Author: Trafficblast

The latest patch for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and the battle royale game Warzone is out now, bringing with it new maps and a series of changes. The update dropped on PS4, Xbox One, and PC at 11 PM PT, so if you don’t have it already, it’ll be here soon. It weighs in at a whopping 30.86 GB on Xbox One, and is around the same size on PC and PS4 too–although it’ll be smaller if you only have Warzone, and not Modern Warfare.

Ahead of that, Infinity Ward has posted the full patch notes, which you can see below.

The biggest new additions in the update include a new Gunfight map for Modern Warfare called Aisle 9, and a new Modern Warfare multiplayer map called Hardhat. Coinciding with the release of the new maps, Modern Warfare is getting a special 24/7 playlist for Hardhat and a Face Off Moshpit playlist for Aisle 9.

Additionally, a new DLC pack, “Fearless”, is available for the Call of Duty Endowment charity, with all proceeds going towards helping veterans find work. Spec Ops also gets a new mode with “Modified” missions that include special variants like headshots-only and more.

The Warzone battle royale mode adds a number of new features with this update, including an Armor Box that players can find as loot or purchase through Buy Stations. This box resupplies your entire team’s armor, so it could prove to be very useful on the battlefield. Additionally, Most Wanted contracts have returned, while there are now more Gulag loadouts including six different assault rifles and four SMGs.

The May 18 update also fixes a number of bugs, including exploits that could allow players to access points outside of the map. A rare bug in Warzone that traps players in the Gulag for the entire match has also been fixed with this update.

There are some weapon balance changes, too. The FAL and SCAR weapons now have decreased aim-down-sight times, while the penalty for holding your breath too long while using a sniper rifle has been reduced. The VLK Rogue sees its rate of fire increased, while the Holger 26’s recoil has been reduced.

You can see the complete patch notes below, as posted by Infinity Ward.

May 18 Modern Warfare/Warzone Patch Notes:

WHAT’S NEW

• Call of Duty Endowment “Fearless” Pack is now available!
• New Gunfight Map, Aisle 9!
• New Multiplayer Map, Hardhat!
• Modified Special Operations! Replay existing Operations with a twist! Some enemies may charge more frequently or maybe they can only be taken down with headshots. Check out new Modified Special Operations and earn new rewards each week!

PLAYLIST UPDATE

Modern Warfare

• Realism Moshpit with NVG
• Reinfected Ground War
• Core Ground War
• Blueprint Gunfight
• Aisle 9 Face Off Moshpit!
• Hard Hat 24/7!

Warzone

• BR Solos
• BR Trios
• BR Quads
• Blood Money Quads
• Armor Box (available via loot on the ground and purchasable at Buy Stations): Resupply the entire team’s armor
• Added Most Wanted contracts back (in addition to the other 3 contracts, none have been removed)
• Loot Update
  • Added the new SKS (legendary only)
  • Updated 5 New Blueprints:
    • AX-50 – Epic
    • Kilo 141 – Legendary
    • FAL – Epic
    • MP7 – Legendary
    • AUG- Epic
• Gulag Loadouts – the Gulag will now randomly choose from 6 ARs and 4 SMGs. All automatic, no burst or single fire guns included
  • Kilo 141
  • M4
  • AK-47
  • M13
  • SCAR
  • Ram-7
  • MP5
  • AUG
  • P90
  • Striker 45

GENERAL FIXES

• Infected and Gun Game now feature playlist text to reinforce that KDR and win loss are not affected
• Blueprint variants of Gun Game and Gunfight can now be enabled in custom match advanced options for their respective modes
• Added the fire throwing knife to restricted equipment for CDL
• Fix for the ‘Splash Guard’ shotgun weapon camo not applying properly to the weapon
• Fixed a bug where on occasion, your selected Operator would not appear in the squad walk
• Added a ‘Hold to Use’ option that allows you to choose between a hold or a press for the interaction button on keyboard and mouse
• Adjusted the Monitor Distance Coefficient slider option to maximum value from 2.00 to 5.00
• Out of map exploit fixes across various maps
• Fixed a bug where players could take the ATV out of the map on Aniyah Palace
• Fix for an XP exploit in Hardpoint
• Fix for the ‘Time to Reap’ watch not displaying the time
• Fix for the ‘Blue Skies’ watch appearing backwards when worn
• Fix for some players spawning facing a wall while playing FFA on Talsik Backlot
• Demolition: Added VO to alert the defending team a bomb site was destroyed
• One in the Chamber: This mode is now available in custom games!
• Regular Infected playlist now has random care package drops!
• Gun Game Reloaded is now in the Quick Play filter.
• Gunfight:
  • Fire throwing knife is now available in OSP mode
  • Fixes to the Snapshot grenade so it functions as intended in OSP mode
• Reinfected Ground War:
  • Removed IAV and Counter UAV
  • Added a hint to tutorialize how to sky dive in this mode
  • Do not show death icon when a player uses Field Upgrade Tac Insert to skydive
  • Deaths from Field Upgrade Tac Insert (skydive) no longer count as deaths on the scoreboard
    • Kills & Deaths do not count against your lifetime records in this mode, this is purely to reflect the accurate KDR on the scoreboard
  • Lower Juggernaut health in this mode only
  • No longer give killstreak points on kills if the player is in your party
  • Significantly lowered damage from killstreaks if the player called out the killstreak and then moved to the infected team
  • Added ATV visibility on the map to avoid players hiding while riding the ATV

