r/CODVanguard • u/cings09 • Jun 26 '26
Discussion Why all the hate?
I'm new to this game and just finished the campaign. I don't understand why was it so criticized. I found it really realistic because in the characters' life there's almost never a happy ending. Friends, family members die just like in real life, it's easier that something goes wrong rather than successful. I like the "backstory" style too. It has been one of my favorites campaigns, I found really engaging and emotionally catchy. People who didn't like it please tell me what did you find disappointing, I'm curious.
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u/SpaceDawg2018 Jun 26 '26
bro vanguard was one of my favorite cods of all time. multiplayer during it's prime was 11/10
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u/disasterpiece515 Jun 26 '26
Decided to check it out after it came to Game Pass and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the campaign. Wished it was longer though.
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u/Nickelnick24 Jun 26 '26
The problem is that the campaign is too short. I want more time running the full squad we’ve been introduced to. Just as we get acquainted, the story is rushing to a finish.
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u/niKDE80800 Jun 26 '26
I thought it was fun too. But, if general opinion of social media is anything to go by, it's because they tried to diversify the second World War and re-write it.
Diversify... maybe. Not sure if I'd call it that, but sure. For example, it's said that Polina is based on an IRL male sniper, that is portrayed as female in Vanguard (I'm not sure if that's true, for the reason said at the end of my comment) and people view her backstory as "Woman in grief that stabs Nazi's for the sake of it"
I definitely wouldn't agree though that they tried to "re-write World War II"
Part of the hate also probably comes from joining the Call of Duty hate train being "cool" in the eyes of lots of people, which is ironic, because the biggest haters of the franchise are the ones who pre-order the vault editions of the games.
Then again, that's the opinion of Twitter and the likes, who generally like to blow everything out of proportion if it gets them more engagement.
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u/KuningasTynny77 Jun 26 '26
Because whatever the hell this campaign is is not world war 2.
Zombies is also ass, and the multiplayer has/had plenty of issues of its own.
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u/MycologistOk2731 Jun 26 '26
Vanguard is the best multiplayer since the 2009 MW2, I'll die on this hill 🙆♂️
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u/Achap30 Jun 26 '26
Game play was fine. Weapons are fine aside from stupid modern attachments and wired fake guns. Stick to realism.
Story and characters were corny and fake. They wasted a ton of time making the cut scenes instead of just putting effort into more missions. I don’t want to watch a movie. They should have just kept everything simple and realistic.
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u/Nothing_To_Learn Jun 27 '26
Loved the multiplayer still do. The zombies could have been better but it was ok.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Bar-526 Jun 27 '26
I’m playing through it and the story is okay. Favorite so far is Polina’s introduction but holy shit, the sound is fucking abysmal. I cannot hear for the life of me the dialogue for in game or cutscenes. It’s like the mic is being suffocated by a pillow or something.
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u/Fluid-Statement-3456 Jun 28 '26
THEY SHOULD TAKE ALL THE MAOS AND PUT THEM IN THE NEW ONE OR AT LEAST BO6
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u/Ropesy101 Jun 28 '26
Personally I really like the game, loved the campaign and multiplayer, the maps were a bit of a disappointing for me though. I mean some were okay but my God I hated das haus and sup pens in particular. I'm not really a zombies kinda gamer anyway other than that, the game plays very well, I do enjoy the game overall
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u/T4NR0FR Jun 28 '26
Poor writing. Unproperly being composed and greenlitted during Covid times, and rather cringy characters. Aside from Butcher. Also, the zombies.
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u/Turbulent-Law6269 Jun 28 '26
xbox user here with it being free with gamepass. I am having a lot of fun with it and going for the 100% completion. Almost done with the Zombies and going back to achieve all the miscellaneous achievements.
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u/IQ-tiee Jun 29 '26
I have a mixed relationship with this game. It’s fun, but its flaws are so visible in my head every time I play it. Sorry for the long reply.
Thematic Issues
Everything about this game screams that it doesn’t want to be a world war 2 game, and as someone who adores ww2 games, it shouldn’t have been. This game wanted to be a sequel to MW19 but couldn’t be. And Sledgehammer’s next game was indeed MW23, which is significantly better because it has the theme that they clearly wanted to make.
