Call of Duty: Vanguard Review Round Up

Another year. Another Call of Duty. But our very first review round-up. The Vanguard review embargo has been lifted and a lot of sites have published their thoughts on this year’s Call of Duty entry. Our goal with these review round-ups is not to make a comprehensive list of all the reviews the game has gotten, but to give you a general idea of how the game is scoring and what the critic consensus is. First, let’s start with the review summaries.

Attack of the Fanboy | 8 out of 10

• All in all, Call of Duty: Vanguard is a solid yet unremarkable entry into the long-running franchise. On a technical level, it’s one of the most impressive games out there right now. On a gameplay level, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.

Eurogamer | No Recommendation

• Vanguard won’t join the pantheon of Call of Duty games, but it’s a decent stop-gap for those waiting for Modern Warfare’s return.

Game Informer | 8 out of 10

• Vanguard is an overall solid pick with a lackluster campaign, a nascent but incredibly promising zombies experience, and multiplayer with a few critical new aspects.

GamesBeat | Unscored

• Call of Duty: Vanguard is a balanced game across the vectors of historical interest, good gameplay, variety, and a strong narrative. It ties everything together in a competent way that makes sense. That doesn’t mean it’s a spectacular game on the order of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which was a breakthrough game for the franchise because of its thoughtfulness and disturbing material. This is a good installment, but the stutter in combat makes me wonder if it’s as polished as it should be.

GameSpot | 7 out of 10

• Tweaks in multiplayer and Zombies advance the Call of Duty franchise overall, and an emphasis on distinct characters makes Vanguard’s story fun, but it doesn’t always mix well with the series’ gameplay.

IGN | 7 out of 10

• Call of Duty Vanguard’s highly polished campaign provides a healthy amount of fun, even if its brief length and lack of variety lead it to fall short of the classic pieces of war cinema it’s trying to emulate. [IGN is reviewing campaign, multiplayer, and zombies separately. This is just the score for the campaign.]

If you’re looking for an overall rating, Vanguard is landing in the predictable but safe 7 to 8 out of 10 range. Over the last few years, Call of Duty has gotten comfortable with its multiplayer, playing it safe with only minor changes to the formula. This means that the thing that really sets each Call of Duty apart is the campaign. And, according to the reviews, Call of Duty: Vanguard‘s campaign, which takes players across various battlefields in World War II with the unsurprisingly incredible production value that players have come to expect, holds the game back from being a truly memorable title in the long-running first-person shooter franchise. However, solid-as-ever multiplayer and a zombie mode from Treyarch that promises to take the undead storyline in a new direction make Vanguard still worth a play for fans.

Call of Duty: Vanguard is out today on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. If you plan on picking up the game, remember that you have to choose between three different editions: Standard, Cross-Gen, and Ultimate. We are in no shortage of games to play and review, so it’s uncertain when we will get around to reviewing Vanguard ourselves, but we still have a lot of other content on the way. That’s all for our first review round-up though. What do you think about Call of Duty: Vanguard and do you plan on getting the game? Let us know down in the comments.