Gamer Frenzy Magazine

Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Has The Biggest Opening Weekend In Franchise History

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has set a new record for the best-selling weekend in the franchise’s history, bringing in a total of $800 million worldwide in sell-through after only three days on the market, according to publisher Activision.

Given the series’ history and cultural impact, it’s never a surprise that Call of Duty regularly sees staggering sales numbers at launch. However, this year’s second entry in the rebooted Modern Warfare series has already rapidly surpassed the previous franchise record set by 2011’s Modern Warfare 3, which brought in $775 million across a five-day span.

“T hank you, Call of Duty players, for making Modern Warfare II’s launch one for the record books as well as the highest grossing entertainment opening of the year," Call of Duty General Manager, Johanna Faries, said in a statement. "It is our honor and privilege to deliver such a historic launch weekend for the best fans in the world. As amazing as this opening has been, Call of Duty has much more in store. An unprecedented level of support for the Modern Warfare universe is on the horizon and Warzone 2.0’s launch is right around the corner. It’s an incredible time for the franchise.”

Modern Warfare II is a sequel to 2019's reboot of Modern Warfare, both of which feature iconic characters and themes from the original series while telling fresh stories set in today's world.

I n our campaign review, we called Modern Warfare II a “lackluster follow-up to Modern Warfare 2019’s refined take on a Call of Duty campaign, and an experience that’s already fading in my memory.” However, our multiplayer review praised the multiplayer for how it “shifts its focus enough to where it feels distinct and different.”

HOW TO MAKE A DURRR BURGER

It’s been about 6 years since Fortnite took the world by storm and became one of the most played games. If you’re familiar with the game, then you’re familiar with DURRR BURGER. It is a fast food chain in the game and can be found in various locations. Incase you’ve always wanted to make a DURRR BURGER here’s how!

INGREDIENTS INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a large bowl, stir the salt and pepper into the ground beef. Form the beef into two half pound patties, about an inch thick. (OPTIONAL: You can make the patties any size you desire, but I kept mine as close to the ‘real’ version as I could.)

2. Use a cast iron or flat top iron skillet over medium high heat to sear the burgers until a golden crust as formed on each side. Cook the burgers until they reach your desired doneness, about 5-8 minutes per side. (Rare: 120-125 F | Medium Rare : 130-135 F | Medium Well : 145-150 F | Well-done: 155160 F)

3. Remove the cooked patties from the skillet but leave the grease behind. Let the burgers rest for about 8-10 minutes.

4. Slice the Spam into quarter inch thick slices. Fry the Spam in the remaining grease in the skillet until the Spam is heated through and just beginning to brown on the edges.

5. For an authentic Durr Burger, top the patties with two slices of cheddar cheese, and a thick slice of tomato. Place the Spam so that it hangs off the side of the burger like a tongue.

6. Slice the black olives thin and then attach the slices to small mozzarella pearls so that they look like eyes. Skewer the mozzrella with the toothpick and affix to the top sides of the burger bun. Serve with french fries and a variety of your gamer’s favorite toppings. Enjoy!

POKEMON SCARLET AND VIOLET HANDS-ON PREVIEW

PALDEA, THE FIRST OPEN-WORLD POKEMON REGION

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet both take place in the region of Paldea, widely believed to be inspired by Spain, and perhaps the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula. It’s the first truly open-world-style Pokemon game, which should let you go where you want when you want to with three different storylines, all part of your school’s “Treasure Hunt” assignment, to follow at your discretion.

BOND WITH YOUR POKEMON AT PICNICS

While having a picnic in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, you can play with, take photos of, and bathe the Pokemon in your party. Washing up your Pokemon supposedly strengthens their bond with you, which I assume references the hidden friendship mechanics that allow, say, an Eevee to be able to evolve into an Umbreon.

LET’S GO! SENDS YOUR POKEMON TO AUTO BATTLE AND COLLECT ITEMS

After the short picnic, I tried out the new Let’s Go! feature (not to be confused with the games of the same subtitle.) Tossing out a Poke Ball will release your party’s lead, who will engage in an Auto Battle with wild Pokemon nearby, or pick up any nearby items, which classically appear as Poke Balls on the ground. Your Pokemon stick near you as you explore, even if you’re mounted on your Legendary Pokemon companion, with notifications of its escapades appearing in the top right of the screen.

