Can 360 Live games be playable offline?

[YoshiM]

As if this weekend I'm now a proud co-owner of an Xbox 360 Premium. To make a long story short my bro-in-law and I found one at a Gamecrazy. Playing Fight Night Round 3 was in a way like playing Super Mario 64 all over again ("This is a game?!") and caused me (amongst other reasons) to pony up for the hardware.

Anyway, since the system comes with one month of free Gold access, I was wondering if any of the popular downloadable Live games, like Marble Blast Ultra or the new Geometry Wars, can be played offline? The 360 is living at my bro-in-law's (he's allergic to my cats) and he has just a DSL modem instead of a router. Plus neither of us play online so having the system hooked up constantly is meaningless.

[Oobgarm]

Yessir.

But you have to 'buy' the full version of the game to play it in its intended form. The downloads are just trial versions.

Once the Gold trial expires, it reverts to Silver, the free plan, so you can have your scores update and download new games, but no multiplayer. That's what I'm going with currently.

[YoshiM]

Yessir.

But you have to 'buy' the full version of the game to play it in its intended form. The downloads are just trial versions.

Once the Gold trial expires, it reverts to Silver, the free plan, so you can have your scores update and download new games, but no multiplayer. That's what I'm going with currently.

I figured I'd have to pay, which isn't a problem. I just wanted to make sure that my entertainment investment didn't vanish if I pulled the network cord out.

Thanks!

[Darren870]

xbox live has to be one of the best investments as it is. Im surprised you don't play online. Heck id still pay the $50 to have just some of the features.

[Oobgarm]

xbox live has to be one of the best investments as it is. Im surprised you don't play online. Heck id still pay the $50 to have just some of the features.

Eh, when you don't play online very much, that $50 can be better used elsewhere. Besides, in the odd event that I am going to play online, I'll just create a new account. That's what I did to play with njiska a while back, anyway.

[YoshiM]

xbox live has to be one of the best investments as it is. Im surprised you don't play online. Heck id still pay the $50 to have just some of the features.

Believe me, I really wanted to in the past with my regular Xbox. I loved Phantom Dust, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Battlefield 2, Out Run 2 and probably some I'm not thinking of. I ran into two major problems:

1) People left the games I liked. Phantom Dust is a perfect example. There was a decent following and I was practically guaranteed a match when I'd log in. Over time I sporadically found empty servers and not long after the scene was dead quiet. I literally left P.D. on for a half of an hour while I did dishes, checking every so often to see if there was anyone available. Nothing. This happens in the PC world too but in many cases the online service is either free or cheap (like $10 a year for Gamespy Arcade or my $25 one-time fee for Kali I paid several years ago) so it's not that big of a deal. $50 over a year isn't bad either but if I can't find people to play with....

2) People I ran into were asshats. Battlefield 2 is the perfect example. I loved the concept of this game and when I first played the demo I fell into cooperative groups that worked as a team. It was great. As time went on those people became harder and harder to find, drown in a sea of complete bastards. Nothing says entertainment when you log into a game where a bunch of pre-teens are yelling back and forth, swearing up a storm because somebody ticked off somebody else on the team, thus causing that side to lose. After too many sessions of that, I hung my headset up.

Now I know that I *could* use my friends list. This brings up another problem: I normally game at night or sometimes on an early Saturday or Sunday. Rarely are people on my friend list online when I want to game. My schedule doesn't permit me to play earlier on weekdays and gametime on weekends is sporadic at best. Believe me, if I could find a good group o' peeps to throw down with on my schedule, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.

[Darren870]

Screaw just playing with friends, when im playing a game ill get in a chat with 4-5 other friends and we are all just playing differnt games talking to eachother. I LOVE that, i don't know if you can do that with silver but still I think its cool.

I see your points with people leaving, but new games always come out and its fun to try em online. IDK $50 seems so minute to me for the great service.