I want my life back...

It's been five months now since I bought my Xbox 360, having witnessed the glory of Call of Duty 4 on my mate Scott's machine and deciding I couldn't hold out any longer. It may well register as a bad decision...

Not because it's a bad console, you understand; the 360 is a fantastic piece of kit for the money, and in my own humble opinion unless you're after a BluRay player then you'd be nuts to fork out for a PlayStation 3. Nor is it that Call of Duty 4 has let me down. No, in fact it's quite the opposite.

You see it's too good a combination to resist. The moment it all went wrong was when I set up my Xbox Live account, thus transforming CoD4 from an excellent yet fatally short-lived single player experience to an all-consuming extravaganza of multiplayer nirvana. Since then I've struggled to find the time to do much else outside of work hours, except of course the act of being a selfless, thoughtful and loving boyfriend to Kate. No, really. Not since Tomb Raider 2 put paid to my exam revision all those years ago have I found myself so firmly at the beck and call of a video game's will, bendng like a slender reed in a gale to it's every whim.

Unless you've experienced the joys of reaching Prestige level first hand I can't hope to explain it to you mere mortals, but the crack-like addictive quality is impossible to resist. Of course as much fun as the running and gunning is it would be wrong to dismiss that the social euphoria of meeting your friends online and teaming up to take on other armchair mercenaries from around the globe, all the while shouting horrifically racist and inapropriate abuse into the microphone.

What worries me is that I find myself staying up hours later than usual to shoot more hapless fools in the head, and I also seem to be getting out of bed earlier and earlier so I can play some more while I "wait on my hair drying". And this has been for five months solid. Still, there are worse things I could be out doing. Like my job.