What's worse, though, is that it's pretty great. For a hugely anticipated game that was advertised to capture the whole world at war, it's unsettling.
The gaming experience in all three formats begins with a lot of excitement - thanks to a great storyline, beautiful cinema, next-generation graphics, and steady marketing - but it becomes pretty obvious that something has gone amiss as the game progresses.Ĭall of Duty Vanguard PC Performance Review: Can a Budget Gaming Rig Handle It? Call of Duty: Vanguard single-player campaign reviewĬall of Duty: Vanguard campaign is roughly a six-hour run. Treyarch Studios claims to have a clear roadmap, but one that is yet to take a formidable shape. The Zombies mode in Call of Duty: Vanguard, though, is in its infancy compared to the last instalment. While the game controls are the same, the experience is markedly different (not worse, not better) from Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War. The expansive mode has 20 maps at launch and a new ‘Combat Pacing' matchmaking that lets you control the pace of the game - you can choose the number of players vis-à-vis the map size - and not be forced into a sniper contest or a bloodbath where you only survive for a few short breaths. The gameplay is classic CoD: fast and dynamic like an elite obstacle course, with a few party tricks that make the experience less humdrum.Ĭall of Duty: Vanguard multiplayer mode gets more attention. The single-player campaign developed by Sledgehammer Games spends so much time in defining its four prime characters - and two Nazi shmucks - that the story wraps up before it can get going.
But the 18th instalment of Activision's priced series suffers from the consequences of its lofty intentions. Call of Duty: Vanguard injects the biggest flights of World War II into a spin-off story about the mythical Fourth Reich, which is worthy of a big round of applause. The enigmatic heroes that knock your socks off in carefully imagined cutscenes render into one-trick-pony operatives for the most part. What follows, though, is an epic story that never quite reaches a crescendo. Call of Duty: Vanguard rubs and polishes the trite World War II theme to cinematic brilliance.