If you’re itching to play the latest Call of Duty game that releases today but you’re in the sad state of not owning a game console to play it on, we have a deal for you. At Target, you can pick up the $299.99 Xbox Series S online or in-store, and you’ll receive a free digital copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (no, not the 2009 classic; Activision is just reusing old names now). Buying that game by itself normally costs $70, so this could be a great promo for you to take advantage of before it expires Saturday, October 29th, at 11:59PM PT.
The Series S is a great console with or without this deal. It’s small, so it won’t hog a bunch of space in your entertainment center. And despite being significantly less powerful than the Series X (in addition to having no disc drive and half the usable storage for downloads), the Series S could be worthwhile if you mostly play digital games, including those on Xbox Game Pass. Here’s our review.
Microsoft Xbox Series S
$299.99
The Xbox Series S is smaller than the 4K-capable Xbox Series X, but it can still play the same digital games — albeit topping out at 2560 x 1440 QHD resolution. At Target, you can get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II for free with purchase through Saturday, October 29th.
There are a couple of Sonos home theater bundles that are discounted, and I want to tell you about them. While the discounts aren’t blowing our minds over here, it could be the price cut you’ve been waiting for before buying a set for yourself. First up is the Surround Set with Beam, which has the first-gen Beam soundbar (normally $399) and two One SL speakers ($199 a pop). It’s priced at $678 through Sonos, Adorama, and B&H Photo, which is just a little over $120 off the cost of buying each speaker separately.
The Premium Immersive Set with Beam that includes the second-gen Beam, two One SL speakers, and a third-gen Sonos Sub costs $1,277, down from $1,596. That’s obviously a much higher-costing setup, but the price drops are noteworthy for some of these products. It’s like getting $90 off the second-gen Beam, $150 off the Sub, and $40 off each One SL speaker.
$1277
The Sonos Immersive Set is a 3.1 surround sound bundle from Sonos, one that includes two Sonos One SL smart speakers, a second-gen Sonos Beam, and a Sonos Sub.
HBO Max’s excellent discount on prepaid yearly subscriptions is about to end on October 30th. Paying yearly instead of monthly usually saves you some money, but this promo will save you as much as $75. Here’s the deal: getting one year of HBO Max with ads costs $69.99 (usually $120) or $104.99 (usually $180) for the ad-free plan that lets you download content and stream select content in 4K.
Most people should find plenty of entertainment (at least a year’s worth, to take full advantage of this deal) with HBO Max. You can watch The Sopranos there as well as a host of movies and exclusive TV shows for a range of tastes. It has The Rehearsal, the excellent Harley Quinn animated series, Succession, House of the Dragon, Euphoria, Barry, Los Espookys, Our Flag Means Death, and a lot more.
Some more deals for your Friday
- Tile is offering a pretty fantastic discount on a four-pack of its Pro Bluetooth trackers. Normally it costs $99.99 for the bundle, but you can get it for $49.99. These offer water resistance and the longest range of all its trackers (up to 400 feet). It touts year-long battery life with replaceable coin batteries. Read more about them here.
- For all of Friday, October 28th, you can get Samsung’s bean-shaped Galaxy Buds Live wireless earbuds in the royal blue color scheme for $79.99 at Best Buy. Other colors cost $20 more. These aren’t Samsung’s latest earbuds, but they offer surprisingly good sound quality in a low-profile design. Read our review.
- Dell is selling a 24.5-inch 1080p IPS gaming monitor with a fast 240Hz refresh rate for just $149.99. It’s not a bad price at all if you value speed over superb picture quality. It includes a height-adjustable stand, and it has two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort version 1.2, and a handful of USB-A ports.
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1.0 out of 5 stars Completely unplayable.
