![]() There are immediately some power positions which you can see are going to be cheesy, but generally the maps flow well, although the same old Call Of Duty problem – where you can end up in a recurring loop of getting slaughtered – is still present and correct. There’s a heap of maps – some of which are reworks of earlier WW2-themed Call Of Duty efforts – and all have some fairly tasteful use of destruction. So I’m hoping that bit gets fixed, at least. Still, several times I spawned into the middle of an ongoing bombing run and turned to meat paste instantly. There are issues at the moment: sometimes you spawn in front of bad guys with their guns trained at you and that goes about as well as you expect, unless perhaps you’re equipping a bayonet or using one of the many elements of the multiplayer that currently feel overpowered. The multiplayer is one of the better entries in recent years, but it’s hard to say yet how it’s going to develop over the next 12 months. Seeing the other sides of WW2 is the best part of the campaign, whether you’re fighting with the 93rd Infantry Division – a segregated division of the US Army – in the Pacific, or exploring Stalingrad before things go to pieces. Her engagements swing between long sniper-duels watching for scope-shine and close-quarters guerrilla scraps that feel something more like Batman: Arkham Asylum, if the Dark Knight had decided to stamp out crime with a PPSH-41, instead. Riggs’ special ability lets him carry several types of grenade and switch between them at will, and also see a predicted path for where those explosives are going to land, and it’s impressive how fast you adjust to just tossing things around.Įlsewhere, Russian sniper Polina Petrova has the ability to climb walls and can scramble through smaller spaces at speed. This feels like “classic” Call Of Duty, but with the added benefit of Australians bickering at each other while you do it. You play as five characters – one for the prologue and then four for the rest of the campaign – each of the latter four have a special ability that makes playing as them very different, but they also have a unique style of gameplay: a highlight is Lucas Riggs, an Australian in Africa who spends all of his time blowing up bigger and bigger Nazi targets while his British squad leader whines and moans. He’s every inch the blockbuster action star, and he steals most of the narrative beats he’s involved in with deft ease. The characters are all fairly detailed too, although Arthur Kingsley (played by Chiké Okonkwo) is a real highlight as the leader of the team. ![]() It’s mostly cliché, but seeing some of the less-observed parts of WW2 is the real draw: rather than replaying the same rote WW2 Western Front touchstones, we get to see different angles of a conflict that affected the entire world. Credit: Sledgehammer Games.Īs you jump around the different characters, you find out more about them. The writing is great, and I got a real kick out of the narrative structure: the first-ever special forces team comes together for a seemingly impossible mission, they’re captured, and then you find out about their past through a series of vignettes.Ĭall Of Duty: Vanguard. What does stick in the memory, and is notably better than recent games in the series, is the story. However, there are clearly elements that have popped up from those games: one knife fight inside a burning building is almost identical mechanically to a segment in Modern Warfare – with the exception that you don’t have to stab someone to death as an actual child, this time. It feels like a step back after the bombast of 2019’s Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s campaign which felt like it was taking genuine risks, but it’s worth remembering that every game in the series has a three year development cycle, so things filter down over time. ![]() Vanguard delivers a lot of fun set-pieces, but without checking my notes, it’s a struggle to remember them. A bombastic opening level that sees you running along two moving trains – jumping from one to the other while blasting Nazis – was nearly entirely forgotten by the time I’d rolled the credits six hours later. Vanguard’s campaign does a lot right, but it’s often forgettable. These disparate elements are all their own thing, but they tie together into the big Call Of Duty burrito that you’re getting here. It’s a lot of game, so each of the three elements will get their own chunk. Reviewing a Call Of Duty game is a real endeavour, especially for years when there’s the campaign, multiplayer and a Zombies mode on offer.
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