Discussion
First COD I’ve played since WW2. Played a few games of TDM last night and had a hell of a lot of fun. I haven’t a clue how much of it is “new” since the last few games though.
Playing on a remastered Sub Pens was very nostalgic, WaW was the first COD I ever played on console. Looking forward to playing the other remastered maps!
Playing on a remastered Sub Pens was very nostalgic, WaW was the first COD I ever played on console. Looking forward to playing the other remastered maps!
The first thing i'd say is that it's another boots on the ground Call of Duty game and as such feels instantly familiar, particularly to Modern Warfare as it uses the same engine. There's nothing revolutionary about it, it's more of the same. To pick up on some of the specifics:
- The graphics seem very system dependant. I played Cold War on the PS4 and am playing Vanguard on a reasonably high-spec PC and it looks much, much better. I think it'll look great on current gen consoles too but, unfortunately, not on the PS4-gen consoles as Jay posted above.
- Kill streaks are back following the hybrid system used in Cold War
- Recoil is back too. Some guns kick quite a lot!
- You get to 'choose your ninja' (i.e. silent footsteps) either by equipping it as a perk so you're always silent, or by having dead silence as a triggerable bit of equipment that only lasts for a short period of time as per Modern Warfare. I think having the choice is a good shout.
- Mounting and doors are both back, again as per Modern Warfare. The destructible environment, which is little more than destructible doors, feels more like a gimmick than something that really changes the gameplay.
- The death machine killstreak doesn't reset on death, so you can use the remaining bullets in your next life, which i find very handy.
- At the end of each match you still get play of the game, which seems to be getting worse and worse at working out what a good play actually looks like! They've also added in a voting system where the game picks three players from your team as nominees for MVP based on stats like most multikills, most headshots, best KDR etc and you can vote on who wins MVP. Not really sure of the point if I'm honest.
Finishing with the biggest two changes for me:
1. Time to kill. It's quick. My aim with a keyboard and mouse is nothing like as good as it used to be with a controller, so in Cold War I basically had to play hardcore to have a hope in hell. In Vanguard, the faster TTK means i can play Core modes much more easily. So I'm a fan of it, but others might not be as a longer TTK requires more gun skill.
2. Pacing. Pacing is the number of people on the map and goes, Tactical (least), Assault, Blitz (most). Exactly how many players there are on each team in each mode depends on the map. So a tiny map might be 8v8 in Blitz, whereas on a large map I think I've seen 16v16. Normally in CoD you have one map like Shipment where the pace is very high. Blitz is getting towards Shipment levels of insanity on any map. You can choose to be in a lobby where all 3 speeds are available to be played, or you can pick one speed of the three and all your lobbies will be at that speed. To the best of my knowledge you can't pick two of the three, which is a shame as if I could I'd pick Tactical and Assault and leave out Blitz. Blitz seems to encourage a lot of camping, probably because if you're moving you're vulnerable from multiple angles and lots of people, whereas when you're camping because there're so many people on the map you don't have to wait long for someone to walk into your gun sights. So expect to see people mounted on a head glitch watching the busy lanes...
Overall, despite those changes above for me it's more of the same. The general feedback I've seen around the game from professional players to YouTubers seems largely positive following the improvements since the Beta and better received than Cold War was. I think the lack of hype around the game is partly because it's nothing revolutionary, partly because it's difficult to generate hype for a franchise that releases a new game every year and partly because Battlefield and Halo are coming out in the near future and are bound to hog the limelight as they both the first release from each franchise in a while.
- The graphics seem very system dependant. I played Cold War on the PS4 and am playing Vanguard on a reasonably high-spec PC and it looks much, much better. I think it'll look great on current gen consoles too but, unfortunately, not on the PS4-gen consoles as Jay posted above.
- Kill streaks are back following the hybrid system used in Cold War
- Recoil is back too. Some guns kick quite a lot!
- You get to 'choose your ninja' (i.e. silent footsteps) either by equipping it as a perk so you're always silent, or by having dead silence as a triggerable bit of equipment that only lasts for a short period of time as per Modern Warfare. I think having the choice is a good shout.
- Mounting and doors are both back, again as per Modern Warfare. The destructible environment, which is little more than destructible doors, feels more like a gimmick than something that really changes the gameplay.
- The death machine killstreak doesn't reset on death, so you can use the remaining bullets in your next life, which i find very handy.
- At the end of each match you still get play of the game, which seems to be getting worse and worse at working out what a good play actually looks like! They've also added in a voting system where the game picks three players from your team as nominees for MVP based on stats like most multikills, most headshots, best KDR etc and you can vote on who wins MVP. Not really sure of the point if I'm honest.
