If there’s one thing you can count on with Call of Duty games, it’s a brisk, action-packed campaign offering plenty of shooting galleries and spectacle. This year’s release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is no different, bringing all of the franchise’s usual thrills to both current and last-gen consoles and PC. Taking place a few years after 2019’s Modern Warfare reboot, this frenetic campaign provides a continuation of the story and characters we were introduced to in that game.
For those looking to knock out the campaign before jumping into the online modes, you’ll probably be curious how long that’s going to take you. It should come as no surprise that, like most first-person shooter campaigns, this one won’t be a massive time commitment, but if you’re looking to do everything it has to offer, you may be spending some extra time with it. Here’s what you need to know.
If your primary goal is to simply see Modern Warfare II through to its credits and move on, beating the game will take you somewhere between five and seven hours. If playing it on the easiest difficulty, you can probably shave an hour or two off of this playtime.
While the campaign can be blown through in a sitting or two, completionists are looking at around 10 to 15 hours to fully complete Modern Warfare II. In order to obtain all of the trophies or achievements, you’ll need to beat the game on Veteran difficulty, find a handful of safes, and complete a collection of chapter-specific challenges. You’ll also need to play the co-op Spec Ops mode to wrap up the last few challenges, so your time investment will vary based on the skills and patience of both you and your partner.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.