Welcome to part three of the Call of Duty Vanguard review! In the final section of this review, we’re going over the most popular aspect of the CoD series… Multiplayer! We love to play it and love to hate it! At least that seems to be the ongoing trend when it comes to CoD titles. So, without further ado, let’s get started! Call of Duty’s Vanguard multiplayer variant is alright. It’s definitely not anything that stands out in the franchise. It feels rather plain and already done a bunch of times over. On the one hand, everyone seems to want the game to change, but everytime it does, people complain. On the other hand, everyone seems to get upset when it feels like another copy and paste. While it may be the best selling video game year after year, the developers just can’t seem to win us over no matter how hard they try. As far as I am concerned, Vanguard isn’t anything new and it is disappointing in the sense that this game was delayed last year and they put 4 years into this one. Granted, Sledgehammer Studios had a lot of changes in personnel including leadership, but I can’t really excuse the lack of innovation this time around. Not after 4 years. I will start you off with the good and work my way down to the bad. Keep in mind, this my opinion and it doesn’t have to line up with everyone else’s and it’s not meant to be insulting to those that thoroughly enjoy the game. Graphically, this game isn’t special on any platform. It’s obviously better looking on a PS5 versus a PS4, but not enough of a difference to really care. It’s smoother looking and all, but it may as well have been released on the PS4 and forget about current Gen platforms. It’s not bad, it just doesn’t live up to expectations. Audio is pretty good with this title. Footsteps sound much better than they have in recent years. I can tell the difference between my teammates and my enemies when playing matches and that’s pretty important to me. When I’m rushing to the other side of the map to find the enemy team, it helps to hear them coming in from any direction. I don’t use my mini map like I should, so I don’t always look up and notice the blue friendly markers. I feel like the sound of guns firing weapons and kill streaks has been brought back to a level it needs to be on. Since Modern Warfare, I thought the sound effects were too much and overpowered everything else in my headset and even though I made adjustments, it was still a bit much for me. I know I’m not alone in this opinion, but I also know there’s a good amount of players that disagree with me as well. All that being said, I’m definitely happy with the audio settings. Controls … Read More
Call of Duty Vanguard Review: Part 2 – The Campaign
Welcome back to our ongoing Call of Duty review of Vanguard. In part 2, we’re discussing the campaign! Believe it or not, there are a lot of people out there still buying the game for the campaign only. I personally could care less for the campaigns, but I still play through them for principal reasons and obviously so I can complete the reviews. Moving forward, let’s discuss the storyline first. We kicked things off in 1945, during World War II. You are part of the Vanguard Task Force One and tasked with finding enemy intelligence and ultimately making sure the good guys win the war. Your team is made up of characters from the USA, Russia, England and Australia. A touch crew of misfits at that. As you play through the game, the story isn’t that great. I won’t spoil anything for you, as I try to avoid that, but I want to. I want to tell you exactly why I don’t like the sorry, but I’ll save that for a time where spoilers aren’t so much a concern anymore. Let’s just say, it’s rather mediocre and there isn’t very bonding with the characters. They are less than memorable. The graphics of the game irritate me because this game should look amazing. Unfortunately, it’s watered down and doesn’t look very next/current gen. This game was pushed back in 2020, and we got an underdeveloped version of Black Ops Cold War instead. Well, the extra year working on Vanguard didn’t help very much. Audio is definitely in good standing with me. Footsteps are where they should be and the sound effects aren’t overpowering each other like they do in Cold War and Warzone. A silenced weapon sounds silenced and you can still hear enemy and friendly footsteps over it. I typically turn the music level to zero and make other minor adjustments to fit my play style with little distraction. I use the same settings in the campaign as I do in Multiplayer. I probably shouldn’t as I’m sure I’m missing out on some things, but as I said earlier, I only play the campaign for principal and review reasons. Controls are tight and work flawlessly, but that’s definitely to be expected. Where the Call of Duty franchise falls short, one thing I can always count on is controls that aren’t clunky or wonky. Responsiveness is extremely important and Vanguard is no exception. The campaign is of course rather short. I managed to complete it in under 7 hours and that’s with looking around and taking my time to explore what I could when I could. Unfortunately, the storyline isn’t great and the campaign is easily forgettable. I just can’t imagine buying a game at full price and playing it for 7 hours and feeling like I got my money’s worth, but some do, so hopefully they’re satisfied with their purchase. All in all, I rate the Vanguard campaign a 6 out of … Read More
