But I found visibility a bit of an issue.

Vanguard ran just fine on my PC with all the settings cranked up. Everyone still sounds like Danny Dyer hollering, 'Some FAHCKIN INTEL CAMING AP'. Get three kills in a row and you're free to whip out a chunky black phone and call in a recon blimp. Use a gun for a bit and you'll be able to pop the 1940s equivalent of a red dot sight on it. Most modes descend into this mad crush of spawning and dying and spawning.and dying. This may sound delightful if you're into Modern Warfare, but Vanguard does such a good MW impression that I wonder whether it's enough to tempt those diehards away in the first place. It borrows so much from Modern Warfare that any excitement you may harbour for a freshly caught CoD evaporates the moment you tuck in. Judging by my time in the beta, Vanguard lacks this strong identity. Guns produce a proper pap-pap-pap, and medals clang onto the screen as you slot magazines into chambers with satisfying snaps. Sure, Black Ops Cold War isn't a smooth Call Of Duty by any means, but at least it has that unmistakable Treyarch punch. If anything, steering your soldier through Vanguard's maps feels like a glorious return to peak physical fitness, where Black Ops Cold War suffers from an unshakeable stiffness in its joints.

Movement feels incredibly similar to Modern Warfare: slides, crouches, sprints, I'd be hard-pressed to tell them apart if you stripped both sets of soldiers down and entered them into Tough Mudder. One thing's for sure, boot technology clearly hasn't changed between WWII and modern day. Having played a sizable chunk of it now, I'm not kidding when I say that it's like the Modern Warfare lot LARPING on a WWII set. Despite its World War II setting, Vanguard's open beta has me thinking back to the days of Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Call Of Duty: Vanguard's multiplayer feels familiar, have I been here before? Yes, in the past, but also in the future.

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