This is a game as much about being able to think clearly under pressure as anything else, but it’s also about knowing where to lay down a thermite or gas grenade, whether or not to equip a Stim, and when to slide in fast or take a corner slow. Knowing the maps, understanding the strategies involved, good communication, quick reflexes, mini-map awareness and being faster and more accurate on the draw. Learning to make use of Gunsmith and the myriad combinations of attachments, perks, ammunition and so forth will also help, as will a varied selection of loadouts suitable for different-sized maps and mode strategies.Ĭall Of Duty skill is about all these things. Map awareness, quick reflexes and better accuracy will all help you stay alive. I’ve heard people say it’s faster than Cold War but it feels close enough not to matter. Either that or with practice comes skill and I just keep getting better (even as my eyes get worse and my body ages). Placing at the top multiple times in a row hasn’t resulted in being placed against shockingly more difficult players. I’m generally at the upper end of the leaderboards these days regardless of mode or map and Vanguard is no different.
A lot of times the playerbase gets obsessed over things like Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) or Time-To-Kill (TTK) but I guess I just don’t mind how these are typically implemented in Call Of Duty. Whatever the case, the multiplayer feels smooth as butter. It makes me wonder if Sledgehammer and Treyarch (the latter of which developed the Zombies mode for this game) worked more closely on this title than we realize, and have come to share some of the same multiplayer DNA. This is interesting since Vanguard was built on the Modern Warfare engine. You have the double-sprint, door and mount mechanics in place from Modern Warfare, but the game’s speed and shooting feels a lot more like Cold War. The gameplay is fast and arcadey, with quick movement and low-recoil gunplay, though it feels as good as ever. It’s basically Hardpoint if the point moved continuously around the map. There aren’t a ton of modes at this point-no doubt many have been withheld for seasonal releases-but alongside TDM, Domination, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed and Search and Destroy there’s the fun new Patrol mode. I won’t list all the ways these maps differ suffice to say, there is a great deal of variety. Sub Pens takes place in a U-boat base with a grounded submarine at its center and lots of long, open lanes. Tuscan is an Italian city with winding, narrow cobblestone streets and lots of interior areas for close quarters combat. Another WaW map that’s made its way here is Dome-one of the most frenetic, chaotic maps in the game, with lots of open spaces and sniper lanes despite its small size. Castle (a remake of the World at War map) is a mid-to-large sized map set in a beautiful Japanese castle with lovely fall foliage and rice-paper walls. These are all wildly different from one another, with settings taken from every theater of war. Sometimes you’ll play on a huge map like Red Star (though it doesn’t pop up all that often these days) and sometimes you’ll battle your way through the claustrophobic interior of Das Haus or Eagle’s Nest (which is slightly larger).īeyond size, Vanguard’s maps are incredibly varied, with only a handful sticking to the beloved, but kind of repetitive, three-lane structure so many Call Of Duty fans seem obsessed over. Vanguard’s plethora of launch maps means that there is constant variety.
But the Ground War and Combined Arms and Fireteam modes and maps all felt too big for Call Of Duty-half-baked attempts at capturing some of that Battlefield magic, with vehicles and sprawling spaces to fight across. War Mode and Gunfight are two of my favorite modes of all time, and I’ve argued over and over again that they should be included in every Call Of Duty release. Both Modern Warfare and Black Ops Cold War also had Gunfight maps. And in Black Ops Cold War there was Fireteam and the extra-large Combined Arms maps (which were turned into smaller Strike maps, thankfully). So in WWII we had a handful of War Mode maps in Modern Warfare there was the big team Ground War maps. Over the past three games prior to this, there have always been some other secondary MP mode that’s taken up some of the resources and space that might normally be devoted to traditional MP.