I haven't played the most hyped video game of all time (Halo 3) in weeks.  I don't know how long it has been, but it could very well be 2 full months.  It has a little bit to do with my understanding of Halo 3 being what I call "downloadable content for Halo 2".  It has a lot to do with Call of Duty 4.

Call of Duty 4 is alongside Battlefield 2 as being the best modern war fighting simulator of the day.  CoD4 has an amazing campaign that leaves you doing things that you have never done in a singleplayer campaign before.  The multiplayer is very rich and immersive.

This Thanksgiving I had family over to my house.  I threw a couple of uncles on the AC-130 mission in CoD4 and they were hooked.  My uncles had never played XBOX before, let alone a next-gen game.  They picked the AC-130 mission up and ran with it.  Smiles on their faces.  People laughing as huge explosions obliterated the enemy. 

I highly recommend this game for the campaign alone.  Contrary to other reports, this game does not have a short campaign.  Playing off and on, it took me several weeks to fully beat this game on Veteran.  In fact, parts of this game were part of the hardest and most technical FPS gameplay I've experienced.  I had to play some parts of this game 6-12 hours just to get to the next checkpoint.

Multiplayer in CoD4 is great.  It reminds me of Halo 1 because of the quick kills and the successive runs that you can make.  It's nothing to kill 3-4 guys in a matter of seconds.  It's nothing to get 10+ kills in a row without dying.  This is very much like Halo 1 and very different from a close combat fighting/shooting game like Gears of War.  This game is about map control which ultimately leads to spawn control.  If you control the map, you can dominate the field.

There's huge replayability in the multiplayer thanks to the unlockable equipments and perks.  Red dot scopes, new camo patterns, new weapons, new grenades, etc.  The more you play, the more you unlock.  A novel idea that keeps people playing multiplayer (although I really only need one weapon--an M16 with red dot scope, extra bullet damage, and bullet penetration.

There are two major weaknesses to CoD4.  The pre-game lobby system on XBOX Live fails about 5% of the time.  This is due to all the different routers and ISP's that gamers are using.  That said, Infinity Ward needs to fix their game so that others don't get booted out of the game while trying to find matches.

The other weakness is CoD4's LAN system.  It's laughable.  It's extremely limiting.  In fact, there's no pre-game lobby system.  The host must setup a game, announce that it's ready, and wait for people to join up into a live game.  Unacceptable.  You also can't use your custom weapons builds in LAN play.  You are stuck with using default weapons set by the game's designers.

Perhaps IW knows what they are doing and don't want CoD4 played on a LAN setting--specifically offline competitive tournaments like Major League Gaming.

Call of Duty 4 is a beast of a game.  Get it.

I'm serious.  But don't call me Shirley.