The experience earned from an Auto-Battle is still spread across the entire party, but is largely decreased compared to what you’d earn from a normal wild Pokemon battle. This is honestly a relief - if Auto Battles granted the same amount of XP as a normal battle, I’d probably accidentally power level, especially since I’ll be using Auto Battles as a way to collect Pokemon Materials dropped by defeated Wild Pokemon.

IT’S A LARGE DEPARTURE FROM THE SERIES TRADITION

It’s a large departure from the series’ tradition, with good and bad implications. On one hand, this can decrease perceived difficulty, but on the other, a lack of deterrents encourages exploration, and I can now see myself easily succumbing to the song of environmental side-tracking. It’d be a much more relaxing, straightforward experience to choose a spot to venture to and not be forced into a series of battles along the way. We also don’t yet know if some areas will have forced trainer battles as soon as you make eye contact - who’s to say?

TERASTALLIZING IS THE NEW BATTLE GIMMICK

When you do enter a battle, the scenery remains exactly as is, similar to Pokemon Legends: Arceus - it’s quite a seamless transition! Battling will be familiar to Pokemon fans. Each Pokemon has four moves, you can switch Pokemon out in exchange for a turn, there are type weaknesses and resistances, etc. The new battle gimmick in Scarlet ann Violet is the Terastal Phenomenon, which essentially changes your Pokemon’s type to its Tera-type and boosts that type’s moves. It seems like any Pokemon can have any Tera-type, but it seems “rare” Tera-types are exclusive to special wild Pokemon, event Pokemon, and Pokemon in Tera Raid Battles (which we’ll discuss later.)

THE CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION IS ROBUST

Finally, I have to mention the customization options - which are more robust than I’ve seen in any Pokemon game to date. With more than a dozen

eyelash options alone, I see myself spending quite a bit of time creating my character and changing up her style as I play.

Overall, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet seem to shake up the traditional Pokemon formula in more ways than one, with an open world to explore freely, three stories to tackle on your own terms, four-player co-op, and even smaller details we probably haven’t even uncovered yet like the disposal of forced NPC battles. There’s enough new here to make me highly anticipate a new Pokemon journey once Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are released on November 18.

Ash Ketchum Finally

After 25 years, perpetual 10-year-old Ash Ketchum has finally become the world’s greatest Pokémon trainer.

Ash’s big moment took place in the latest episode of Pokémon Ultimate Journeys: The Series, which premiered today in Japan. In it, Ash’s Pikachu defeats a Charizard belonging to Leon, who video game fans will remember as the champion of Pokémon Sword and Shield’s Galar region.

Their battle was the final bout in the Pokémon World Coronation Series Masters Eight Tournament, which pits champions from across multiple regions against one another, including Cynthia, Iris, Steven, and Lance. By defeating Leon, Ash effectively proved himself the strongest of all the Pokémon League Champions, thus completing the dream he first set out to accomplish when he left Pallet Town in episode one of the original 1997 series.

This is an especially big deal for Ash, who historically has had a tough run in tournaments like this. In fact, until 2019, he’d never managed to become a Pokémon League Champion in any of his attempts - a losing streak that ended when he defeated Gladion in the Manalo Conference and became Alola’s Champion.

What’s next for our hero, then? Well, with a new Pokémon game coming out next week, we’re sure to see Ash eventually make his way to the Paldea region and challenge that league. He’s also previously expressed desires to, you know, “catch ‘em all,” but given how far behind he is now that the total number of Pokémon is pushing 1000, this seems an unlikely feat for him to achieve.

Congrats, Ash. You’re an inspiration to us all.

Becomes the World's Greatest Pokémon Trainer

TOP 5 SUPER MARIO GAMES OF ALL TIME!

What’s the best Mario game ever? Where do you even begin to rank them? Let’s face it, any of the games in the top 10 could justifiably take the top spot. All of them could easily be somebody’s ‘best game of all time’, and there’ll always be someone who believes the series peaked with The Lost Levels. That’s an opinion you’re entitled to!

1. SUPER MARIO WORLD (SNES)

There is endless debate about whether Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World is the better game. For our money, they are two sides of the same coin — two faces of the same monumental peak in the video game landscape. This remains an incredible achievement of invention and sheer entertainment that the 2D platforming genre has struggled to match ever since. Introducing Yoshi and an expanded overworld with multiple paths, this game overflowed with secrets and secret exits, perfect for fuelling playground gossip and elevating it to the upper-est echelons of platform video games, 2D or otherwise.

