The release of Call of Duty: Vanguard is a contentious one – but on a technological level, it’s a return for the brilliant Modern Warware 2019 engine (known internally as IW8), enhanced and expanded upon to accommodate the ambitious of Sledgehammer Games’ latest offering. There are engine advances designed specifically for multiplayer, but for my money, it’s the campaign that is the star of the show. Telling the story of an elite squadron delivered via set-piece after set-piece, the technology shines thanks to brilliant materials work, stunning lighting and remarkable volumetrics. IW8 was always designed to scale across the generations – and the end result is a highly polished result on the new wave of machines, albeit with some oddities and blemishes that the developers should address.
Bugs? Yes, they’re there. I’ve seen AI and animation issues that break the immersion – mostly in the Operation Tonga mission. Enemies awkwardly repeat their animations in a group. You might catch a soldier, stood motionless in a battlefield without a gun – oblivious to the carnage around him. There are bizarre rag doll reactions on major characters. However, the most glaring issue I’ve seen so far comes down to performance. Xbox Series consoles see the campaign play out with some egregious – albeit sporadic – stutter, while PlayStation 5 sees checkpoint save pauses of around half-a-second. For a game that delivers so much polish and panache, it’s a bit of a let-down. Beyond that, if we take ourselves away from the bugs for a moment, there’s also a full screen motion blur effect enabled by default. It’s overkill in its intensity, turning any quick camera pan into a smear. I turned it off right away, and I suspect for many it’ll be more enjoyable switched off.
I’ve also got to take issue with some bizarre presentation choices. The game runs at 60fps – as you’d expect for a Call of Duty titles – yet some elements shift to pre-rendered cinematics built on the game engine that run at 30fps instead (complete with macroblock artefacts). Typically, developers use pre-rendered scenes to push post-effects, big battles, huge environments, that the hardware can’t deliver in real-time. But here, it’s usually a continuation of what the consoles capably handle in-engine moments before. And then there’s the end-of-chapter scenes. These are the real deal: beautifully directed, motion captured – almost movie-like in their visual quality, with heavy film grain layered on top. But curiously, they run at 24 frames per second. It’s a “cinematic” 24fps – but yes, another jump in frame-rate from the 60fps of gameplay, and the 30fps in other scenes. It’s all very strange.