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2020
This game, as purchased...is completely unplayable. And I mean completely. Bought the physical copy a few weeks ago to have something mindless to occasionally do while we wait out this quarantine. Installed the game from disk and was quickly asked to download an update, of almost 100 gigabytes. Ok...not terribly unusual. Finished the update and this is where the real problems started. At first the single player campaign was playable, but not local multiplayer or the Co-Op "Special Ops" mode. I tried over the last several weeks various methods of uninstall, reinstallation, disabling the Xbox auto-shutoff. Occasionally I could get one out of three game modes to work initially, but never all three at the same time, and these would never last after you I shut off the Xbox. In the end, nothing I tried on my own or from forums online worked. So one of 2 things happened. One, the developers have introduced a bug in the most recent "war zone" update that locks a significant portion of their customer base completely out of the game (google ‘modern warfare you are missing dlc packs). Or, two, the seller is shipping people bum copies (elaborate clones, stolen, out of region ie mexican copies). So until this issue is fixed, I can’t recommend this game to anyone.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2022
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2020
The campaign is outstanding, but single player only. One of the most entertaining campaigns I’ve ever played, but it lacks replay because most of us want to play with others…so Co-Op. The Co-Op play is just amazing and is significantly challenging. I’ve played multi-player online to confirm it is actually as much hot garbage as all MP in every game (truly amazes me that anyone enjoys the random mess that is team deathmatch…to each their own). I aim disappointed that there is a limitation to weapon accessories without MP as I will never play enough to unlock them.
The over the top greed of attempting to milk gamers for every dollar with a “battle pass” also detracts from the game. No expansion pack, just locking existing content for an additional charge of $20. Every gamer should stop wasting their money (or parent's money) and the developers might actually stop doing this. If the game was not so outstanding I would deduct 2 maybe 3 stars from the rating for the greed, but because the game was done so well I only deducted 1 star.
Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2021
Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2022
I bought this disc and could only play warzone, in order to play modern warfare I would need to download an extra 200 gb worth of stuff and I had no space left because warzone itself took up all the space. I don’t recommend this product.
Reviewed in the United States on June 9, 2020
Even thoug I have never liked battle royals this game has the best one (In my opinion) The multiplayer is also decent. I havent played that much spec ops though
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2020
This game, as purchased...is completely unplayable. And I mean completely. Bought the physical copy a few weeks ago to have something mindless to occasionally do while we wait out this quarantine. Installed the game from disk and was quickly asked to download an update, of almost 100 gigabytes. Ok...not terribly unusual. Finished the update and this is where the real problems started. At first the single player campaign was playable, but not local multiplayer or the Co-Op "Special Ops" mode. I tried over the last several weeks various methods of uninstall, reinstallation, disabling the Xbox auto-shutoff. Occasionally I could get one out of three game modes to work initially, but never all three at the same time, and these would never last after you I shut off the Xbox. In the end, nothing I tried on my own or from forums online worked. So one of 2 things happened. One, the developers have introduced a bug in the most recent "war zone" update that locks a significant portion of their customer base completely out of the game (google ‘modern warfare you are missing dlc packs). Or, two, the seller is shipping people bum copies (elaborate clones, stolen, out of region ie mexican copies). So until this issue is fixed, I can’t recommend this game to anyone.
1.0 out of 5 stars Completely unplayable.
By Ian Jones on May 16, 2020
This game, as purchased...is completely unplayable. And I mean completely. Bought the physical copy a few weeks ago to have something mindless to occasionally do while we wait out this quarantine. Installed the game from disk and was quickly asked to download an update, of almost 100 gigabytes. Ok...not terribly unusual. Finished the update and this is where the real problems started. At first the single player campaign was playable, but not local multiplayer or the Co-Op "Special Ops" mode. I tried over the last several weeks various methods of uninstall, reinstallation, disabling the Xbox auto-shutoff. Occasionally I could get one out of three game modes to work initially, but never all three at the same time, and these would never last after you I shut off the Xbox. In the end, nothing I tried on my own or from forums online worked. So one of 2 things happened. One, the developers have introduced a bug in the most recent "war zone" update that locks a significant portion of their customer base completely out of the game (google ‘modern warfare you are missing dlc packs). Or, two, the seller is shipping people bum copies (elaborate clones, stolen, out of region ie mexican copies). So until this issue is fixed, I can’t recommend this game to anyone.
Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2021
It’s call of duty. Of course it’s legit.
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2020
Is the best call of duty modern warfare i ever played is more real but so many programs for sample campaign mode
Top reviews from other countries
4.0 out of 5 stars Thanks, for all the swear jar donations.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2020
I can't really comment on the game play because this was bought as a gift for another member of my household.
What I can say though is the phrase
"cheating c***" gets used quite a lot while its being played.
However, it could just be the person playing it is a bit useless at it and not actual cheats. He sure seems to die in game a lot.
3.0 out of 5 stars Going Dark... But Leave the Lights On, I'm Scared of the Dark
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 25, 2021
Before you buy this game make sure you have a stable internet connection and at least 150gb free on your console. You will need internet JUST to install the campaign, which then needs to be installed from the games internal file management.
2019's MW promised to have the most mature
Call of Duty campaign to date. People online who tested the game talked about how it was extremely visceral, grounded, very serious and mature, and some mentioned how the game "made them cry" (seriously look it up). After I've 100% the campaign and trophies I can safely say that these statements are 50% true. Yes the game is very mature and rather dark in tone, it's still a Michael Bay wet dream. Talks of proxy wars, domestic terrorism, the invasion of countries, civilian casualties are all
serious subject matters. Yet it doesn't seem to want to take it seriously, it wants to just shock you into thinking it's taking these subject matters seriously. For example one breif mission has you saving civilians during a terrorist attack in Picadilly. The game shows the enemy mowing down police officers, civilians and your fellow team members, but it also gently reminds you that this is Call of Duty and you are an unstoppable war machine. You proceed to turn the tables and begin to mow the
enemy down, all by your lonesome (friendly AI isn't the greatest). You proceed to a building where a civillian has bomb strapped to him with 10 seconds left until it blows. You have not seen this man before, nor is he mentioned again. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do so good old Captain Price proceeds to flip him over the edge of a railing so he doesn't take anyone else with the explosion. 3 second after this is over Captain Price just carries on as if it's a mission success and calmy
enters the next cutscene to more or less nudge our character to join his task force. How am I meant to care or be shocked when actions and reprocussions are looked over so nonchalantly? Gameplay wise this is the most polished COD to date. Smooth animations, satisfying sounds, incredible graphics. This game has one of the greatest COD missions of all time (Clean House). But all of this comes in at 3-4 hours with a rushed middle and end. I was happy with the campaign but I was left wanting so much
more. Spec Ops is a shell of what the precious MW games offered, just don't bother installing this game mode. Repetitive and tedious at best.
The Multiplayer is punishing and brutal. In a rage inducing fun way of course, as with tradition with Call of Duty. Buy it for the multiplayer alone if your not a campaign fan. Play it for the fun, don't stay for the "mature" story.
1.0 out of 5 stars Buyer beware
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2020
£46, 200GB of downloads, hours/days of waiting, re-downloading all updates, rebooting xbox, ages searching online for errors and ways around it.... and still cannot play the game, what a complete joke! Xbox and Activision have made this so complex and error riddled that you're better off with an old Sega or Nintendo, buy, plug, play. I hate this game for the time its wasted and there is literally NO help available from the developers/suppliers. Buyer beware.
1.0 out of 5 stars Faulty Disc? I’ll never know.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 30, 2022
Game refused repeatedly to load, disc had strange, faint circles on it, doesn’t look like damage but is odd. Contacted seller asking what they thought. They ignored me, so, won’t be trusting this seller again!
1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2020
This game was delivered today, much anticipated from my son. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t play and only advises us to buy it. Sending it back:(