The story of Call of Duty: Vanguard impresses with graphics, staging, and sound. It is quite good, and fans will even call it great, but let us discuss it in comparison with other cool shooters. All of them capture attention with ideas and genre shifts.
Last year's Call of Duty had a cool storyline. The classic shootouts and chases in it were interspersed with completely unusual episodes and mechanics, such as the need to make decisions and explore the enemy base undercover, like in Hitman. It can be seen that the Raven studio got confused and tried to surpass the super-successful Modern Warfare (2019).
And then Vanguard came out. The idea and concept are very interesting: several unusual characters of different nationalities unite into one squad and go on a super-important mission right at the end of the war. But what is there inside except the intriguing concept? You can buy mp 40 gold and discover more benefits, but let us first explore the game.
The general impression
In Vanguard the single-player game is very successful. Everything is done expensively, richly. The staging is gorgeous in places, even though everything is scripted, as is customary in the games of the series. No screenshots can convey all the visual splendor of this game. Gorgeous play of light and shadow, voluminous smoke, partial destructibility, and fantastic beauty of particles – a windmill burning in the night in one of the first missions is something incredible.
Visually, the new Call of Duty is really impressive! Yes, on rare occasions the game looks dull, but most of the time the graphics deserve all the praise. At the same time, the picture is quite diverse and does not have time to become boring: the game has both night and day attacks, as well as the desert, lush jungle, gray France, and such a different Stalingrad with its colorful architecture and interior decoration of apartments.
The cinematic effect of the new Call of Duty is also given by the chic orchestral music, which perfectly complements what is happening on the screen, as well as the fact that the story in the game is served through a lot of coolly staged videos, which are even too many and sometimes they are very long.
You catch yourself thinking that you are watching some beautifully staged and expensive movie about the war, instead of poking buttons and, in fact, playing. A large number of videos and cut scenes with the new shooter really play a cruel joke – the developers would better give the player the opportunity to personally experience the most spectacular moments of the game, such as the landing of one of the heroes. Instead, we watch videos.
Summing up, the Vanguard is one of the most beautiful games in recent times, which at the same time works on PS5 and Xbox Series X without problems at all and without any brakes.
The heroes and their story
At the center of local history is an international detachment, consisting of several colorful guys. The game begins in the spring of 1945: the end of the war, the Nazis are almost defeated, but they continue to flounder, trying to create the Fourth Reich. Our group of brave warriors, being behind enemy lines, is trying to quietly find out more information about the secret Phoenix Project.
Everything does not go according to plan, and the detachment falls into the clutches of the Nazis. As the game progresses, we learn how the team members got to know each other and ended up where they ended up.
Sometimes the game does not stand on ceremony and shows all the horrors of war. The player will take part in four theaters of war: the Western Front in France, the Eastern Front in Stalingrad, the Pacific Theater, and the military campaign in North Africa.
The narration comes from the perspective of the main characters – we are told in several separate sketches about their adventures on the battlefield. Missions for each character differ not only in the place of action but also in the pace and atmosphere:
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The charming pilot Wade Jackson will have time to make war on his plane with the Japanese in the Battle of Midway and crawl through the jungle after his plane crashes.
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Briton Arthur Kingsley will land at night with the allies in Normandy – and this is the best part of the game.
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Australian sapper Lucas Riggs and his partners blow up tanks and bunkers from the heart.
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The brave Soviet girl-sniper Polina (the Germans call her ‘Lady Nightingale’) will first miraculously survive during an air raid on Stalingrad and lose a loved one, and a little later she will set the heat on the invaders and have a duel with one of the high-ranking fascists already in snowy Stalingrad.
An interesting fact: the events and characters of Vanguard are fictional, but the authors of the game were inspired by real people and the battles in which they participated. So, the image of Polina was created on the basis of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Soviet sniper who managed to kill 309 German soldiers and officers.
The basis for the image of Wade Jackson was the pilot Vernon Mackill, and Lucas Riggs was the New Zealander Charles Upham, who was twice awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery.
As for Captain Arthur, he was based on Briton Sidney Cornell, the first black paratrooper to land in Normandy on D-Day. An incredibly atmospheric mission called ‘Tonga’ is dedicated to this event in the game, the first half of which the player will hide from the Germans in the bushes and cellars at night.
Most of the maps in Vanguard are medium to small in size, with lots of buildings, and designed for aggressive play. By the way, now in CoD you can adjust the pace of the battle, the number of participants in the match, and the respawn distance, hence the style of the game will change. For example, if you set the tactical pace, then the matches should become more measured, as the enemies come across less often.
Altogether, the Call of Duty: Vanguard turned out to be interesting to play, and worth the attention.