Call Of Duty: Vanguard's Champion Hill Is Gunfight On Steroids
Call of Duty: Vanguard’s alpha is officially live for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, which features the recently announced Champion Hill mode. This new multiplayer mode feels like a mashup of Gunfight and battle royale, with duos competing in a series of rounds to be the last team standing. Basically, Champion Hill is a more chaotic and strategic Gunfight tournament.
Champion Hill combines four small maps to make one large arena, where players in duos compete in 60-second rounds of a Team Deathmatch-style tournament against other squads. Every team begins with a total of 12 lives. In Champion Hill, players want to move through the rounds and work to eliminate all other squads’ life count to zero before their squad is eliminated.
All squads start with the same loadout of a pistol and submachine gun. However, better gear can be obtained by collecting cash and using the Buy Stations. All players start with $500 cash, and more cash can be earned through the rounds by eliminating players and scavenging cash piles found around the map.
There are four Buy Stations that can be used during “Buy Rounds,” which are phases that happen between every three rounds of combat. Each Buy Station offers something different. Players can choose whether they want to spend cash on perks, killstreaks, equipment like armor plates, or better weapons. Here you can find Champion Hill’s full list of available weapons, perks, streaks, and equipment for this alpha.
Players can also upgrade their weapon by pressing right on the D-pad, and the gun can continuously be upgraded with up to 10 attachments to beef it up. It does get more expensive with each upgrade, but it’s definitely worth adding some of those attachments early on. Weapons can be upgraded during the Buy phase as well as mid-match.
The cash feature reminds me of Black Ops 4’s Heist mode, which seemed inspired by Counter-Strike’s strategic Buy feature. How players spend their money is important. Going for better weapons and weapon upgrades feels crucial, but having enough money to splurge on something like a UAV streak or Ghost perk could be helpful too.