CHALLENGES/MISSIONS

• Fix for Rodion’s Season 3, Objective 3 Mission from not tracking properly (“Purchase the Armor Bundle in Warzone 2 times while using Rodion as your Allegiance Operator”)
• Fix for the “Use the Dead Silence Field Upgrade in 3 different matches” not tracking properly

WEAPONS

• Renetti:
  • Reduced the max ammo reserve
  • MK3 Burst Mod – Significant hip spread increase
  • MK3 Burst Mod – Small decrease to damage
  • Reduced damage when Akimbo and MK3 Burst Mod are both equipped
• FAL: Decrease to ADS time
• SCAR: Decrease to ADS time
• LMGS: Lowered ammo count for reload warning on belt fed LMGs
• Reduced penalty for holding breath too long with sniper scopes
• Fix for the level 34 unlock of the Renetti showing the Merc Foregrip
• VLK Rogue
  • Increased rate of fire
  • Increased close damage range for 12 gauge
  • Increased damage range to 6” Revolt barrel
• Holger 26
  • Increased move speed
  • Improved ADS time
  • Slight recoil reduction
  • Attachments:
    • FTAC 8.98” Spitfire Barrel:
      • Improved ADS time
      • Faster movement
      • Reduced hip spread
  • XRK Ultralight Barrel:
    • Improved ads time
  • 30 Round Magazine:
    • Reduced sprint out time
    • Improved ADS time
    • Faster movement
    • Improved hip spread profile
  • Not Stock:
    • Increased sprint out time
    • Faster movement
    • Reduced hip spread
    • Improved ADS time
  • Stippled Grip
    • Improved ADS time

WARZONE

• Fix for a bug where a player could become immune to the gas if they were bought back as the final circle was closing
• Fix for a rare bug that left a player in the Gulag until the end of the match
• PC: Fixed an issue where the gas mask overlay could remain on screen after leaving the gas and entering a vehicle
• Removed the option to “Squad Fill” while in BR Solo
• Fix for voice chat sometimes cutting out during a match
• Reduced the RPG kill radius for players with full armor
• Final circle now moves (BR)
• The Most Wanted contract has had the time reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes
• Replaced Shield Turret with Armor Box at Buy Stations (Shield Turret is still in loot)

SPECIAL OPERATIONS

• When players are respawned via the plane their weapons will now start with at least one full magazine each, to fix getting into situations where you could respawn without any ammo
• Operation Headhunter – Fix for the players keeping the Gunship munition if the team wipes during the tank assault section
• Operation Brimstone – Fix for the Extraction Crate appearing to be already open if the team had wiped and restarted earlier in the match

SPECIAL OPERATIONS: SURVIVAL

• PS4: Atlas Superstore has been added to Survival Mode
• Teammates respawned via the ‘Respawn Flare’ item will now come back with full armor, to help them survive their dangerous respawns better
• Disallow usage of the ‘Respawn Flare’ item if no teammates are currently in last stand or spectating, and display why
• Fix for missing dialog, store icons, and sounds during the buy phase
• Fix for missing message display for players attempting to use the minigun at the weapons store
• Fix for the ammo store not filling your magazine, and only your stock, and fix its missing sounds
• Made the assorted stores’ Cash font easier to read on dark screens
• Players now get $10 per hit on enemy helicopters

Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road, the upcoming fast-paced mobile spin-off, has been delayed. The game, which was originally targeting a Spring 2020 release, will now arrive later than expected.

