This year's Call Of Duty starts with a bombastic, heavily cinematic level set on a fast-moving train. It's full of the series' trademark action set against a war-torn background of blood red skies amid a torrential downpour. It's heavily atmospheric yet it feels unearned, as though it's trying to grab your attention by force. Developer Sledgehammer Games has form with WWII (it was literally the name of the last CoD game they led in 2017) so they should be a safe set of hands with this material. But after 2019's superb Modern Warfare reboot and last year's solid entry, Black Ops Cold War, Vanguard is a disappointment.

Set at the very end of WWII, Vanguard follows the escapades of a disparate band of allied soldiers. Our heroes are captured at the start – where they're menaced by a creepily effective Nazi officer played by Dominic Monaghan – and it's during their incarceration that we learn about their place in the conflict through a series of historic missions. This narrative ploy cleverly gives the game room to explore a broad geographical and chronological range of stories, including the Battle of Midway, the fall of Stalingrad and Operation Tonga, a sortie to prepare for the Normandy landings.

In recent years, the rival Battlefield series smartly focused its single-player campaigns on a similar narrative system that it called War Stories. Vanguard's efforts to collate missions is more ambitious but not entirely successful; when the allied gang operate together they're a lot of fun, but they're separated for most of the – relatively short – story and it feels like a missed opportunity. Unusually for the series, there's no standout mission, although the one set in Stalingrad makes a good attempt to portray civilian life crumbling in real time as a city comes under siege. Technically, it also feels like a step back from the stunning imagery of the past two games: backgrounds are samey, the lighting feels flat and character models look waxy; for the first time in ages there's rarely a reason to stop what you're doing and admire the view.

Numerous levels feel buggy and underdeveloped, particularly when stealth comes into play: it's rarely clear what the rules are when trying to remain undetected, and a jungle mission under fire from a hidden sniper is intensely frustrating as the game defies its own logic, enabling your adversary to locate you even if you're completely concealed. The game is much more confident when it sticks to tradition, and later missions set in Tobruk and El Alamein will feel like home to veteran CoD enthusiasts, with grandiose desert battles filled with tanks and heavy artillery.

This year's multiplayer offering is typically dependable, with a new system called combat pacing which allows you to regulate the number of players in a match. So if you find yourself getting thrashed by dozens of CoD regulars you can simply dial it down to a slightly more relaxed setting. Otherwise, not much has changed, so whether or not you're a fan of the series' kill-die-spawn gameplay will dictate how you feel about this. There are copious weapons to unlock and modify, and there's a real thrill to progression. For fans of the Zombies mode, it's playable but unfinished, with many of the usual features missing in action, expected in the next month or so.

Call Of Duty: Vanguard is less enticing than its recent forebears and that's a real problem when it's facing its own competition with free-to-play battle royale CoD: Warzone riding high (not to mention rival Battlefield 2042 out later this month). But with a solid multiplayer mode on offer, there's enough here to keep fans occupied over Christmas at least.

Call Of Duty: Vanguard is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.