Call of Duty Vanguard review: A mechanically superb WWII shooter held back by a shallow campaign, broken matchmaking, and a divisive Zombies mode.
Introduction & Key Details
Call of Duty Vanguard arrives as Sledgehammer Games returns the franchise to its World War II roots, packing in more features than ever before across its three main pillars.
Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty Vanguard marks a visually impressive return to WWII, yet beneath its polished surface lies a package of uneven quality. This year’s entry delivers a fantastic core shooting experience but is burdened by significant design missteps and a lack of compelling content at launch.
Following modern and Cold War settings, the series revisits World War II. Sledgehammer leads development on the campaign and multiplayer, while Treyarch crafts a controversial new Zombies experience.
Mechanically, Vanguard stands as one of the tightest first-person shooters available. Its production values are top-tier, and its controls are impeccably refined, delivering the explosive, responsive gameplay the franchise is known for.
However, if previous Call of Duty games haven’t captivated you, Vanguard does little to change that calculus. Multiplayer is the clear standout, but it lacks innovation. The campaign is forgettably brief, and the Zombies mode takes a puzzling turn that alienates its core audience. For players not invested in the annual multiplayer grind, Vanguard offers scant reasons to engage.
Call of Duty Vanguard – Key details
Call of Duty Vanguard trailer
Campaign: A Forgettable Tour of Duty
As a fan of narrative-driven FPS campaigns, I hold Call of Duty’s best efforts in high regard. When developers like Infinity Ward or Treyarch are at their peak, these campaigns deliver unparalleled cinematic spectacle and thrilling combat sequences.
Vanguard’s campaign, unfortunately, fails to reach those heights. It feels like a collection of gameplay vignettes rather than a cohesive, gripping story, ranking among the series’ weaker recent offerings.
Activision announces new strategy for Call of Duty’s annual release plan
These are the 25 best games to play on Xbox Series X / S
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 review – Worst campaign ever saved by great multiplayer & Zombies
You control Task Force One, an international squad of stereotypical operatives. The campaign uses flashbacks to explore each character’s origin story across various WWII theaters.
This structure leads to a disjointed experience. One mission features aerial dogfights over the Pacific, while another is a slow-paced sniper mission in Stalingrad. While individually competent, these segments feel like isolated tutorials that never coalesce into a satisfying whole or introduce memorable mechanics.
Practical Tip: To maximize your campaign enjoyment, focus on the core gunplay. The mission design is safe, so creating personal challenges, like attempting stealth approaches or limiting your weapon choice, can add much-needed depth.
A major flaw is the pre-launch marketing, which revealed extensive Operator descriptions. This strips the story of any surprise or character development. You already know each hero’s personality and role before you start, leaving no room for narrative payoff.
Technically, the gunplay and visuals are superb. Lighting is a notable step up from *Cold War*. However, we encountered severe audio-visual hitches during cutscenes, where the video would lag and permanently desync the audio—a jarring issue in a game with lengthy cinematics.
Common Mistake: Don’t purchase Vanguard solely for the campaign. Its primary value is as a extended tutorial for the Operators you’ll use in multiplayer. If you’re not a dedicated multiplayer fan, the campaign alone isn’t worth the price of entry.
Multiplayer: Brilliant Core, Broken Systems
Vanguard’s multiplayer is its undeniable strength, delivering some of the most instantly gratifying and polished combat in the franchise’s history. The movement is fluid, gunfeel is exceptional, and the core loop is incredibly fun.
The 16 launch maps offer variety. In my experience, five are excellent, five are average, and six are poorly designed instant-skips. This ratio is better than some recent entries, providing a solid foundation.
However, this fantastic core is crippled by systemic failures. The new Combat Pacing feature, designed to let players choose lobby sizes (Tactical, Assault, Blitz), is completely broken. Selecting ‘Tactical’ for 6v6 matches often throws you into chaotic 18v18 Blitz games on small maps, ruining the intended experience.
Optimization Tip: If you’re struggling with chaotic matches, manually back out of lobbies marked ‘Blitz’ during the countdown. While tedious, it’s the only way to somewhat control the pacing until a fix is deployed.
Worse still is the Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) and regional matching. At launch in Australia, I was consistently placed in North American servers with 200+ ping, despite a healthy local player base. The system prioritizes speed over quality, making for a frustrating online experience.
The weapon progression system is a monumental grind. Each gun has around 70 attachments to unlock, and base weapons feel underpowered. In high-SBMM lobbies, you’ll be outgunned by players with fully leveled ‘meta’ weapons, punishing experimentation.
Common Mistake: Trying to level multiple weapons at once in core modes. Focus on one primary weapon in a dedicated playlist (like Patrol or Hardpoint) to level it efficiently before moving on. Using an unleveled gun against maxed-out loadouts is a recipe for a negative K/D ratio.
A litany of smaller issues further drags the experience down: persistent packet burst, broken camo challenges, inactive leaderboards, and an unskippable, tedious post-game MVP screen. The fun of the core gameplay constantly battles against these aggravating ancillary systems.
Zombies: Der Anfang’s Identity Crisis
Treyarch’s Der Anfang mode abandons traditional round-based survival for an objective-based, rogue-lite structure. Players complete tasks in a central hub to gain upgrades and prolong the run.
Initially, the change of pace is refreshing. The core loop of upgrading your character between objectives has potential. However, the extreme lack of content at launch shatters the illusion of a deep, replayable mode within just a few hours.
The progression system hits a hard ceiling far too quickly. Perks cap at four upgrades. The Pack-A-Punch machine only boosts weapon damage twice. Abilities have a few rarity tiers, then stop at Legendary. By round 10, you can have a fully maxed-out character with nothing left to strive for, yet the game continues throwing harder enemies (including gun-wielding zombies) at you.
Practical Tip: If you’re playing Der Anfang, understand that the ‘endgame’ begins around Round 10. The goal shifts from progression to pure survival against overwhelming odds, which lacks the rewarding feel of mastering a traditional Zombies map’s Easter egg or high-round strategy.
With minimal objective variety and a shallow upgrade path, Der Anfang fails as a compelling rogue-lite. It also utterly disregards what the Zombies community loves: intricate maps, hidden narratives, and endless progression. It sits in an unsatisfying middle ground, unlikely to please either group.
While seasonal updates may add content, the launch version feels like a hollow shell. It’s the most glaring example of Vanguard’s ‘minimum viable product’ approach at release.
Verdict & The Road Ahead
Call of Duty Vanguard’s saving grace is its superlative core gameplay. The gunplay, movement, and visual polish are top-notch. Without this, the package would be a disaster.
However, it’s buried under a lackluster campaign, a fundamentally broken multiplayer matchmaking system, a grind-heavy weapon progression, and a Zombies mode that misses the mark entirely. The sum of these parts is a launch that feels rushed and incomplete.
History shows that Call of Duty titles transform over their annual cycle. New maps, modes, balance passes, and system fixes will undoubtedly improve Vanguard. But that does not excuse the state of a full-priced AAA release. If you live for Call of Duty multiplayer and can tolerate its current flaws, there’s fun to be had. For everyone else, it’s advisable to wait for significant patches and content drops before enlisting.
Reviewed on PlayStation 5
You can purchase Call of Duty: Vanguard by following these links to Amazon or Best Buy, but please note that if you click on a product link on this page, we may earn a small affiliate commission.
No reproduction without permission：SeeYouSoon Game Club » CoD Vanguard review – A step back in more than just time Call of Duty Vanguard review: A mechanically superb WWII shooter held back by a shallow campaign, broken matchmaking, and a divisive Zombies mode.