The news of the game’s delay was announced on its official Twitter account, which said that more details will be revealed in June. Kingdom Hearts fans will have to wait a while to find out when Dark Road is releasing, but as the tweet notes, “current conditions” amid the COVID-19 pandemic aren’t ideal for development.

If it still comes out this year, it’ll be the second Kingdom Hearts release of 2020, following Kingdom Hearts III Re:mind. Once it releases, Dark Road will be available within the Kingdom Hearts Union X app, although it’ll be a standalone experience.

The game will explore the pass of villain Xehanort, so fans of Kingdom Hearts’ lore will likely appreciate it. Hopefully we’ll have an updated release window soon.

The latest Madden Bowl competitive gaming tournament took place over the weekend, and Raidel “Joke” Brito won the series and claimed a giant cash prize in addition to bragging rights. It’s notable because, despite being one of the best players on the Madden pro scene, Joke had never won the Bowl. Not only did he win this year’s event, but he claimed the title in the final without throwing a single pass.

That’s right, Joke defeated Daniel “Dcroft” Mycroft by a score of 17-0 with his run-only offense. In fact, Joke won all of his Madden NFL 20 games in the tournament without ever passing the ball, according to ESPN.

Joke employed a unique strategy to secure the victory. He opted to select specialist players, forgoing a true quarterback, and instead chose to run the ball and rely on his defense to win the tournament. The event was conducted virtually this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can watch a replay of the competition in the video above.

Joke’s strategy is not entirely unprecedented. The Army college football team almost never throws the ball, and it has a very good winning record.

Joke took home $65,000 for the victory, while he will also receive a 12-pound physical championship belt that consists of 700 Swarovski rhinestones and a 24-karat gold plate.

It was an especially emotional win for Joke, as he dedicated the event to his friend Taylor “SpotMe” Robertson, who was killed in the 2018 mass shooting during a Madden tournament in Florida. “I dedicated this tournament to him, and the fact that I won it … is awesome,” Joke said through tears.

It’s an exciting time to be a Halo fan, as Microsoft is releasing Halo Infinite as a launch title for the Xbox Series X later this year. The first new details in a long time will be released during a July Xbox event, and while you wait for that, Microsoft has published its latest behind-the-scenes video that showcases how the Halo Infinite audio engineering team went about capturing sounds for the next-gen Halo title.

In the new behind-the-scenes video, Halo Infinite’s audio engineers are seen recording “custom electric engines” with special microphones. The sounds from this recording session will be used for the sci-fi vehicles in Halo Infinite. Check out the video below to see for yourself.

Microsoft has been steadily releasing these “Sound Design Saturday” videos for more than a year. Previous videos showcased how the team captured real bullets flying overhead and a propane cannon to capture sounds of explosions. The team also showed off how they recorded a Chevy El Camino, helicopters, and jet engines for the sounds of vehicles in Halo Infinite. And who could forget this delightful video featuring a pug whose guttural gruffs will be heard in Halo Infinite.

Halo Infinite releases in Holiday 2020 as a launch title for Microsoft’s next-generation console, Xbox Series X, as well as PC. The game will also be playable on Xbox One as well as the other variations of the next-generation Xbox that might be coming.

Microsoft will show more of Halo Infinite during the Xbox 20/20 event in July. Ahead of that, Microsoft has warned people to stay vigilant online, as bad actors are creating fake leaks about Halo Infinite.

Ghost of Tsushima, the long-awaited PS4 exclusive from Sony first-party studio Sucker Punch, will lead players on the journey of samurai Jin Sakai. And while the themes of honor and dishonor can often be found in samurai-focused media, the studio has taken a different approach to examining morality than it has in the Infamous franchise, its most recent games.

Speaking to IGN after the Ghost of Tsushima State of Play, Creative Director and Art Director Jason Connell spoke with IGN about whether it considered adding any sort of morality meter to Ghost of Tsushima, given the Infamous games’ penchant for having players choose a good or bad path for their protagonists.

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“We thought about [a morality meter] because we had the karma system in [Infamous: Second Son], but we realized it was more important to us that we wanted to tell a human story of someone who is this way and has to evolve into something else, versus transform completely into something else,” Connell explained. “He doesn’t flip flop back and forth, it muddied it up for us. We really wanted the story to reflect his transformation.”

Second Son, Sucker Punch’s most recent full release, had players decide whether protagonist Delsin Rowe would be a benevolent, life-saving hero or a carefree, and careless when it came to lives, antihero. With Jin and Ghost of Tsushima, it appears the studio is aiming to tell a more singular story of Jin’s life. And, according to Connell, it’s a story defined by the very human challenges many of us face.