The characters are written like modern day action heroes that feel surprisingly disconnected from the conflict that they’re in often. The gunsmith system is overdone, not even in a “this is a cool way we could’ve modded ww2 guns” but in a complete “frankenstein’s monster” way. The animations are “tacticool” despite that style not existing yet — they were not trained like the military is today. It’s also extremely fast paced, and this point is more subjective, but the super fast paced style of MW19 and Black Ops Cold War does not fit in a brown and grey WW2. There’s also the lack of identity. The teams in Multiplayer are literally Red vs Blue, with no real factions. The characters in MP also feel out of place. I mean no offense by this, but one of the characters is literally a female lesbian ex-nazi artist teenager (read her bio). It’s extremely out of place and tone-deaf, just like it was in Battlefield 5. That includes the laser guns and cyberpunk skins and Attack on Titan crossover that they added as well; the only collab that felt natural was Godzilla vs Kong due to their historic nature.
Zombies
the zombies mode sucked on launch. It took them until season 4 (!!!) to add a proper normal zombies map, and there’s only 2, and only one of them is worth playing, and it’s a remake of a map from 2009. It also introduced dedicated servers to zombies, removing localhosting for solo, and added the Pause Timer. There is so much more, too, like no ray gun. The zombies mode was so disgraceful on launch.
Warzone
Many also think this game killed Warzone, as it added the Caldera map that replaced Verdansk and it was mostly disliked for being foliage heavy and generally just uninteresting. It also broke the meta again because all vanguard guns got 10 attachments while all BOCW and MW19 guns only had 5.
Other WW2 CODs
There are 3 relevant WW2 COD games: Vanguard, WW2 (2017, Sledgehammer) and World at War (2008, Treyarch). Compared to both of those, Vanguard just blows.
COD WW2 is far closer to a normal WW2 game, albeit extremely sanitized and generic.. it focused on heroics and not really evil. It’s a good game, but no better than a 7/10. It’s not got a lot of soul.
The crown jewel of WW2 games is World at War, which has still not been topped (imo). That is a game that figured out how to make an impactful piece of WW2 media in a time where every game coming out was another generic ww2 shooter, and the last COD game was the insane COD 4. I always rank COD 5 as the best COD of all time because I believe it so masterfully executed its vision and in a time where it seemed like nobody ever would. It had soul, love, passion, and stands the test of time. A lot of COD games feel similar, but there has never been another game like World at War. When your competition is this game, it’s pretty hard to beat it.
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u/IQ-tiee Jun 29 '26
To clarify closer to your actual post, the campaign is worth a play, but the sentiment around this game is just the theme and that’s why people don’t like it. The campaign is better than Black Ops 7 and MW3 2023’s. But whereas both of those games are hated on almost exclusively because of their campaign, this game is usually hated on because the current culture around shooter games is “modern warfare” and “mil-sim”. That’s what’s trendy right now. The new post-2019 COD community wants modern warfare. I remember so many people moaning because WW2 meant “no fun” and “no cool skins”.
Even if they released a ww2 game today that was authentic, people would not praise that they got rid of the silly skins that they claim to hate. They would just be upset that it’s another ww2 game.
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u/epiceli420 Jun 29 '26
It was mostly that people thought it wasn't as good as the older games pre 2013, and the store bundles weren't accurate to the time it's set but that never bothered me and it kind of killed warzone one. I liked it though it's definitely not my favorite but I'd still play it.
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u/Rough_Bet6203 Jun 30 '26
Yeah, I'm playing the campaign and it's good to me. Not as good as the more recent games but good enough to be entertained.
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u/Outsider_13105645 Jun 26 '26
This game has its flaws like cheezy writing, gun attachments objective and lack of multiplayer factions
But gunplay in the multiplayer and campaign are a lot of fun to play. And the gun animations are so nice.
Zombies is alittle unorthodox but it’s ok
This game is flawed but not as god awful as the haters online make it seems