Three decades on, it still doesn’t get much better than this. All games have flaws, but if there’s an exception to that rule, Super Mario World is it.

2. SUPER MARIO BROS. 3 (NES)

As

toweringly important as the original Super Mario Bros. was, Super Mario Bros. 3 was a colossal leap forward in practically every way. It refined the basics, switched up the visuals, and added more mechanical variety and one-and-done elements than any video game to that point; so many that even today there are certain suits, stages or secrets that fans of the game may never have found.

So many ‘old’ games are best approached with historical context in mind, or come with caveats when playing them years after release, but SMB3 needs none. It’s just as boundingly inventive and fresh as the day it was released, and easily one of the very finest video games ever made. Play it, now.

3. SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY (SWITCH)

There’s

an argument to be made that Mario 64 never got a ‘true’ sequel until this game: Sunshine’s FLUDD muddied the waters with its feature set; the Galaxy games cleverly eschewed large open worlds for impeccably crafted planetoids designed around specific gameplay elements; 3D Land and-

3D world were deliberately constrained with linear design to attract players of 2D Mario into the third dimension.

Super Mario Odyssey was a return for the ‘sandbox’ style of Mario adventure players had been pining for since 1996, and it delivers everything you could want and more. Cappy’s capture abilities keep things fresh in a game which blends all sorts of ideas and art styles into an improbably coherent, compelling whole. It really shouldn’t work, but New Donk City’s human inhabitants are able to co-exist with the anthropomorphic cutlery of the Luncheon Kingdom and the big-eyed cute characters of the Mushroom Kingdom clan thanks solely to the developers’ impeccable execution. The mechanical mastery on display here is breathtaking; there’s a joyful abandon to the game which carries through every kingdom you visit, with so many distractions and things to discover. We don’t envy the designers who have to come up with Mario’s next game, but if Mario Odyssey’s anything to go by, absolutely anything is possible.

An utterly remarkable entry in this most celebrated of series, then, and an essential purchase whether you like Mario or not.

All that aside, there’s also Rosalina and the Lumas’ story to enjoy if you go looking for it; an affecting and underrated aspect of an utterly sublime game. It’s available to play on Switch, and you really should — Super Mario Galaxy is an infectiously fun trip through the cosmos which begged the question: Where the plumber could possibly go next?

5. SUPER MARIO GALAXY 2 (WII)

With

Super Mario Galaxy 2 Nintendo gave us that rarest of treats — a direct sequel to one of its finest games. While anyone who played and fell in love with Super Mario Galaxy would have been overjoyed to hear there was more on the way, the expectations couldn’t have been higher. Somehow, Galaxy 2 expanded on the inventiveness of the original, turning up the colour dial to eleventy-stupid. This was Nintendo tearing up the rule book and pasting it back together in fascinating, surprising ways, flexing its beefed up and confidently creative muscles after the first game, with a huge variety of environments and obstacles, plus Yoshi and a host of new power-ups. It’s an absolutely brilliant time. It may be missing from Switch’s 3D All-Stars collection, but this game is truly worth hunting down a Wii for if you missed it.

Where

Sunshine faltered, Super Mario Galaxy truly did shine. Taking Mario into space gave Nintendo the opportunity to play with gravity and give him a whole new (final) frontier of planetoid playgrounds to blast between, setting the stage for endlessly creative snippets of platforming perfection.

4. SUPER MARIO GALAXY (WII)

NOW IS THE TIME. THE WORLD’S GREATEST PLAYERS ARE GOING TO ENTERTAIN, CREATE, AND AMAZE ON THE ULTIMATE STAGE. THIS YEAR A NEW GENERATION WILL PUSH THE BOUNDARIES OF PLAY AND SHARE IN MOMENTS OF WONDER. THIS YEAR PLAYERS WILL BECOME LEGENDS.

NINJA’S GAME WINNING STRATEGY

Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins is widely regarded as the world’s most famous gamer. A former professional Halo player for the likes of Cloud9, Team Liquid, and Luminosity Gaming. He began streaming Fortnite regularly and his number of viewers began to expand along with the game’s growth in popularity.

How would you describe the core pillars of how you go about winning a match?

So what I go in with and what I tell people is to learn how to play and learn how to shoot. What I like to do is land in a more aggressive spot – and that’s because I like to put on more of a show and challenge myself –but I go for where I know the chests are, and where I know a gun is that I can land at and get before anyone.

