Last year, the most significant leak came from Nvidia themselves, when GeForce Now’s database leaked a list of games that were on their servers. Over the last few months, almost twenty of those games have been confirmed to be real projects. That obviously doesn’t mean everything will actually come to fruition, but one of those games was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Remastered. Now, this would make sense considering we have already seen the first two games in that trilogy release.
To heal the pain due to my lack of timezone knowledge…
There's technically a 4th Call of Duty title releasing by the end of 2023.
Modern Warfare II Warzone II COD 2023 and something else.
Today, we got even more evidence that it could be real. Infamous Call of Duty leaker, Tom Henderson, went to Twitter to say the following: “To heal the pain due to my lack of timezone knowledge… There’s technically a 4th Call of Duty title releasing by the end of 2023. Modern Warfare II Warzone II COD 2023 and something else.” Tom followed up with a tweet confirming that he was referring to Warzone Mobile, but there is still reason to believe that it could be the 5th Call of Duty title released by the end of 2023. If I was a betting man, I would say that we will see Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Remastered by the start of 2023’s summer season. There is no reason to hold on to it if it has already been made.
The 4th Call of Duty title I'm referring to is Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile.
Not much is known, but it's expected to release this year.
Disclaimer: Activision provided us with an early copy of Call of Duty: Vanguard Ultimate Edition on PC for review purposes.
Introduction
Call of Duty: Vanguard had me worried from the get-go. At first, there was a dreadful wait for any official updates on the game. The community heard whispers through leakers such as Tom Henderson, but Activision continued to withhold updates from the community for months on end. It was the middle of August which was usually the time we would all be checking out the beta and we still had no updates. Obviously, it eventually got announced later that month and by October we all were diving into the beta. My second concern with the game was that I didn’t enjoy the beta. The gunplay and mechanics felt rough and it was clear that it needed more time in the oven to cook. I was one of the many people calling for a delay which never got granted. However, I have now beaten the campaign, enjoyed the surprisingly content-filled multiplayer, and dabbled with the disappointing zombies mode. In this review, I am only going to be talking about my time with the campaign. Which was better than expected.
Narrative and Gameplay
Six specialists from six different backgrounds join the first Task Force to take on a threat from the Nazi Army during World War II. In the first mission of the campaign, your team hops back and forth between two trains as they push through countless enemies. They even go as far as jumping off the train, onto the roof of a truck and shooting everyone inside of it, and then jumping back onto the train at the last second before it blows up. I was pretty disappointed by this because I wanted a more grounded experience similar to Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: WWII, rather than getting something that feels like it was taken out of a Michael Bay movie. Thankfully, my wish was granted because everything after this point in the game has a much more realistic vibe to it, even though it still pushes the gas pedal to its max. Throughout the next couple of missions, we get flashbacks that give much-needed bonding time to our cast of characters on an individual level. Four different fronts throughout the war are explored ranging from the jungles of Midway to the rooftops of Stalingrad. These four storylines are the best moments of Call of Duty: Vanguard and give distinct experiences that were top of the line. Each storyline introduces new side characters to care about (and in classic Call of Duty fashion, a lot of them unfortunately die). Each character you play unlocks new abilities. Crack locks and safes as Novak, command troops as Kingsley, climb walls and bait snipers with the reflection of your knife as Petrova, take over the sky as Jackson, and blow everything up as Riggs. Some of these are more lackluster than others (I am looking at you Novak). When the flashbacks are over, it brings us back to where the first mission ended, for an exciting conclusion to the story. I still wish the main cast got more bonding time together as a squad because eighty percent of the game is flashbacks before they all met (excluding Kingsley and Webb). It would be tough to believe that Task Force 141 were able to take down Makarov in essentially their first two missions together. The main villains of this game also are very forgettable. To the point where I was almost ready to publish the article, and then I realized that I forgot to mention the villains. Their only traits are that they are ruthless Nazi leaders which aren’t really enough for me when I compare them to some of the previous main villains.
Credit: Activision
Call of Duty: Vanguard from a gameplay perspective feels like a mixture of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) and Call of Duty:WWII. With forty-plus different weapons, there are plenty of ways to deal with enemies. Blowing through the wooden planks of a train with a machine gun feels as good as anyone would expect it to. The destructible environments have always and continue to be one of the most satisfying parts of playing through the campaign. I played through the campaign on the default difficulty due to being strapped for time and not wanting to have to spend time replaying sections which led to me seeing one flaw that I probably would not have seen on the higher difficulties. The AI can be very rough at times. Like standing in front of an enemy and them taking ten seconds to open fire level of bad. This only happened on a handful of occasions, but I guess that is what I get for being a coward and not playing on veteran.
