Call of Duty: Vanguard Review— The Underperformer That Changed the Franchise Anyway
Call of Duty: Vanguard arrived on 5 November 2021 carrying the strangest dual legacy in the series: it was the best-selling game of 2021 in the United States — and Activision looked investors in the eye six months later and admitted it had failed. Sledgehammer Games' WWII entry (Treyarch on zombies duty, built on Modern Warfare 2019's engine) got labeled "safe" and "half-done" at launch, its zombies mode got roasted alive, and the fallout quietly broke Call of Duty's sacred annual release cycle. Five years later, with the dust long settled, here's the honest state of the one CoD that history keeps singling out.
Table of Contents
- At-a-Glance
- Campaign: Four Soldiers, One Hour Each
- Multiplayer: The One Good Idea
- Zombies: From Der Anfang Disaster to Round-Based Redemption
- The Sales Postmortem (and the Cycle It Broke)
- What's Actually Playable in 2026
- Price and Availability
- Verdict
- FAQ
At-a-Glance
| Developer | Sledgehammer Games (Zombies by Treyarch) |
| Publisher / Engine | Activision · IW 8.0 engine (Modern Warfare 2019 tech) |
| Release | 5 Nov 2021 — PC (Battle.net/Steam), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S |
| Modes | Campaign (solo) · Multiplayer (online) · Zombies (co-op) |
| Scores | Metacritic 72–74 · user score 3.8 ("Generally Unfavorable") |
| Rating | ESRB M (Mature) |
| Legacy | #1 US best-seller of 2021; Activision admitted it missed sales targets (~30M lifetime per later reports) |
Campaign: Four Soldiers, One Hour Each
The pitch is irresistible on paper: Task Force One, the first multinational special-operations unit in history, races to stop "Project Phoenix" as the Third Reich collapses. Delivery is a ~5-hour campaign told almost entirely in flashback — the four operatives origin-tour their own theaters. Polina Petrova, the Soviet sniper hunting the Germans who slaughtered her city, is the sole exception to the ensemble's Expendables-flatness; her Stalingrad stealth missions are the campaign's peak. Arthur Kingsley, Lucas Riggs, and Wade Jackson each get serviceable set pieces — Operation Tonga's night drops, North Africa's El Alamein, and the Battle of Midway, the game's lone flight mission and its best visual showcase — but only Polina and the villain, Gestapo menace Jannick Richter, ever feel written. Per-character gimmicks (squad orders, Polina's agility and stealth routes, Wade's enemy-awareness vision, Riggs' extra explosives) appear mostly once each. By the credits, the campaign's real function is obvious: a costume fitting for the operators you'll meet in multiplayer.
Multiplayer: The One Good Idea
Tucked inside an otherwise conservative package sits a genuinely smart innovation that history hasn't given Sledgehammer enough credit for: the combat pacing selector. Instead of waiting for playlist rotations, you chose your chaos level up front — Tactical (classic 6v6), Assault (bigger lobbies and maps), or Blitz (kill-die-kill chaos). Weapon leveling, camo grinding, warm-up sessions — pick the pacing, any time. It launched with a healthy 16 core maps plus Champion Hill (an 8-team evolution of Gunfight), and the MW2019 gunplay foundation is still mechanically elite: punchy audio, readable recoil, generous attachment crafting that gets absurd only at the 10-slot extreme. If Vanguard had been judged on multiplayer systems alone, its reputation would be kinder.
Zombies: From Der Anfang Disaster to Round-Based Redemption
Launch zombies — Der Anfang, the Dark Aether prequel strand — was roasted for good reason: one hub area, three rotating portal objectives, no classic round-based survival. Within round ten, you'd seen the inventory. To Treyarch's credit, the redemption actually happened: the mode expanded through 2022 with Terra Maledicta, then the full-fat classic Shi No Numa remake and the Archon finale, restoring round-based play, main quests, and wonder weapons. In 2026 the zombies package is genuinely respectable — provided you judge it as it exists now, not as it shipped.
