Call Of Duty Black Ops III thoughts of the game.

[Az]

You think some sort of death signal from Microsoft is imminent that will brick Xbox 360's?

I think paying full price for a game with absolutely zero offline component that also requires an additional paid subscription fee *just to play online* on a system that is all but dead is ludicrous, especially when the previous dozen games in the series on the same console are nothing like that. We all buy digital goods knowing they're just glorified rentals, but full price when the system is almost on life support? This shoddy release screams for a free to play (or fee to play, in game micro transactions, $2 pot-leaf gun camo, whatever) model instead of how it ended up being released.

Maybe 3-5 years ago I could have seen this being a viable release if at an expensive price point. With Black Ops 1/2 I can still play all the modes plus still have multiplayer splitscreen and additionally still use all my DLC even if I let my gold membership lapse for a millisecond. When MS/Activision starts pulling the plug on servers in the next year or two for individual games (or the entire 360) Black Ops 1/2 doesn't turn into a Game Gear TV tuner-style paperweight, I can have just as much fun with it as I do right now with Outtrigger, Alien Front Online, and other network-centric DC games.

Much different scenario from Black Ops III which will be rendered completely and absolutely useless. Given the series' reliance on the DLC and season pass cash cows yet they don't even plan on releasing map packs for the 360 does not bode well for the servers being up or consistent network updates. While I lump Amazon reviews into the same category as Gamefaqs reviews I certainly never expected to find all the angry 1 star "this is bullshit due price versus lack of content" comments.

Sounds as if you'd be best off following my tactic, since clearly you don't hold much interest in the online component. I buy these when they hit $10 or less for the short single player campaigns.

Exactly what I've always done with this and the BF series. I own all the 360 releases of BF and CoD, I think I paid $39.99 for BOII around launch but other than that I've never paid more than $10-12 each for any of them. At that rate they're an excellent buy and serve as a gigantic deterrent for buying map packs. Why pay $15 for 5 new maps when I could pay half that and get an *entire new game* in the same series? I really like BFBC2 but didn't get into it until a year or so ago. I was dying to pick up the Vietnam expansion but at $15 I knew that I couldn't get that much use out of it being that wonderful catch 22: You can only play it online.... but nobody plays it online. Instead I spent $5 on BF3 and $8 on BF Hardline which was definitely a better investment.