Some players are missing the days of Call of Duty: Vanguard. A professional Call of Duty coach posted about feeling nostalgic for Call of Duty: Vanguard, and more than a few players agreed with him.Call of Duty: Vanguard came out in 2021, and it was the most recent Call of Duty game before Modern Warfare 2 was released. The game departed from Call of Duty's more typical modern settings and took players back to World War 1. The game was not well received on launch and was the worst-performing Call of Duty launch in the UK since 2007. Despite the poor performance on launch, Vanguard continued to be updated and improved, and by the time Modern Warfare 2 was released in late 2022, the game had gained some improved goodwill from the playerbase.Professional Call of Duty coach for Team Falcons, LewTee, tweeted that he took Vanguard for granted. Several people in the thread agreed with him, although it was far from a unanimous sentiment. Others posited that Vanguard only looked good because Modern Warfare 2 has been so bad, but that still meant they preferred it over the newer Call of Duty game. Fans have criticized Modern Warfare 2 quite a bit, with one complaint being that Modern Warfare 2 was missing a map from the beta on launch.
Although LewTee's nostalgia for Call of Duty: Vanguard is valid, it's also worth noting that when Modern Warfare 2 was released, there had already been a year of improvements and updates that were put out for Vanguard. Of course, there are a lot of fair criticisms about the newest Call of Duty game. One Modern Warfare 2 fan made a video spotlighting all the UI issues, and those weren't the only problems players were experiencing on launch. Despite that, however, it seems unfair to compare a game that is barely two months old to a game with a year's worth of updates.
Of course, not everyone in the Twitter thread agreed with LewTee. There were plenty of players who remembered the problems Vanguard had at launch, or who were just not fans of Vanguard at all. They said that it was the worst Call of Duty game ever released, among other things, which echoes what players were saying before Modern Warfare 2 was released, like when Vanguard players criticized the game's field upgrades. This seems to be a cycle for Call of Duty fans, though, with players criticizing the newest game and experiencing nostalgia for previous games, and that will probably never change.
Call of Duty: Vanguard is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.