical interest, good gameplay, variety, and a strong narrative. It ties everything together in a competent way that makes sense. That doesn’t mean it’s a spectacular game on the order of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which was a breakthrough game for the franchise because of its thoughtfulness and disturbing material.
Call of Duty: Vanguard doesn't drive the franchise forward in any major ways, but its tense, cinematic campaign and satisfying multiplayer modes are worth experiencing.
Vanguard's multiplayer does just enough to be fun, but is largely unambitious. Zombies is a similar story and lacks any weight. This is a package that feels designed to be filler.
An unremarkable FPS story set in World War 2. Has moments of spectacle and is largely quite fun, but feels like you're a gun on-rails, hardly a war hero.
Call of Duty: Vanguard will get better with time, but the launch game is still an impressive package. The Campaign is short but sweet and the Multiplayer is a blast, though Zombies fans will likely come away disappointed. Even with Zombies failing to live up to expectations, though, Call of Duty: Vanguard still has a lot to offer fans of the franchise and is very much worth the price of admission.
This culmination of all things Call Of Duty has resulted in something the entire series can look to, a blueprint on how to build a meaty and superb first person shooter experience.
A short but solid campaign and minor multiplayer tweaks suggest Warzone is still the main priority
A band of inglorious stereotypes go on a covert mission to uncover a Nazi plan in a traditional instalment of the series
Call of Duty: Vanguard's campaign and multiplayer are serviceable enough, but nothing exceptional for the series, while Zombies is disappointingly limited in scope and ideas.
Perhaps the softest launch in Activision Blizzard's historic FPS series, Call of Duty Vanguard shows that there's much potential for this year's entry to grow. However with the weakest Zombies mode in series history, a shortage of cosmetics and upgrades for anything save your primary loadout, and a Campaign that could've offered so much more, Vanguard is a tough sell if you're looking for anything than your next TDM fix at the moment.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is not the full package fans have and should expect from a franchise that consistently tops the sales charts. There are not enough positives to overcome the fact that the amount and quality of its content is sorely lacking. This is a blast from the past in the worst possible way.
It follows the formula of a Call of Duty game, but delivers each element just a bit worse than it's predecessors. Call of Duty: Vanguard is a game that will surely grow and improve over time, but what we have at launch is something that at least fails to cater to what I was hoping for in any aspect of the game. The single player campaign is ridiculous even if it does deliver some moments of high action; the multiplayer is a mess, at least for someone with my skillset; and zombies is simply unfinished. It'll get better, but what we've got right now just isn't all that good.
The biggest problem is CoD: Vanguard feels like the least innovative Call of Duty in years. I think a lot of that has to do with Warzone, and the fact that developers HAVE to ensure that their game can be compatible with that battle royale. The fact that so much has to go into making sure it all works together; I just feel like it has to be hampering the developer’s creativity. In my opinion Call of Duty as a whole need to take a year off and regroup, come back with something as memorable as the original Modern Warfare was when it launched. If it’s a matter of money (and I doubt that it is) developers could lean into Warzone, they already are making a killing on all the microtransactions but just update Warzone like Epic does for Fortnite. Then after a year surprise people with something fantastic… I know this will never happen, but a man can dream.
Again, Call of Duty has some very good things to offer but also has big problems, starting with its laziness. The franchise does not seek to review its formula and always serves us the same drum, effective certainly, but that we see coming from miles away. This year, we have the right to an honest campaign but too short and so uninventive that it will not mark the spirits and turns out to be perfectly dispensable.
Review in French | Read full review
As a huge multiplayer fan Call of Duty: Vanguard ticks all of the right boxes for me. It's chaotic and fast paced and besides some bugs that will surely be patched out, there's little to complain about. Unfortunately, the accompanying Zombies and Campaign modes are lacklustre and it is simply not worth buying the game for them alone.