I know they’re giving me EXACTLY what I want by including two of the best maps from COD4 (Overgrown and Crash), but I just refuse to shell out that much for DLC. I bought the Variety Map Pack for COD4 and regretted it pretty quickly. I thought it would get me back into the game, but I found the maps mediocre and I probably played them a couple of hours. And those four new maps cost a total of $10. Why am I going to pay more for less new maps? Getting two maps I’ve already played to death doesn’t scream additional value to me, even if I appreciate the thought.

I would just not get the amount of playtime from these extra maps that would allow me to justify to myself spending 15 bucks. I haven’t played MW2 in months. I think I only beat a handful of the single-player campaign missions; I think I played even Spec-Ops more than it, since that had online co-op functionality. Maybe I’ll get around to finishing the campaign sometime, but I don’t see any way I’ll have the patience to beat it on Veteran like I did with COD4. I’d say I burnt myself out getting 1000/1000 on COD4, but my total playtime for MW2 is somewhere between two and three days, which is a significant amount of time. But I’m done. I haven’t had the urge to kill hooded terrorists on my 360 in a long while now.

It’s not even that I’m not buying this map pack, it’s that I’m not buying it DAY ONE. I was in the COD4 beta and played that for a couple of days total. I bought COD4 day one and completed it in its entirety while playing an additional few days of multiplayer. I went to the midnight launch of MW2, even after half-seriously contemplating a boycott only to stand with my former PC brethren who were screwed over by the removal of dedicated servers. But it wasn’t even a boycott in my head — I legitimately wasn’t interested until the day before it came out when I realized I could not live without playing a new Infinity Ward game as soon as possible. But I don’t see such a turnaround happening again; the Stimulus Package isn’t a new game — it’s an overpriced add-on.

I don’t regret buying MW2, but I know I’d regret buying this map pack. I’ll save my 1200 MS points for an awesome Xbox Live Arcade game or two. And so ends the love affair of a non-dudebro with his — and seemingly everyone else’s — favorite FPS series of the past few years. I’m sure Infinity Ward will care after a million people buy the Stimulus Package today.