Finishing with the biggest two changes for me:
1. Time to kill. It's quick. My aim with a keyboard and mouse is nothing like as good as it used to be with a controller, so in Cold War I basically had to play hardcore to have a hope in hell. In Vanguard, the faster TTK means i can play Core modes much more easily. So I'm a fan of it, but others might not be as a longer TTK requires more gun skill.
2. Pacing. Pacing is the number of people on the map and goes, Tactical (least), Assault, Blitz (most). Exactly how many players there are on each team in each mode depends on the map. So a tiny map might be 8v8 in Blitz, whereas on a large map I think I've seen 16v16. Normally in CoD you have one map like Shipment where the pace is very high. Blitz is getting towards Shipment levels of insanity on any map. You can choose to be in a lobby where all 3 speeds are available to be played, or you can pick one speed of the three and all your lobbies will be at that speed. To the best of my knowledge you can't pick two of the three, which is a shame as if I could I'd pick Tactical and Assault and leave out Blitz. Blitz seems to encourage a lot of camping, probably because if you're moving you're vulnerable from multiple angles and lots of people, whereas when you're camping because there're so many people on the map you don't have to wait long for someone to walk into your gun sights. So expect to see people mounted on a head glitch watching the busy lanes...
Overall, despite those changes above for me it's more of the same. The general feedback I've seen around the game from professional players to YouTubers seems largely positive following the improvements since the Beta and better received than Cold War was. I think the lack of hype around the game is partly because it's nothing revolutionary, partly because it's difficult to generate hype for a franchise that releases a new game every year and partly because Battlefield and Halo are coming out in the near future and are bound to hog the limelight as they both the first release from each franchise in a while.
Edited by Snubs on Sunday 7th November 12:48
Edited by Snubs on Sunday 7th November 20:01
Snubs said:
1. Time to kill. It's quick. My aim with a keyboard and mouse is nothing like as good as it used to be with a controller, so in Cold War I basically had to play hardcore to have a hope in hell. In Vanguard, the faster TTK means i can play Core modes much more easily. So I'm a fan of it, but others might not be as a longer TTK requires more gun skill.
This surprises me, I was under the illusion that key board and mouse where far more accurate than a controller. On normal MP I play against all platforms but on Warzone I turn cross play off and play with Playstation players only due to the slower pace of the game making the Mouse far more accurate. Edited by Snubs on Sunday 7th November 12:48
Chuffedmonkey said:
This surprises me, I was under the illusion that key board and mouse where far more accurate than a controller. On normal MP I play against all platforms but on Warzone I turn cross play off and play with Playstation players only due to the slower pace of the game making the Mouse far more accurate.
It's just my incompetence, rather than a true reflection of which is best. I'd used a controller for the best past of 30 years, but my thumb joints were getting really painful so switched to a mouse. I've been using one for a year now and I'm still not as a good as I was and I doubt I ever will be, but for sure the best K&M players are apparently better than the best controller players. If you've never tried online PvP with a mouse give it a go, it's not that easy IMO. I play Destiny 2 these days and my aim in PvE with a mouse is fine, but PvP is much harder.I've got say to say when it comes to cross play, I've played cross-platform CoD with a controller on the PS4 against PC players, with K&M on PS4 and now with a K&M through the PC and have never really noticed the difference in terms of the still level of those I'm playing against. There are god-tier players using every input method!
I have to say, even though I normally turn cross play off, and even with the 'normalisation' work (is that what it's called?) to even out playing using input types, I'm doing better on this than Cold War so far. Now this is normally down to everyone being on an even keel with everything being new to everyone but I do seem to be much more competitive on controller. The MVP bit needs to go in the bin.
It almost feels to me a bit like COD3 but new.
The loadouts seem interesting, specially with the ammo types.
Zombies is not the complete make over I was hoping for (I didnt watch anything on the run up). I'm still hoping for a Wunderwaffle
It's a bit pants. The default assault rifle is absolutely awful......
I did get a nightmare installing though. Initially it ripped the disc, installed the patch and the 5 content packs and then wouldnt play. You could get into a lobby but would time out, and it seemed the xbox was constantly trying to install the update file so wouldnt play a single game. I deleted everything and cleared the cache and reinstalled and it seemed to work. It's crap like this that makes me think about getting a PS5.
It almost feels to me a bit like COD3 but new.
The loadouts seem interesting, specially with the ammo types.
Zombies is not the complete make over I was hoping for (I didnt watch anything on the run up). I'm still hoping for a Wunderwaffle
It's a bit pants. The default assault rifle is absolutely awful......I did get a nightmare installing though. Initially it ripped the disc, installed the patch and the 5 content packs and then wouldnt play. You could get into a lobby but would time out, and it seemed the xbox was constantly trying to install the update file so wouldnt play a single game. I deleted everything and cleared the cache and reinstalled and it seemed to work. It's crap like this that makes me think about getting a PS5.
