Call of Duty: Vanguard Preview

As the year draws closer to its end, there’s one annual tradition that we are all looking forward to; the new Call of Duty game. With their last Call of Duty title heralding from as far back as 2017, with Call of Duty: WWII it’s time for Sledgehammer Games to step up and deliver this year’s most anticipated shooter, Call of Duty: Vanguard.

Again we will see ourselves cast to the grim days of yore; when spitfires took to the skies and bombs blanketed whole countries – World War II.

Call of Duty: Vanguard – The Story

As Sledgehammer Games are keeping their cards close to their chests on this one, the details and information surrounding the upcoming CoD game are as scarce as hen’s teeth. What we do know is that the game will follow a similar vein to Sledgehammer’s last single-player story. Like Call of Duty WW2, Call of Duty: Vanguard will follow not one protagonist but four. Spanning across four allied nations, the characters are all based loosely on real-world soldiers and their stories. Sledgehammer has worked closely with historians to find four heroes that played a part in key, table-turning events in World War 2.

Even alone, this instills a real interest in the title, but couple that with the fact that it’s a Call of Duty game, is enough to pique our interest and stir up some excitement in the gaming community. Having delivered tense, exhilarating, and exciting games every year for the last 15 years; we can make a safe bet that this is going to be nothing short of great.

Sledgehammer has announced that the game will take on a ‘hammer’ approach of getting things done, as opposed to Modern Warfare 3‘s neat, clean, and concise ‘scalpal’ approach. What this says to us is the constant, frantic action that’s synonymous with World War 2. While there will undoubtedly still be some of the token stealth moments to enjoy; the game looks set to focus on fast-paced action that will ring the bells of familiarity of some good old-fashioned shooter fun.

Multiplayer Mode

Call of Duty: Vanguard is to play host to a total of 21 maps. Along with many of the classic, much-loved game modes, Vanguard will introduce some brand new ways to kill and be killed in the form of the Patrol and Champion Hill game modes.

Expect the usual tried-and-tested style of action along with further additions such as a stripped-back environment destruction feature.

Patrol

With underlying tones of Hardpoint, Patrol will once again utilize score zones (or ‘hills’). However, unlike what we saw in Hardpoint with the ever-changing hill, Patrol will feature just a single hill that moves on a preset path. This will hopefully work as well in a Call of Duty game as it did in the likes of the popular Siege mode, seen in the free-to-play shooter, Paladins.

Champion Hill

Champion Hill will be played in two-vs-two, three-vs-three, and four-vs-four modes and will make use of the Airship, Courtyard, Trainyard maps. These maps will be destructible but sadly not to the extent seen in the Battlefield franchise. Instead, you will be able to destroy barriers and doors to allow for a tactical edge. Think Rainbow Six: Siege, as opposed to Battlefield. However you look at it, it’s still a welcome addition to a franchise that’s teetering on the edge of becoming stagnant.

Summary

Call of Duty: Vanguard is going to take us back to the bloodied battlefields of WW2 and offer us the same kind of barebones war we saw in the studio’s previous franchise title, Call of Duty: WW2. Going back to the roots of the massively popular franchise is a bold move but it worked to a resounding success with the early titles and it also worked with CoD: WW2. To stay in past wars as opposed to speculating on future fictional conflicts has always gelled perfectly with their model to make some truly unforgettable games.

Call of Duty: Vanguard will be released on November 5th of 2021 and will be available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.