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“It definitely plays with the notion of, you’re born and raised into this certain way of life. There’s expectations of you, the way you should perform. And then at some point, because some events happen, in this case a war, you have to challenge those things. And not everybody’s going to love the fact that you’re going to challenge an assumption that’s made upon your life,” he explained.

That’s not to say Ghost of Tsushima will be lacking in ways for players to choose how they want to play. Whether it’s the black-and-white film grain mode, Japanese voice track, color changes for gear, and more, Sucker Punch is obviously finding ways for players to tailor Jin’s story to their preferences. One of those is the flexibility in playstyle — the State of Play showcased Jin fighting as both a samurai and as the titular Ghost.

But these aren’t distinct modes players will be forced to play or spec Jin into throughout the game; the naming merely represents different facets of Jin as a character and fighter, emblematic of the “evolution” Connell referred to for Jin’s character.

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“There’s definitely important story moments that are more reflective of this change than others. But the reality is that even as you have gotten to some story moments, you can still play the game as this Samurai, you may just be more potent or more powerful. We don’t make you choose between [samurai and Ghost],” Connell said.

“When he’s a Ghost, he can turn around and play as a samurai because he’s always a samurai. All his training, using the Katana, that stuff is buried in him deep. On the stealth [State of Play segement], if you wanted to jump off the roof and start fighting like a samurai, you could totally do that. We don’t spec you out and suddenly you can’t play as a samurai. He’s always at his core, his heart of hearts, a samurai. The Ghost is this legendary warrior that he’s evolving into,” Connell said.

Some of those techniques range from Jin’s ability to engage enemies in standoffs — which, as Connell amusingly put it, “is the most samurai thing in the world to do, just walk slowly up to somebody and call them out,” while Jin will learn some tactics as the Ghost to intimidate and strike fear in his foes. Techniques aren’t limited to either Ghost or samurai — you can perform standoffs as the Ghost too, which Connell noted is even a prompt that appears in the State of Play, but simply wasn’t acted on as the developers tried to showcase a variety of tactics.

For more on Ghost of Tsushima, be sure to read everything we learned from the Ghost of Tsushima State of Play, and find out why the Ghost of Tsushima showcase wowed us on the latest episode of our weekly PlayStation show, Podcast Beyond!.

Stay tuned to IGN for more from our interview with Jason Connell.

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Editor’s note: Former IGN employee Andrew Goldfarb is currently working for Ghost of Tsushima developer Sucker Punch.

Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

It’s a special week of Watch From Home Theater programming coming up to celebrate the big Star Wars anniversaries of Revenge of the Sith and The Empire Strikes Back! We’re happy to announce not one but two digital watch parties with some very special guests.

This Tuesday, May 19th at 5 p.m. PT, we’re watching Revenge of the Sith with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order star Cameron Monaghan and Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ Ashley Eckstein, joining IGN hosts Clint Gage and Max Scoville! The final film in the Star Wars prequel trilogy turns 15 on Tuesday, and its age has only increased your love of it; an IGN user poll conducted in January saw our fans rank Revenge of the Sith as your #2 favorite Star Wars movie.

The larger RotS time period has been well explored in recent memory, both in the recent conclusion of The Clone Wars’ final season, which happened concurrent with the movie, and in Jedi: Fallen Order, which takes place five years after these events.

“Now that we’ve seen the Siege of Mandalore arc in The Clone Wars, I’m excited to go back and watch Revenge of the Sith,” said Ashley Eckstein. “I feel like it will be a completely different experience knowing what is simultaneously happening with Ahsoka, Captain Rex and Maul.”

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Then, on Thursday, May 21st at 5 p.m. PT, we’re watching The Empire Strikes Back on its 40th anniversary with superfan Rahul Kohli (The Haunting of Bly Manor, iZombie), joining IGN hosts Clint Gage and Brian Altano. In that same IGN user poll, our fans (rather unsurprisingly) rated The Empire Strikes Back as their #1 favorite Star Wars movie with a landslide 51 percent of the 25,000 votes.

We want you to join the stream by tuning in on your platform of choice and dropping in everything from your questions for our guests to your favorite moments in the movies!

While IGN won’t be able to show the full movies in the live stream watch-along, we will be showing select clips throughout the live Q&A with our special guests. If you want the full WFH Theater experience, sync up the full movies on your devices and watch with us when we press “play” together! Both Revenge of the Sith and The Empire Strikes back are available to stream exclusively on Disney+. If you’re not already signed up, Disney+ is offering a 14-day free trial.

