MW 2019 on Steam has been $60 for a long time, so I've avoided buying it. I already bought it on Xbox One X years ago, but I've switched my gaming to PC. (And it's not transferable from Xbox purchase to Windows, screw you Activision and screw you Microsoft.) It's now $20 on Steam.
I don't want to give a cent to Activision because of A) turning the series to a vomit bucket, quality-wise and B) destroying that H2M thing, but I do want to pay to own this on Steam and have it in my library:
- The gun feel, the reloads, the smoke, the sound, the smooth solid quality. To me COD4 2007 and MW2 2009 were the peak, but MW 2019 is the last hurrah of Mark Grigsby's animation etc etc etc before the series was ruined in my opinion by unacceptable publishing decisions and stylistic changes pathetically chasing the goofy cartoonish nonsense of Fortnite and Overwatch (yet while failing to chase any of the considerate thoughtful high-quality little design decisions here and there in Apex Legends).
- It also has bots for single-player. At this point that's my preferred way to sip the "fine beverage" of old school quality vintage Call of Duty without any sweat. I like to move around the maps and enjoy the art direction…I can't do that enjoyably in multiplayer or not without hurting my team.
- I think the campaign is bad (sometimes laughably bad) except for a few levels like the Russia shoot-out/chase and the final facility attack. Now it can't possibly be that my memory is correct where we flashback to childhood of a girl getting chased by an evil Russian soldier in her house…this isn't real right? I played through the game on Xbox years ago, I must be mixing up my memory with a low-vote Skyrim mod right? Also they turned Price into a roided up person with a wrestler for a voice and a chicken sandwich for a face, Alex is a hipster dork with no business here, and Garrick is the dreaded Nervous Newbie arc. But oh well!
Side note about the old classics: to anyone who doesn't already know, MW2 2009 and COD4 are purchasable on Steam and great. I've also got bot mods for my own play sessions for MW2, and downloaded extra custom map packs…see above for why bots are fun. I'm using iw4x, fully virus-scanned, it runs beautifully and has protections if you do online multiplayer. Also note that the stock version of MW2 2009 can be played multiplayer with essentially full safety against RCE if you follow the precautions.