Īs with Cold War, Vanguard is integrated with Warzone, allowing players to progress and use weapons, operators and other cosmetics items across both titles, in addition to the existing Modern Warfare and Cold War items in Warzone. As an addition to the returning Gunsmith system, Vanguard 's multiplayer features a 'Caliber system', which brings greater destructibility and reactive environments to maps through different ammunition types. This allows the player to have more control over the selection of multiplayer game modes through three pre-defined pacing filters favoring different playstyles. A new feature introduced to the Call of Duty series through Vanguard's multiplayer is 'Combat Pacing'. Season 2 of Vanguard introduces 'Arms Race', a large-scale game mode where two teams of 12 players attempt to capture five bases, or destroy them players can also earn cash from kills and complete objectives to buy custom loadouts and killstreaks. Champion Hill tasks players with surviving as long as possible in a squad-based deathmatch, round-robin tournament. Vanguard's multiplayer mode introduces a new game mode to the series, titled 'Champion Hill', a successor to the mode 'Gunfight', a 2v2 arena mode previously featured in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. New gameplay features allow the player the ability to use a more advanced tactical approach in combat such as blind firing from behind cover, breaking through destructible environmental elements or creating new paths to complete objectives by climbing walls.

Vanguard's campaign features similar gameplay mechanics previously introduced in Modern Warfare, such as the player being able to mount wielded weapons to flat surfaces, interact with doors and execute takedowns. It failed to meet the sales expectations of Activision. The game received mixed reviews from critics, with praise towards the entertainment value of the campaign and multiplayer, and the graphics, but criticism for its writing, Zombies mode, and lack of innovation. Vanguard establishes a storyline featuring the birth of the special forces to face an emerging threat at the end of the war during various theatres of World War II. It serves as the 18th installment in the overall Call of Duty series.

It was released on November 5 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Call of Duty: Vanguard is a 2021 first-person shooter game developed by Sledgehammer Games and published by Activision.

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