Call of Duty: Vanguard

Call of Duty: Vanguard is a first-person action shooter from Sledgehammer Games, the eighteenth entry in the main Call of Duty series. The game takes players into the final months of World War II and follows an international squad of soldiers across various battlefields – from North Africa through a Pacific island to the final assault on Berlin. The campaign is told through the memories of individual characters and emphasizes their personal stories as much as the battles themselves between missions. Alongside the single-player campaign, Vanguard offers extensive multiplayer with a range of maps and game modes, a seasonal update system, and a cooperative zombies mode that directly continues the story from the previous entries Call of Duty: Cold War and World at War.

On PlayStation 4, this is the older-generation console version, running at lower resolution and with a more limited frame rate than the PlayStation 5 edition. The game launched on the same day as all other platforms, so PS4 players didn't miss out on any campaign content or multiplayer maps and modes. What they do miss are new-generation technical features like ray tracing or support for higher multiplayer frame rates, and loading times are noticeably longer due to the slower storage. Thanks to cross-play and cross-progression, PS4 players can play with friends on other platforms and, if they move to the new generation, carry over their progress without losing anything.

The PS4 version thus remains functionally complete and content-identical to the other editions; it's more a choice for players who haven't yet moved to the new console generation than any sort of limited version of the game. The difference is purely technical, not content-related.

The Gunsmith weapon customization system, which first appeared in the series in Modern Warfare (2019) and was expanded in Cold War, works on PS4 the same as on other platforms, albeit with somewhat longer delays when switching between menus due to the older console's weaker hardware. This has no effect on gameplay or the loadout customization options, however.

Why play it: The Gunsmith weapon customization system works on PlayStation 4 just like everywhere else, only with somewhat slower menu switching due to the weaker hardware - it has no effect on gameplay.