The Silver Standard

It may (but possibly not) come to you as a surprise to hear that I’ve never actually played games online. Despite having a 360 for years and a broadband connection, I’ve never combined the two properly.

I feel like I’ve missed an opportunity to experience something awesome, like going pants-less on a water slide (in theory this would be rad but you would most likely end up with a rash on my bum). Week in, week out, all I hear from Dutch and most of my other gaming friends is how blah blah was playing some game and then blah blah blah awesome finish.

It’s not that I don’t want to join Xbox Live – I regularly enjoy demo’s etc with the standard silver account – I simply can’t justify forking out the money for it. Sure I could pay a measly $40 to Play Asia for a Gold subscription but I just wouldn’t use it.

With ever increasing work loads along with a wife and a two-year-old to thoroughly enjoy, I’m pushing to get quality (a.k.a. any) game time as it is and quite frankly if I’m going to play something I don’t really want to play against some douche in another country who is going to swiftly annihilate me and then give my lifeless corpse a solid teabagging for added humiliation. I get enough of that when playing games with friends in my own living room.

But that was the old me; the me without the juiciest, time critical carrot dangling in front of my nose.

Thanks to a free Gears of War 3 beta code that runs out on Monday, I’m going to temporarily sign up with a free one month trial (that’s how little time I have to play games online – I won’t even sign up with a free pass) and play the game I’ve been drooling over. I know Dutch has examined the beta in detail so I won’t hammer on about it but I’m really excited about trying out something new.

As an added bonus, I should be able to play a bit of Duke Nukem Forever online too for a bit of a different experience.

Anyway, I’m really looking forward to my new gaming experience, even if it is one that millions of people have done, and do, on a regular basis. Have you experienced something new lately? How was your first dabble into online gaming?