Want to tune in to IGN’s WFH Theater? Here’s what you need to know!

Watch From Home Theater isn’t just a show or an opportunity to watch a movie; it’s a hangout with passionate people who share one thing in common — their love of film. Each week, we’ll invite our viewers to join in the conversation using our WFH Theater Discord channel to chat with our host, Clint Gage, as well as our celebrity guests. With running commentaries that range from insightful to silly, each viewing will take on a life of its own based on each film.

Check out highlights from our recent episodes of WFH Theater below!

WFH Theater – Netflix’s Extraction with Chris Hemsworth, Joe Russo and director Sam Hargrave

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WFH Theater – Star Trek: First Contact with actor/director Jonathan Frakes

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WFH Theater – Jurassic Park with original movie star Joseph Mazzello

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Terri Schwartz is Editor-in-Chief of Entertainment at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.

Acronis True Image has long been known as the go-to app for system imaging and drive cloning, but the company also includes cloud backup in its True Image 2020 suite. That means you can combine local backups with a copy in the cloud, which is crucial when it comes to protecting your data from fire, theft, and other types of catastrophic loss.

Cloud backup options vary wildly in price and functionality, and are increasingly necessary for peace of mind and data security. I thoroughly evaluated Acronis True Image along with several other leading packages based on three main criteria: pricing, features, and performance.

Acronis True Image – Design, Features, and Pricing

Despite being an advanced backup tool, Acronis’ interface is very user-friendly. Buttons are big and clear, your storage is color coded so you can see what’s taking up space, and Acronis’ many, many tools are organized neatly into sections away from the main backup window. It explains every feature as you set it up, so you don’t have to click on “help” Icons to find out how anything works.

The backup process itself is dead simple, taking only a few clicks: you can back up certain folders and files, or back up an image of your entire machine. Acronis lets you back up to an external drive, a NAS, or to Acronis’ cloud servers (if you pay a monthly subscription fee).

The structure of that subscription fee is a bit confusing at first, but the comparison wizard helps you choose what’s right for you. The Standard version is a one-time purchase of $60, which just gets you a license to the software that performs local backups. If you’re backing up to the cloud, you’ll need a subscription to the Advanced version instead: for 250GB of space, you can pay $50 per year for one computer, $80 per year for three computers, or $100 per year for five computers. If you need more space, add $20 per year for 500GB.

Any more than 500GB, and you’ll need a subscription to Premium, which adds a couple small features and allows for more space: 1TB for one computer at $100 per year, all the way up to 5TB for five computers at $320 per year, with many options in between. It’s not the most expensive service I tested, but it is on the pricier side. Some throw in just 50GB of storage, and some like Backblaze are unlimited, and then others like IDrive start out at 2TB, so as you can see the options are kind of all over the map.

The value comparison depends highly on the number of machines you’re backing up, especially since they share the same pool of storage. For multiple machines, Acronis can get quite expensive, but it packs its program with extra features to make it more enticing.

Some of those features are tangentially related to backups, like the “Archive” feature, which scans your hard drive for large files, and allows you to back up ones you rarely use to the cloud to free up space on your hard drive. Acronis also has a syncing tool, à la Dropbox/Google, for syncing files between machines. Acronis can also clone one disk to another (which is useful if you’re upgrading to a new SSD or hard drive), build rescue disks (so you can fix your PC if it won’t boot), and convert your backups to a virtual hard drive for use in a virtual machine. It even has a module that can back up your mobile devices and social media accounts.

Those are all relatively useful, but it also has a lot of features that feel more like unnecessary padding. For example, it comes with a system cleaner (which works fine, but doesn’t seem much better than Windows’ built-in tools), a ransomware monitor, and a “Try & Decide” feature that lets you make changes to your computer, then roll them back if you don’t like them. Most of these tools feel “tacked on,” and I feel that most people would rather pay less to eschew some of these less important add-ons. (I’ll be focusing mostly on the backup and cloud features for this review.)

Acronis True Image – Backup and Recovery

Despite being overloaded with features (denoted by tabs along the left side of the window), Acronis puts the important stuff front and center. The “Backup” tab along the top is where the magic happens: you’re given two big boxes in the center of the screen, one for the backup source, and one for the backup destination. By default, Acronis is set to back up your entire computer, but you can click on a box to change your backup to only certain drives, files, folders, or to back up a mobile device.