After that, it’s about rotating when the storm pushes you in a specific way and making sure you are taking note of where the bus was going, so you know of where players are on the map. Where they’re more than likely going to be rotating from as well, where there are going to be hotspots that are going to be pushing people certain ways depending on where the storm goes on the map.

So why am I dying so much? What are some common mistakes you see people making?

People are dying usually because they’re not practiced -- the game is still very new. I encourage people to put in the hours, more than one or two, in order to actually engage and improve and grow as a player. That being said, it’s important to make sure that you’re balancing your life -- not many people can make a living or afford to be playing the game as much and as long as I am, so I encourage a lot of kids to make sure to get good grades, and do well in school, then they can play Fortnite.

Do you have any tips for building, specifically?

Idefinitely recommend the same thing, being aggressive and playing in those areas, and you’re going to need to learn how to build to make it out of there.

But also there are some instructional videos on YouTube, and there are some little videos that will tell you, you know, this is how you make a door, this is how you make a window. This is how you make a ramp and then twist it and turn it.

What are your favorite weapons in the game?

So people ask, what is your favorite kit to run? And I say, you want a rifle – burst or regular – a shotgun, a sniper, rockets or explosives, and then your last item slot is healing. It should always be shield, because your shield is the first thing to go in a fight. If you get shot once or twice, you should be able to go recoup your shield

What do you think makes the game so approachable?

There’s a lot of things that do that, like the fact that the graphics are way more approachable. It’s definitely clear when you’re playing a game like PUBG there’s this realistic warzone feel that they’re going to get, there’s a little bit of blood and you get that Call of Duty war feeling. Fortnite is cartoony if you want to use that word, and that’s going to a good turn-on for parents when they see their kids playing a game like that. Not to mention that when a body dies in Fortnite, they just get materialized and warped back up into the internet. There isn’t really any dying, and It is something as well that is really beneficial for not turning away young gamers. Are you excited about the mobile version?

Iam – the mobile version is going to help a lot of people pass time when they’re traveling, kids on car rides, I think they’re going to nail it. I’ve talked to some of the devs and they’re very excited about the way it feels to play on mobile. And as a streamer, the more people it reaches, the better for me too.

BUDGET MICROPHONES

You don’t need to spend a lot to whisper sweet nothings over the world wide web.

The phrase ‘the best cheap microphone’ is no longer an oxymoron. One of last year’s most surprising hardware trends was the rise of budget streaming microphones for $100 or less, with brands like Rode and HyperX getting in on the action with stripped-down mics that focus purely on sounding great at low cost.

The catch is that some of these cheap microphones will be lacking some common features you might find for more cash, like volume control. Hell, a lot of these budget mics don’t even have a mute button. The idea is that you can do all that with third-party software like OBS or Xsplit instead.

Yet while some might be turned off by a lack of extra features, the sound quality and low price more than make up for it in our eyes. These cheap mics give the budding content creator everything they need to get started for as little as $60.

SoloCast

HYPERX $60

The HyperX SoloCast is a budget microphone that sounds just as good as, if not better than, microphones available for double the price. It’s less flashy than HyperX’s more out-there microphone, theQuadCast S. However, the sound quality on the mic is just incredible for the money. Even when comparing the sound quality is scarily similar when using cardioid mode across both.

So it more than makes up for losing out on some of the quality-of-life features. It does well against the competition too, while the JLab Audio Talk GO and Razer Seiren Mini offer great sound, the HyperX SoloCast still reigns as the king of budget microphones. It gives us the audio chops of its pricier QuadCast S compatriot but for a fraction of the price and with portability and simplicity, it’s ace for gaming or streaming.

Seiren Mini

RAZER $50

Remember earlier I mentioned that some of these microphones had to sacrifice some features? Yeah, well the Seiren Mini pretty much gives up everything. Some people won’t care because you’re getting a killer mic for $50. At the same time, some other people won’t get over the fact that there’s no mute button. That said, the Razer Seiren Mini is one of those obnoxiously adorable pieces of hardware I instantly want to

put on my desk. Its stylish pill-shaped design and color variety give the Mini the personality lacking in some of our other choices on the list. And it sounds incerdible, to boot. The Mini’s super-cardioid polar pattern does a better job of tapering down background noise to focus on what’s in front of it, though it does sound a bit softer than the Seiren Emote at its default gain.

“Simply Awesome!”

“Aw, it’s so cute!”