In Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0, gunfights can end in less than a second. In fact, some weapons have the potential to down a player in less than 400 milliseconds, which is wildly punishing in a mode that can last upwards of 25 minutes. While this isn’t an inherent flaw, many elements around the fast time to kill (TTK) are disproportionately slow, such as aim down sights (ADS), reload times, and other animations. It’s demoralizing to spend so long playing a match, only to get taken out in mere milliseconds by a player who happened to be aiming in your direction.
As Warzone 2.0 begins to roll out tweaks, there’s one thing I’m hoping to see changed: an increase in the TTK to match other battle royale games like Fortnite or Apex Legends — or at the very least, to match the original Warzone.
Players have complained about the fast TTK since the first Warzone game, so much so, that Activision and Raven Software actually increased the default player health from 100 to 150. With three armor plates equipped, your max total health could be as high as 300.
In Warzone 2.0, your max health is capped at 250 (100 base health, and 50 per plate). However, you can only apply three plates if you acquire a 3-Plate Vest. The default max number of plates you can wear is two. So, throughout the match — especially during the early stages — it’s common to come across enemies who only have 200 health, which means they’ll go down in an instant. But even at 250 health, it still feels far too fast, especially when you consider just how slow some of the weapons are in terms of movement and ADS times.
But it’s not just the weapons that feel slow. Many animations — such as applying an armor plate — are just painful to sit through, especially during a firefight. You also can’t run while plating anymore, which might not sound like a big deal, but you’d be surprised how often this will lead to your demise.
Warzone 2.0 doesn’t allow you to quickly cancel out of animations either — like reloading — meaning you’re often committed to many interactions even if you don’t want to. So, if you happen to use a killstreak, reload, sprint, or interact with the world while an enemy is around the corner, you’ll be a sitting duck, at least momentarily — which, in this game, is all it takes to go down.
Above, you can see an example of a fast gunfight. Imagine being taken out that quickly after 20 minutes. With more health, this player might’ve had a chance to react.
Since many players are well aware of how easy it is to get caught off guard, many have acclimated to a slower-paced play style — one that feels vastly different from what you might’ve seen in the original Warzone. Now, it’s far more common to encounter players who are way too afraid to even move out of a building, slowing the game’s pacing to a halt.
Bumping the base health to 150 (just like in the original) would solve some of the game’s pacing problems. With more health, players would be encouraged to take more risks and move around the map. As it stands, there’s far too much downtime during each game and it has to do — in part — with players moving around slowly. And who can blame them?
If you get unlucky while mantling up onto a ledge, you’re out of the game. Having more health could punish players less for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sure, you should be at a disadvantage if your back is turned to an opponent, but with more health, you would at least have some time to react — and with enough skill, perhaps live to see another day.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”