Edited by TimmyMallett on Monday 8th November 13:00
It sounds like the big shooter developers haven't really tried this year. Vanguard seems to have gone for the BF 'war stories' campaign approach with fairly lukewarm results and the MP side of things seems to be getting 'alright but not exceptional'. In a couple of months, once it has a bit more content, it might be worthy of a discount buy.
BF 2042 seems to have even less effort put into it. It looks like utter crap. BF has really fallen badly over their last two releases. The Skill Up BF 2042 video on YouTube just shows what a dreadful state it's in.
BF 2042 seems to have even less effort put into it. It looks like utter crap. BF has really fallen badly over their last two releases. The Skill Up BF 2042 video on YouTube just shows what a dreadful state it's in.
Don Roque said:
It sounds like the big shooter developers haven't really tried this year. Vanguard seems to have gone for the BF 'war stories' campaign approach with fairly lukewarm results and the MP side of things seems to be getting 'alright but not exceptional'. In a couple of months, once it has a bit more content, it might be worthy of a discount buy.
BF 2042 seems to have even less effort put into it. It looks like utter crap. BF has really fallen badly over their last two releases. The Skill Up BF 2042 video on YouTube just shows what a dreadful state it's in.
I only really got back into PC games over the last year and was always a massive Call of Duty fan. I played all the early ones to death, got as far as Ghosts but that one didn't really grip me.BF 2042 seems to have even less effort put into it. It looks like utter crap. BF has really fallen badly over their last two releases. The Skill Up BF 2042 video on YouTube just shows what a dreadful state it's in.
I then started playing the Battle Field games a few months ago and as soon as I played Battlefield 3 I realised I didn't like Call of Duty anymore. 4 was OK, not as good as 3 and I have just recently started playing 1. I don't know what it is but I just don't like it as much as 3, despite it looking much nicer. I thought it was because of the weedy weapons, but having read your post I realise I also hate the 'war stories'.
If Vanguard is similar then I don't think I will be buying it. Annoyingly whilst you can get the Battlefield games for £4 each, the Call of Duty games seem to always be £20 to £30 no matter how old they are.
I still have BF V to play, but I have a sneaky feeling I won't like that either.
jay-kay-em said:
Avoid the PS4 version unless you want some visual features that remind you of Sonic on the Mega Drive.
I know it’s a downward port from PS5 but there’s no excuse for that river.
I’m still blown away now and again with water effects on GTA so I know a PS4 can do better.
That is crap isn't it. It looked crap in the beta but I was hoping that was just the beta.I know it’s a downward port from PS5 but there’s no excuse for that river.
I’m still blown away now and again with water effects on GTA so I know a PS4 can do better.
Weird as MW looked great. CW was a noticeable step back.
opted for Vanguard over 2042 despite me being annoyed at COD always taking the piss out of the community. Christ, i wonder if i should have waited?
PS4 has this insane bug where post game, it crashes. Not just needs to be a 'close application' - oh no. It crashes the PS4 entirely - only solution is mains switch off. Restart. Play several games, happens again.
How f
king annoying? Like, i can understand corrections needed post launch, weapon balancing etc. But this is the fkin bare basics. A game that crashes your PS4 daily? How do you get through testing ffs? Searched on twitter, seems to be a common issue post matchup, affecting lots of people. Activision said delete and reinstall, guess what, it doesn't solve it. Imagine being the dhead who found that out.
Also, start up the game, my Loadouts are locked despite me being level 10 or something (and loadouts available i think LVL4). Just locked out. Happens daily. PLay a game, post match it's unlocked. But i can't go in and adjust my loadout when kicking off.
Just so fking buggy.
PS4 has this insane bug where post game, it crashes. Not just needs to be a 'close application' - oh no. It crashes the PS4 entirely - only solution is mains switch off. Restart. Play several games, happens again.
How f
king annoying? Like, i can understand corrections needed post launch, weapon balancing etc. But this is the fkin bare basics. A game that crashes your PS4 daily? How do you get through testing ffs? Searched on twitter, seems to be a common issue post matchup, affecting lots of people. Activision said delete and reinstall, guess what, it doesn't solve it. Imagine being the dhead who found that out.Also, start up the game, my Loadouts are locked despite me being level 10 or something (and loadouts available i think LVL4). Just locked out. Happens daily. PLay a game, post match it's unlocked. But i can't go in and adjust my loadout when kicking off.
Just so f
king buggy. 
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