I was reading the Cblogs yesterday, and someone mentioned that Gamespot has COD4 beta keys. I'm not a big fan of FPS, but I'd heard such good things about the game that I figured I'd give it a shot... at worst I'd hate it and delete the d/l.

I start downloading the beta after entering my beta key and it's almost a gig. This isn't normally a problem, but my internet connection is running like shit and so it takes a few hours. In the mean time I play the demo for Sonic 2, spend some quality time with the g/f and our cats and watch the Colbert Report. (Did you know that MSNBC ran 3 hours of their 9/11/01 footage on the 11th of this year... what a bunch of twats!) All the while I'm thinking, "Here I am spending all this time dicking around while this demo of ANOTHER Call of Duty downloads, when I could be finishing off Dead Rising or Oblivion." So I go back in to check on the progress and it's done. It's about 30 minutes after midnight.

I start up the beta, and notice that at level one I really can't do any of the cool shit that I'd heard about, but I should be able to later. I get into the game as a heavy gunner in a free for all, and four minutes into it I realize that I'm having fun. A lot of fun. I continue ranking up and playing for hours... and log off to go to sleep a little before 5am. Call of Duty really is all it's cracked up to be... it's fun, easily accesible and it has a ton of cool, innovative features that make it a truly unique shooter in a sea of nazis and aliens. If you have an XBox 360 with Gold Live you owe it to yourself to go try out this excellent multiplayer experience, as I finally feel that Live is being worth what I paid for it.