Those portals are your gateways to missions, which you will complete (fingers crossed), then return to the courtyard. This time around, Zombies is built around a hub-and-spoke structure that sees your party beginning each play session in a snowy Stalingrad courtyard dotted with glowing reddish-orange portals. It’s an odd choice - why not just delay the mode entirely instead of pushing out a skeletal version at launch? - and the absence defines the experience of playing Zombies right now. Instead, Activision has folded the campaign into the game’s seasonal content, which will start rolling out in early December.

But the lack of a main quest means that there are no bosses to fight and no puzzles to solve. The barest basics of the gameplay are there - you shoot zombies for points and spend those points on upgrades. The primary difference, which returning players will notice right away, is that Vanguard’s Zombies mode doesn’t include a campaign. But, like a character who has suffered an unfortunate bite, it doesn’t quite look the way you remember it.

In Call of Duty: Vanguard, the long-running Zombies mode shambles back yet again.

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