I recommend backing up the entire machine, since this is one of Acronis’ biggest strengths: allowing you to create a full image of your computer so it can be restored, exactly as it is now, if something goes awry. Next, you’ll select where you want to back it up. You can choose an external drive, the Acronis cloud, or a custom location (like a NAS). You’ll also have an option to encrypt your backup, which I recommend. Acronis supports deduplication, so if you move a file to a different folder, it won’t back it up all over again.

Acronis’ default settings work well, but you can click the Options button here to further customize how the backup works. You can change the schedule, prevent the computer from going to sleep while backing up, get email notifications about the backup state, exclude certain files or file types, choose how many versions of a file Acronis keeps, adjust how much bandwidth Acronis uses, and a whole lot more. There is a page where you’ll find a lot of advanced settings too, and while some of them seem more advanced than they need to be (why do I need to set up an SMTP server for email notifications?), tech-savvy users will love the number of options Acronis provides.

The other tabs in the sidebar correspond to Acronis’ other features. The Archive tab analyzes your hard drive so you can offload large files to an external drive or the cloud. The Sync tab lets you set up Dropbox-like syncing, and the Tools tab contains…well, pretty much everything else. The “Clone Disk,” “Rescue Media Builder,” and “Acronis Universal Restore” are the more useful features here, allowing you to migrate your data to a new PC or rescue it when you run into problems.

The other features on this page are interesting, but generally not anything I’d use, since they’re either well covered by Windows’ built-in tools or just not necessary for most users’ day-to-day computing. Though they’re there if you want to explore them.

Speaking of security, Acronis offers end-to-end AES-256 encryption for your backups, meaning you can protect them with a private encryption key. Even the Acronis service itself won’t be able to see your data, which means it’s as private as can be in the cloud. I didn’t notice any slowdowns or other downsides to using this feature, so turn it on – and remember your password, because if you forget it, that data will be locked up forever.

Acronis is, however, still missing a very important security feature: two-factor authentication. Every cloud-oriented service should have this option to protect you from password thieves, especially backup programs that can hold literally all your personal data. It’s truly bonkers that Acronis– which has packed its program with so many features – continues to neglect something so important.

Acronis True Image – Recovery Options

The Backup section offers two useful tabs: Activity and Recovery. Activity shows when you backed up last, and Recovery allows you to select files for…well, recovery. Again, Acronis is remarkably intuitive to use, and the recovery process is no different. Just select the files you want to recover from the folder tree, then Acronis will ask where you want to restore them.

You can also click “Recovery Options” to get an email notification when the process is complete, run a command before or after the restore, choose which files to overwrite, and more. When you’re ready, click “Recover Now,” and Acronis will restore your files. Acronis doesn’t offer a courier service, unfortunately, so downloading your files is the only way to restore them. This can take a while if you’re recovering from the cloud, but with Acronis’ robust local backup features, I highly recommend backing up locally too, using the cloud backup only as a just-in-case-of-disaster option.

Acronis True Image – Testing

Acronis has a lot going on, but the basics are pretty easy to use, and users shouldn’t find it too intrusive. It’ll only nag you when you tell it to, using the notification settings mentioned earlier, and customer support is very good. Acronis used a maximum of 163MB of RAM on my test system, while CPU usage hovered around 7 percent of my 2.7GHz i7-7500U during the backup process (with encryption enabled and the main window open).

For such a feature-packed program, that’s not bad, and does a good job of using bandwidth effectively. My initial backup uploaded at around 163Mbps, even with encryption enabled. Restoration speeds were even better, easily maxing out my 200Mbps connection and restoring my 2GB test folder in 1 minute and 26 seconds. Overall, Acronis was easily the fastest program I tested, which is great provided you also have a fast connection. (Still, I recommend using the cloud as your second line of defense—local backups from an external drive or NAS will be much faster.)

Finally, I contacted support for most of the backup programs I tested, usually just with questions or clarifications. Acronis was responsive and helpful, though it did take a couple of back-and-forth emails to answer my question.

Purchasing Guide

The pricing for Acronis True Image depends on whether you want cloud storage (and how much of it you need), and how many computers you want to protect. As of press time in May 2020, the Standard version was $50 with no cloud storage. Advanced offers 250GB of cloud storage for $50 per year, or 500GB for $70 per year – with higher yearly prices as you add more computers to your plan. If you want more than 500GB, you’ll have to spring for Premium, which starts at $100 per year for 1TB on one computer, with upgrade options for more machines and cloud storage.