This weekend (27-29.8) Call of Duty Vanguard has been hosting its Playstation exclusive Open Alpha Test. The new game mode 'Champion Hill' could be tested by all PS owners.
Champion Hill is a mix of Gunfight and Mini Battle Royale. Teams of 2/3 (16 players total in Duos and 24 players in Trios) are competing in round based gunfights to crown an ultimate tournament winner. Each round lasts 1 minute and players can eliminate each other as often as possible during this time. After the end of the round they switch to one of the other maps and fight a different team for a minute and so on. Every couple of rounds there are buy-rounds, where players can purchase different weapons, equipment or Perks. Weapons on the other hand can be upgraded at any point inside or outside of the buy-rounds. Duo Teams start with 12 lives and Trio Teams with 18 lives. After each round you can check the overall score and extra lives can either be purchased during the buy-rounds or one can be found per round on the map. If there are only 2 Teams left with lives, there will be a showdown round between those, that lasts for 2 minutes. The last team standing wins and you can pick up the weapons of eliminated teams to replace your own with, or you can use them to upgrade your weapons, if you have the same ones equipped.
The gameplay and gunplay feels like a mix of Modern Warfare 2019 and WW2. This is a positive thing and makes the gunplay and movement feel pretty satisfying. The visuals are also nice. Vanguard uses the same visual engine as MW 2019 and it shows. The game is looking pretty good, even on the outdated base PS4. A great new addition in Vanguard is the option for auto tactical sprint, a feature that has still been missing in MW2019 and Black Ops Cold War (Joysticks will now be a lot less likely to break). Another good change in Vanguard is the transformation of the Ghost perk, that now only works if players are actively moving. This makes it less viable for camping. But what I probably liked the most was the new Champion Hill game mode. It is intense, but also strategic and just a great concept and much more motivating than the rather dull separate gunfights in the last two COD games. I also like that the individual maps in Champion Hill are all connected and you can view and listen to players on the surrounding maps (damaged areas on the maps change the flow and stay the same till the end of the tournament).
There were however also a couple of aspects, that I was, so far, not particularly fond of. These can of course still change and I was only playing an Alpha with a single game mode, which doesn't need to be representative of the Vanguard Multiplayer experience at all. There were issues with visibility of enemies in a bigger distance, which sometimes was really poor. You could see each other's player names, but you couldn't identity their bodies. This will probably be improved till the release and I also hope that they will fix the bad spawn locations till then (even though bad spawn locations are kind of a tradition in COD games). Some of them however were particularly awful in the Alpha. You can often shoot players or be shot directly at the starting second of the round, or sometimes spawn 1-2 meters in front of a player. A lot of players praised that you could barely hear any footsteps in the Alpha, but I honestly found them to be too quiet. Listening shouldn't be OP, but I couldn't hear any other players during the Alpha, which seems like a bit too much. The two big new additions to the Vanguard gameplay are the advanced mounting (you can mount behind cover, making you barely visible while leaning over the cover) and destructible objects. I personally may be biased, since I never liked the mounting function in COD games, but I feel like advanced mounting is giving even more incentive to camp. I just personally believe, it hurts the game more than it adds to it. I would therefore recommend removing it. Destructible objects are however not necessarily bad, but they did seem a bit too random during the Alpha. I had walls, where I thought I shouldn't be able to shoot through and other objects, where I should be able to shoot through, and they both worked the other way around. I just think they should improve the consistency of destructible environments and not overdue it in this area.
Result:
Overall I did enjoy the Alpha of COD Vanguard. The new game mode is fantastic and very motivating. Gunplay and movement already feel good, which are probably the most important aspects of any FPS. Other aspects, like some visual issues, bad spawns or the advanced mounting should still be improved, but Sledgehammer already announced they want to fix some of these areas. If you enjoyed WW2 or MW 2019, than Vanguard could definitely be worth a shot (The campaign also sounds pretty interesting so far).
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