Call of Duty: Vanguard Multiplayer Review
Last week, the latest installation of the Call of Duty series was released. Unfortunately, this year’s version of the game is called Vanguard, and it already had an issue that they had to release an apology for. Muslim players have noticed pages of the Quran lying on the ground during a gameplay scene.
The pages of Islam’s holy book were seen scattered on the floor. The Quran is considered holy in Islam and cannot be placed on the ground or a dirty surface. So, of course, the players took to Twitter and voiced their frustration, wanting the Call of Duty creators to “remove the pages immediately.”
“Call of Duty is made for everyone. There was insensitive content to the Muslim community mistakenly included last week, and has since been removed from the game,” an Activision spokesperson said in a statement to CNN on Friday.
“It should never have appeared as it did in the game. We deeply apologize. We are taking immediate steps internally to address the situation to prevent such occurrences in the future.”
According to the website, Vanguard is based in World War II, players “experience influential battles” of the war as they fight in Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa.”
The only thing I’ve played thus far is the multiplayer mode online this weekend, and I have enjoyed all of the maps offered. Vanguard’s multiplayer is better, although Vanguard’s attempts to focus on character also wrestle with the Call of Duty frame on this side of the experience.
You may choose from several different “operator” characters to play in multiplayer, including campaign characters, but the nature of the Player-vs.-Player Call of Duty experience requires that they all have equal abilities.
So the emphasis on the operators–they even get their own special cinematic when you choose them–is not much more than opportunities to win new characters.
However, the additions to multiplayer are positive, even though they are mainly iterative changes to the familiar. The maps are strewn with destructible walls to accompany the destructible gates, allowing you to exit new sightings or shoot people through a fragile blanket.
Destruction adds tactical pathways and options while increasing the global chaos that bullets can fly from more locations, forcing you to notice how things develop. This gives the impression that multiplayer games change with time, which brings a fun dynamism to battles that requires you to think fast and adjust your approach.
Vanguard also offers new modes and settings to improve the regular multiplayer rate.
The competitive menu features a new option that allows you to adjust the type of matches you want to play, leaning into larger team battles on larger or smaller maps, more intense firefights that put you in action faster.
Patrol mode is a highlight, adding mobility to the checkpoints typically seen in Hardpoint games, forcing you to hunt them constantly around the map, which adds to the dynamic sensation of battles and entices out-of-box thinking to catch unconscious opponents.
There is also Champion Hill, which combines the intensity of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s Gun Game and the elements of Call of Duty: Warzone. Champion Hill pits single players or teams of either two or three against each other in a round-robin competition, where each crew has a determined number of lives and earns money from murders edge, but the speed of battle means that winning a fight.
Often boils down to a smart move around the board and a good team game. This is a fun iteration of the Call of Duty ideas that are already working, which has led to a lot of exciting competitive moments in our multiplayer sessions.
Landon Buford is an accomplished sports and entertainment journalist based in Richardson, Texas, with over a decade of experience covering the NBA, WNBA, NFL, WWE, MLB, and the entertainment industry. Known for delivering high-impact stories and headline-making interviews, Buford has earned a global audience through content that blends insider access with compelling storytelling.
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