There is no hiding from the obvious this time. Also, many of the campaign missions feature minimal lighting, such as the intro train level-set at night-which made it hard to distinguish friend from foe and foe from cargo.Ĭall of Duty has never had smart AI, but careful scripting tricks were usually enough to hide their failings. Muzzle flash effects (like smoke) and bouncing weapons (via recoil) tend to obscure whatever you are firing at. The game is a bit blurry, no matter what settings are used, and the levels sometimes abuse film grain which cannot be switched off. These feel good to shoot and there are plenty of bullets to unleash, thanks to a huge icon on the HUD that points out ammo caches. There is a good selection of reliable and familiar historic weapons, like the classic MP-40, Type 100 SMG, and M1 Garand. The moment-to-moment shooting is decent but not without some issues. Even during a better mission, you must take down a circling aircraft with small-arms fire while a truckload of Nazi soldiers unloads its occupants nearby like it’s the last stop on a bus route. But this, the game’s only vehicle sequence, is horrendous due to aiming that auto-centers and incoherent action. When you play as the cocky American, you will pilot a fighter plane and battle Japanese aircraft over the Pacific Ocean.
As the Russian sniper, you will climb up walls that have conspicuous bits of yellow canvas on them, before crouch-running under desks like a limbo world champion. You will have to kill groups of soldiers on mortars, destroy artillery guns on a coastline, and clear bunkers in the pacific with a flamethrower. There is not much that is new or done well, and most of the objectives are formulaic. The missions in Vanguard are an unfunny parody of previous Call of Duty games. As the group lingers in prison, the game consists nearly entirely of unrelated flashbacks players assume control of each squad member in various battle scenarios across the globe. Even the humor must have fallen off the train during the introduction. Emotional attempts regularly fail because of inadequate setup or predictability. The real-world actors make the best of some trite dialogue, but none of the characters are likable due to excess hubris. Almost the entire game takes place while the team languishes in prison, being tortured in succession, with long and dull pre-rendered cutscenes doing most of the narrative work. You don’t find out what it is until the end, and the reveal is poorly done and clichéd.
Then the brutal actions of one Nazi officer are designed to both shock players and make said Nazi officer the main antagonist, in a story that lasts 5-6 hours but takes forever to get anywhere.īecause the team gets captured, the hunt for Project Phoenix grinds to a complete halt. Unfortunately the group are captured, right as they’re about to find out what it is.
This unconventional squad seeks information about a mysterious Nazi operation called Project Phoenix. The hodgepodge group consists of members from various allied nations: an American, a few Brits, a Russian, and an Australian. Vanguard’s campaign begins in Hamburg, 1945, when a small team of allied soldiers infiltrate a train heading into enemy territory. The campaign quality takes a nose dive compared to last year