Fighting in the Hotel Royal in Call of Duty: Vanguard multiplayer.

Hands-on video of the PS5 beta for Call of Duty: Vanguard multiplayer

Sledgehammer Games launched the first public beta tests of the multiplayer for this fall’s Call of Duty: Vanguard over the weekend. I played it on the PlayStation 5 along with others in the first large-scale beta test from Friday through Sunday. You can see videos of some of my matches below.

The multiplayer mode is always key to keeping the fans in the game for a long time, and Vanguard’s version will be different from the more modern fighting and weapons that we saw in the past couple of years with Modern Warfare and Cold War. It will have a single-player campaign, and we got a taste of that earlier: a World War II story covering the rise of special forces. And the multiplayer combat will feature multinational special forces characters from the story fighting across maps set around the world.

Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X! Join now to enjoy our free and premium perks. 

Join now →

Sign in to your account.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.