Bugs
I am happy to announce that my experience had no major bugs and ran incredibly well on my PC. The only bug that I can remember running into in-game was a dead body having a spasm after dying which caused a trash can to start making a ton of noise. Obviously, your miles may vary depending on what platform you are playing on because my friend Mike ran into quite a few bugs on his Xbox Series X including having his achievements glitched. It is also nice to report that Activision may have found out how to compress their files because my game only takes up 77 gigabytes, which is incredible compared to the mess that was last year. One gripe that I had with previous games that somehow continues to happen is this bug (I think it’s a bug, maybe it’s intended, and I am just stupid) where shaders download every time I open the game. The message doesn’t stop me from starting a campaign mission or joining a multiplayer match, but it is still at the top of the screen constantly as I go through the menu. Also be prepared to see advertisements for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Call of Duty: Warzone every time you launch the game. Activision had the idea to have the Vanguard launcher act as a launcher for the previous iterations of Call of Duty meaning you can select their campaigns or multiplayer (which will prompt you to a screen to purchase them). Warzone being there makes sense considering it will have Vanguard content in it, but the other two really have no business being there.
Credit: Activision
Conclusion
In the end, I was satisfied with the campaign experience that Sledgehammer Games provided. My main gripe comes back to the main cast not getting enough bonding time with each other before the flashbacks started to roll. I really feel like having a mission or two occur before the train mission could have done some good for the story. As an overall game, I would say Call of Duty: Vanguard is better than Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Even though the following review score will JUST be for the campaign, I do want to note that Vanguard has so much more content on the multiplayer side compared to last year’s entry. If you even remotely enjoy playing zombies, I highly recommend you check out a review covering exclusively that, because there are some serious issues with Vanguard’s zombies mode. However, I am only focusing on the campaign here so I am not going to let that change the score for the review.
Okay, I get it. This review is really late. This review got started, and then sat in my drafts because Cyberpunk 2077 kept me very distracted in the little bit of free time that I had. But now, final exams are finished and I am on winter break finishing this up at two in the morning. So, what is this new entry of Spiderman about?
Spiderman returns back to New York City but this time we are playing as Miles Morales. For those who didn’t play Spiderman 2018, Miles is a teenager who befriends Peter Parker. Miles ends up getting bit by a spider and you can guess how the rest plays out. When the game starts, you can watch a summary to fill you in on all the events from Spiderman 2018 involving Miles but I would recommend trying out Spiderman Remastered if you never played the original. It is way too good of a game to skip. But you didn’t click on this article to find out if Spiderman 2018 is any good. So how is Spiderman Miles Morales?
Story:
As always, I won’t be diving deep into the story to avoid spoilers but I will give you the bare minimum. The story of Spiderman Miles Morales throws you in the middle of a war between Roxon and the Underground. Roxon is the Tesla of the Spiderman universe and the Underground are a bunch of rebels who have no business being as well trained as they are. As Miles, you do your best to protect New York City while dealing with the challenges of being a teenager. Overall, the beginning of the story is just as good as Spiderman 2018. However, the second half of the story starts to feel weaker. One particular spot is when Miles trusts someone to watch a person of interest (who I won’t name), even though minutes prior he said how he needs to keep an eye on this person because he knows that they want to harm this particular person of interest. You could catoragize this as bad writing or just Miles being naïve but either way it doesn’t make much sense besides wanting to push the story forward.
This may sound like I’m caring too much but I believe that attention to detail is important in these big budget games. In the 2018 game, Spiderman works closely with the police throughout the main story. In the intro to Miles Morales, both Spidermen work with the police. However, midway through the main story, the police disappear. During one mission, Miles discovers an enemy base filled with money and weapons. If this was Spiderman 2018, Peter would contact the police and they would usually be seen arriving as you swing away from the crime scene. However, Miles just swings away like nothing even happened, leaving the door wide open so that any child could just walk in there and grab a rocket launcher. Another example is a major main story plot point so I don’t want to spoil it, but there is a need for the police at a certain emergency at the end of the game and they are no where to be found. It’s like the police are there for the first half of the game and the side missions but they forgot about them for the final half of the main story.
