Multiplayer succeeds, but not due to the addition of any gun, super-slide, or jetpack mechanic. I will marvel at how this campaign made a revenge-fueled badass sniper scenario feel like being stuck in traffic for years to come. Call of Duty campaigns tend to run from strange to spectacular to emotionally resonant – this one is none of those and easy to skip. This dissonance is pronounced, bizarre, and runs through the lifeblood of the entire experience. The narrative never decides if it wants to stay grounded in the harsh realities of World War II or go hard on the ham, with absurd caricatures of sniveling villains who would be more at home in a bad comic book.

The multitude of scenarios and segments look gorgeous, but the good looks can’t save this journey.

I found it puzzling that one of the characters in the game basically has superhero powers, allowing them to see enemies through sight obstructing scenery and auto-aim on-demand with a combination of god-sight and bullet-time. Unbelievably annoying trial-and-error stealth segments are shockingly juxtaposed against bombastic action sequences. You must run under desks, fighting a never-ending slog of light flashes, as you climb up rocks and walls. Unfortunately, it drops the ball and delivers one arena after the next full of trash to kill without ever realizing that sniper fantasy. Vanguard has all the trappings of a ready-made Enemy At The Gates sniper vs. It’s a shame, because some of these scenarios and characters feel like they should have been slam dunks. There's no cool subterfuge mission to break up the humdrum, only tasks that will leave you begging to just clean out another kill room. While big arenas full of opponents to fight are nothing new for Call of Duty, it's even more tiresome engaging in the non-arena segments. These characters are placed into boring segments that are as dull as possible and formulaic, without real opportunity to shine. They are chunks of lifeless cardboard that fail to reach even the one-note action movie tier. Since the narrative jumps around from scene to scene, none of the characters carry any weight. While this showcases some excellent environmental diversity and its throbbing soundtrack begs to get the blood pumping, everything around these elements remains in the doldrums. We’ll get the rough bit out of the way first The campaign is ambitious and beautiful in scope, taking players to multiple key locations, including Stalingrad, the Pacific, and even North Africa.

Skyrim more carry weight