Yesterday after working at the Office, I went over to the apartment of one of my department’s team leader for a Xbox 360 LAN party. We hooked three of the machines together, and a varying group of from four to nine of us played Halo-3, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 into the wee hours of the night.

When I say “wee hours”, please understand I mean 10pm, because, shit, I got up at 5:15am and I was tiiiired.

I am not a big gamer. Every now and then I get sucked in by something, but with the exception of the addictive MMORGs I play (AstroEmpires & OGames), I haven’t really gotten into any games in a very long time. I do own some game systems — a PlayStation 2 (bought very used), and a Nintendo-64. Hey, don’t laugh: I own at The Facility level.

I loved playing Counter-Strike, a cooperative, team-based first-person shooter where teams were divided into “terrorists” and “counter-terrorists”, and missions were based on planting and defusing a bomb, or rescuing hostages, or escorting a VIP player to a safe zone without being assassinated.

I stumbled one lucky day onto the [EGBT] Counter-Strike server, and forged friendships that last to this day. As a matter of fact, the folks who maintain this blog I met on [EGBT].

Anyway, I’m getting off-track. The point is, I love cooperative game play. I would play Counter-Strike almost every few minute I had, and it didn’t matter that, honestly? I was pretty awful. But every now and then someone would text out (because this was when voice-communication was just starting up) “Great job, Snay!” after I’d run headlong into the opposing team carrying a live grenade.

Because that’s how I play.

And Call of Duty? It was my first time playing the game, but it’s like Counter-Strike on crack.

Which is to say, it’s sort of like if you took the cinematography of BlackHawk Down, and coupled it with game play, it’s sort of like that. Only more intense. Also, the blood splatter on the TV when you get wounded is crazy spooky. That said, pretty sure I’m in love with the game.

So, now the question is (and this I ask you), should I look into purchasing an Xbox 360? Or a Playstation 3?