So to summarize: The first half of the story is really good. The second half had a lot of moments that felt so poorly written that it made me pause my game so I could write about them in my notes. I should all emphasize that when I say poorly written, I mean poorly written compared to Spiderman 2018. That game’s story set my standards really high.
Credit: Insomniac Games
Gameplay:
At first glance, you would think the gameplay would feel pretty identical to Spiderman 2018 considering that there hasn’t been much time between them for them to evolve mechanics. This is fairly true but there are definitely some changes. The combat is the same idea but with a lot of new moves and animations for Miles. The most notable is the use of venom which is a form of electricity that Miles can use during combat to take down enemies. There is a decent amount of side content in Spiderman Miles Morales but it felt lower quality compared to what was in Spiderman 2018.
If you are playing on the PlayStation 5, you do have some new things you can check out. First off is raytracing. Insomniac Games does a really good job with it but there was no going back to it after I switched to 60 frames per second mode. Swinging around the city with that smoothness is incredible. It is worth noting, that Insomniac Games added a 60 frames per second with ray tracing in 1080p mode which is how I probably would have played the game if it was available back at launch. The PlayStation 5 controller also showcases their adaptive triggers when you swing through the city. While it is a nice touch that adds some immersion, I thought they could have done more with it. Astrobot’s Playroom set a very high standard for how developers should use the adaptive triggers and haptic feedback.
Bugs:
Early in the game, a character spills some food on a carpet (think Kevin Malone and his chili from The Office). Instead of going to the bathroom for cleaning supplies, he goes to a computer to do some work and then makes his way to the bathroom after you grab another item. That was the only notable bug. It was a very polished experience.
Credit: Insomniac Games
Conclusion:
I still stand by my original thought that this game was not needed (I felt that there was no need for a smaller standalone game since we just had Spiderman two years earlier). A fourth DLC releasing with Spiderman 2018 Remastered or some flashbacks in the next mainline Spiderman game (which is rumored to have both Peter and Miles as playable characters) could have easily told this story without some of the filler. However, this was still a great Spiderman experience. Miles was an amazing character. Seeing New York City around Christmas time changed up the map enough to make it not feel overly repetitive. The gameplay evolved much more then I expected it to (mainly thanks to the 60 fps enhancement). This game really made me think about how in the world Insomniac Games is developing so much at once while keeping it at the highest quality.
Remember back in January when we all expected to be seeing the PlayStation 5 get revealed in February? That date got pushed back so many times until we finally had an official date being June 4th. However, that got delayed in support for the Black Lives Matter protests. We now have the new date after it got leaked on a Twitch ad. We are also going to be going over some additional information on the games to expect at the show after a new leak came out.
As you were probably able to tell by the cover photo, the official PS5 reveal event date will be June 11th at 4 pm Eastern Standard Time. This photo was confirmed as an authentic ad by Daniel Ahmad.
As far as what games we should expect at the show, a new leak emerged from Game Reactor confirming a few of them.
Demon Souls Remake is real, and being made by Bluepoint Games who remade titles like God of War Collection, Shadow of The Colossus and more. He says it’s coming for PS5 and that “you can’t compare it to what they did with SOTC” because it’s a supposedly a way bigger project. Says it’ll be showed off during the PS5 State of Play.
Credit: Wallpaperplay.com
Horizon Zero Dawn 2 will be revealed at the PS5 event. Doesn’t seem to have any new info besides to expect game play and a release date.
Credit: PS4home.com
Resident Evil 8 started out as a spin-off, but quickly evolved into a mainline entry. Confirms the whole village-setting, and says the game will be released early 2021. “Thinks” they’ll show it off soon, either at the Sony event or at a Resident Evil exclusive event later in June.
Credit: Altchar.com
Housemarque (Resogun, Stormdivers) is a finish game studio that’s now pretty much a part of Sony. They’re working on some new unannounced AAA title for the PS5.
Credit: Pureplaystation.com
Silent Hill is real as well, and confirms it’ll be shown off around the same time as Resident Evil 8. Says when Konami tried to put off the rumors back in march, they lied. Says it’s pretty far along in development and to expect it at the Sony event.
Credit: Checkpointgaming.net
We can not wait to see what other surprises Sony has in store on June 11th!
The Game Preview 