Approaching two decades of existence, Call of Duty has continued to be a dominant force in the gaming industry since the skyrocketing success of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2007. That’s about how long I’ve been into the series, plugging away at prestiging and practicing my chops as an FPS gamer for years and years. With 2021’s entry delving into World War II, a time the series has had its fair share of titles in, I’m hoping the formula can be jogged or at the very least maintained to create another memorable campaign.

From the install, I was pleasantly surprised to see the game, accompanied by its Zombies and Multiplayer modes, only takes up 50GB of space on my PC. As such, I had room to fit it onto my SSD for optimal performance. Load times in Vanguard‘s campaign are quick and make it worth the space.

However, it’s an absolute memory hog, as I saw it utilize 8GB of RAM at points in Task Manager. Anyone playing this on less than 12/16GB of RAM is going to have to lower settings significantly. Also, at random points, the game would tab out, even in the middle of a contentious close-range gunfight. This frustration point really should have been hammered out in conjunction with the rest of the game’s sleek polish.

As far as how the story is laid out, I found that it went with an approach I’ve already seen before. Battlefield 1 told “war stories” in brief installments to cover the wide array of skirmishes that took place in the second World War. Vanguard does this in flashbacks for the main characters through its duration, dedicating about an hour of time for the four characters to provide backstory. If I hadn’t already played these arenas of war tons of times before, I would welcome it, but it just feels monotonous in the franchise’s 18th year.

One thing I can wholeheartedly commend in the campaign is how sleek everything looks and sounds. Lifelike cutscenes highlight the sweat dripping off of bodies, in-game gloves have loose stitching, and audio is succinctly-muffled in tunnels and cockpits. Attention to detail is nailed in Vanguard like it is in every other CoD installment. It’s too bad immersion got broken every time the game randomly tabbed out or stuttered under its demanding hardware usage.

Everyone who’s played a Call of Duty campaign knows they’re a short affair, and Vanguard is no different. Howlongtobeat claims the game is 6 hours long, and that’s about how long I spent on it. I coasted through the campaign with my main complaints being how the character I controlled moved at a snail’s pace when crouched or moving at any speed that wasn’t sprinting, and stealth sections where it was legitimately faster to go guns blazing.

As my editor pointed out to me before I began my playthrough, most people purchase a Call of Duty game for multiplayer and zombies nowadays. While Sledgehammer didn’t necessarily put together a lazy campaign, it certainly suffers from avoidable, tired tropes and unfocused polish that shouldn’t occur within one of the most profitable game franchises of all time. It could be worse, but it could certainly serve to be a lot better, too.

A PC review key for Call of Duty: Vanguard was provided by Activision Blizzard for this review.

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Call of Duty: Vanguard

$59.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Stellar Audio
• Strong Visuals

Cons

• Cliched and Full of Tropes
• Performance Issues
• Nothing New