Call of Duty Vanguard Review: Part One
Welcome to part one of the Call of Duty Vanguard review here at PS5 Gamers! I’m breaking this down to three parts because each mode is a separate experience and some are clearly better than others. We’re going to start with the worst of the game modes. In my opinion, that would be zombies. I usually compare my Call of Duty reviews to the last 2 titles that have been released, but this has got to be the worst zombies experience in CoD history. It’s hard for me to believe this game was in development for 4 years. I have sunk a lot of hours into zombies for this review and I’m gonna straight up day it sucks! I play with friends, I play with ransoms and solo matches to boot, but it isn’t satisfying to me and many other players I have spoken with about it are in agreement with me. The graphics aren’t that great. The other two modes seem to look a little smoother and polished. I feel like zombies mode was a last minute toss in that has a less than stellar storyline. Zombies aren’t difficult to handle. They seem as dumbed downed as ever and I don’t expect my zombies to be smart, but this is just lame. A lot of times the zombies would start chasing me and then bump into each other and seem to get stuck in place. While that makes for some easy multi kills and easy points, it takes a lot of the thrill away from rounding up a large group and fighting them fairly. Moreover, even without them glitching together, the zombies are too slow and simple. Sure, reaching high level rounds makes them more aggressive, but damn it all, the mode is boring. The controls are fine and I didn’t notice much clunkiness, so I can’t complain about that. The graphics just look like trash to me. This game mode would look amazing on my PS3 back in the day and that’s pretty sad and a little frustrating. I don’t think sledgehammer makes that great of games anyway. They’ve always been ok, but nothing more than that. Audio is pretty good, so there’s little to discuss there. It’s crisp and I can hear the zombies and other sound effects very well. Keep in mind I’m using the PS5 headset with 3D audio, so it’s definitely a lot better than standard tv speakers. While the story is a prequel to the zombies from Black Ops Cold War, which was a decent experience, this one just stinks and it feels unoriginal. Maybe it’s unoriginal to me because it’s a prequel, but there wasn’t much effort put into this one. I don’t write video game scripts, but I could have done a better job than the writers did with this one. I probably won’t play anymore zombies unless a buddy begs me to help them through the higher rounds, but they’re really … Read More
Vanguard: First Impressions
Those of us on PlayStation consoles got a chance to play the Call Of Duty Vanguard alpha over the weekend and while it didn’t offer much selection (it was only an alpha after all), it did give us a birds eye view into what we could expect in November. There are mixed feelings from a lot of players out there and I am no exception. I am not concerned with the graphics of the game. A lot of polishing and some bug fixes isn’t going to change a lot of minds on this one. I’m talking about the advanced weapons in a WWII game. Red dots and holographic sites that are way too advanced for this title. Part of me doesn’t care. I don’t really play cod for its “realism” as much as I play it for what’s not real. It is a video game after all. But what about the players that want to play something true to it’s time? Vanguard is a made up story and we know that, but some folks want the game to be accurate in regards to weaponry. I’ve listened to their arguments and they have some valid points to make based upon their own personal feelings. While I can see where they’re coming from, it won’t change a thing. It is to my understanding that the weapons are advanced in order for them to be usable in Warzone, although I can’t really see that being the case. If the weapons needed to be advanced for Warzone, they could add the attachments into the game separately from Vanguard. I’m no programmer, but I feel like that would be the solution, wouldn’t it? They could integrate both titles without sacrificing one for the other, right? Let me know your thoughts on that, because I am curious about what you think. Maybe I’m giving too much credit to developers? I dunno. Anyway, advanced weaponry aside, we played Champion Hill and it was alright. 2v2 and 3v3 isn’t really my thing. I like larger player counts, but my bias didn’t affect my judgement. I thought they had some cool ideas for what I played. Picking up cash on the ground and hitting the right D-pad button to upgrade my guns was interesting. No building my own loadouts. They gave me what they wanted and I had to work with it. Between rounds we could purchase armor plates, different weapons and support items, etc. It didn’t feel like a call of duty lobby to say the least and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Playing the alpha doesn’t tell me enough about the game on whether or not I should get excited for it. I have a habit of getting excited for CoD and being disappointed after release. Hopefully Vanguard turns out to be something really special, because the Cold War (IMO) was lackluster and missed the mark by a long shot. Are you excited for Call of Duty Vanguard? Let me … Read More