The Sales Postmortem (and the Cycle It Broke)
Vanguard's commercial story is the weird part: it was the best-selling title of 2021 in the United States, yet its sales ran roughly 36–40% below Black Ops Cold War's. In May 2022 Activision formally told investors it "didn't meet expectations," citing its WWII setting and insufficient innovation — and the industry quietly treated that as the moment the annual Call of Duty cycle died: the 2023 slot became a gap year (Treyarch's entry slipped to 2024's Black Ops 6). Whatever the consultant-cited ~30 million lifetime units eventually say, Vanguard remains the case study for franchise fatigue. In the Microsoft/Game Pass era the series now inhabits, that lesson stuck.
What's Actually Playable in 2026
Be blunt with yourself: Vanguard's multiplayer is a ghost town. Recent tracking puts average concurrent players in the low hundreds, peaking around 250 — matchmaking beyond prime hours in popular regions is a patience test, and niche modes are effectively extinct. Zombies co-op survives better since squads of friends need no matchmaking pool, and the campaign is entirely solo. Servers remain online and the game still surfaces in subscription rotations — but anyone buying it for nightly multiplayer in 2026 should recalibrate expectations accordingly.
Price and Availability in 2026
Vanguard lists at legacy pricing (launched $69.99) but permanent and recurring Call of Duty franchise sales drop it into the $20–30 window on Battle.net, Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox; it also cycles through the legacy CoD lineup in Microsoft's subscription catalog — check your Game Pass or PS Plus before paying. As for the links that used to live on this page: there is no legitimate "free download" for this game. Any site offering one is serving piracy.
Related reviews: Battlefield 2042 · Kena: Bridge of Spirits · Maiden of Black Water · Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
Verdict
| Pros ✅ | Cons ❌ |
|---|---|
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Score: 6/10 — The sum of a great engine and timid ambition. Playable, disc+subscription-cheap, and oddly historic — but it never escapes being Modern Warfare 2019 in a WWII coat. Play the campaign and zombies with friends; leave multiplayer to memory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Vanguard's servers still online in 2026?
Yes, campaign, multiplayer, and zombies all remain accessible — but the multiplayer population averages around a hundred-ish concurrent players in recent tracking, so expect long queue times outside peak hours.
How long is the Vanguard campaign?
About 5 hours — the shortest campaign of the modern-era trilogy (Modern Warfare 2019, Cold War, Vanguard), built mostly from character flashback missions.
Did Vanguard's zombies ever get round-based maps?
Yes. After Der Anfang's rocky launch, Treyarch restored full round-based play with the Shi No Numa remake (Season 4, 2022) plus Terra Maledicta and the Archon finale — the mode is far stronger today than at release.
Why did Activision say Vanguard underperformed?
In its May 2022 investor report, Activision cited the WWII setting failing to resonate and a lack of innovation, despite Vanguard being the year's top US seller. Sales ran ~36–40% behind Black Ops Cold War.
Did Vanguard really end the annual Call of Duty cycle?
Effectively. Following its reception, Activision skipped a new mainline release in 2023 (the next entry arrived in 2024 as Black Ops 6), ending a streak that had run since 2005.
Is Vanguard on Game Pass?
Legacy Call of Duty titles, Vanguard included, have been rotating through the Game Pass catalog since Microsoft's acquisition closed in October 2023 — check the current lineup before purchasing it outright.
What was the combat pacing selector?
A menu choosing multiplayer intensity — Tactical (classic 6v6), Assault (bigger lobbies/maps), or Blitz (maximum killspeed) — available from day one instead of waiting for rotating playlists. Still one of the smartest multiplayer UI ideas CoD has produced.
Is Vanguard worth playing in 2026?
For a budget: yes — the Stalingrad campaign chapters and (now-fixed) zombies content make a solid co-op weekend. For multiplayer: no — the community has moved on, and matchmaking is threadbare.