In Call of Duty: Vanguard, the long-running Zombies mode shambles back yet again. But, like a character who has suffered an unfortunate bite, it doesn’t quite look the way you remember it.
The primary difference, which returning players will notice right away, is that Vanguard’s Zombies mode doesn’t include a campaign. The barest basics of the gameplay are there — you shoot zombies for points and spend those points on upgrades. But the lack of a main quest means that there are no bosses to fight and no puzzles to solve. Instead, Activision has folded the campaign into the game’s seasonal content, which will start rolling out in early December. It’s an odd choice — why not just delay the mode entirely instead of pushing out a skeletal version at launch? — and the absence defines the experience of playing Zombies right now.
There are other notable changes, too. This time around, Zombies is built around a hub-and-spoke structure that sees your party beginning each play session in a snowy Stalingrad courtyard dotted with glowing reddish-orange portals. Those portals are your gateways to missions, which you will complete (fingers crossed), then return to the courtyard. As play begins, the courtyard is bordered by fences crafted from magical bones, which block you off from exploring the surrounding area. But, as you accomplish missions, these boundaries disappear, unlocking new areas of the hub area where new upgrades are available.
As you continue to play, you quickly realize that the portals aren’t transporting you to far-off lands. Instead, they’re merely taking you to until-now unseen portions of the hub area, which, for the most part, remain accessible upon your return to the courtyard. Some of the mission areas feature brightly colored fountains, where you can scoop up a flagon of potion to upgrade one element of your character’s stats. Plunge your glass into the red goop and down it for added health. Glug some yellow ooze for increased speed. The first drink is on the house — a reward for finding the fountain — but subsequent upgrades cost points. The rest of the upgrades that players have come to expect, like Pack-a-Punch for improving your weapon, are centrally located in a sort of base camp around the courtyard’s fountain.
Call of Duty: Zombies has always been about fighting off hordes of the undead, and that core experience remains intact this time around. However, past players may be surprised to see that Vanguard’s entry — like a ravenous zombie punching through the two-by-fours boarding up a window — has busted off the non-shooty defensive mechanics that players may expect to engage in between waves. You won’t be hammering wood to window frames in Vanguard, and this time around there aren’t even really waves at all. Instead, you simply select missions and travel through the portals to reach them. In another change from past entries, moving to the next bit of a level won’t cost you anything. I’m a fairly casual Zombies player, but between my own experience with past versions of the mode and video of gameplay from the outings I missed, Vanguard appears to be a pretty significant departure. The game is superficially similar — if you’ve played Zombies before, you’ll recognize the blimp-shaped Nuke and the skull-shaped Insta-Kill icons — but the structure is quite different.
Each of those areas can be played in a number of ways. For example, sometimes the objective is to collect five runestones by killing the zombies that, unbeknownst to you, carry them, slot the runestones into an obelisk, then repeat the process when the obelisk warps to another spot on the map. Or, you might need to follow a glowing skull in a bone cage as it floats around the map, killing zombies as you go, and staying inside the protective dome that radiates outward from the skull. Or, you might just need to survive for a set amount of time, fending off the hordes as a timer ticks down. None of these objectives feel particularly novel, and they repeat so often that there isn’t much to look forward to after you’ve played a few rounds.
As a result, Call of Duty: Vanguard’s Zombies mode rarely manages to capture the feeling that you and your friends (or party of online strangers) are working together toward a common goal. There are the short-term goals, like surviving a Blitz level for the requisite amount of time or following the floating head until it reaches its final destination, sure. But, much more than in previous games, you are not relying on your teammates, outside of the occasional need for a revival There are no puzzles that they can help you solve, no bosses you work together to defeat, not even windows for them to board up. There are fewer ways to work together and no real long-term objectives that you are attempting to accomplish as a party. Just purposeless survival.
In the end, Vanguard’s Zombies mode feels a little disposable. It’s interesting to see the teams at Treyarch and Sledgehammer play with the structure. But, the process of playing it gets repetitive quickly. There’s a plaque engraved on the fountain in that central courtyard, which you can interact with at a certain point in any run in order to create a portal that will allow you to exit the game. In theory, this offers a risk/reward incentive. Staying is more dangerous, but you’ll get better rewards. Leaving is less risky, but you don’t get as much loot or XP. But in practice, it was hard to tell what exactly the differences were. Regardless of when I stayed, I still received XP after the match and even leveled up after failing. What are the benefits of staying? What are the benefits of leaving? What are the benefits of removing features, like paying to open doors and taking the time to board up windows, that drew players together? And, in the end, what is the point of releasing this mode, unfinished as it seems, at all?