Send some game invites my way if you are trying it out. My gamertag is “NeutralX2”.

Microsoft will offer free access to its Xbox Live Gold service from March 31 through April 2, the company said Thursday.

The company already offers full-time free access to a lower, silver level of its live service. Users there can create player profiles, maintain lists of friends, access the Xbox Live marketplace, play multiplayer online games, and send and receive voice and text messages.

Gold-level users, who usually pay $49.99 a year, get all those features, plus enhanced gamer feedback, better friends list management, access to more sophisticated online game play and more.

As part of the Free Xbox Live Gold Weekend, which is being sponsored by Verizon to promote that company’s high-speed broadband connections, Xbox Live will host a series of special events, including the ability to play in certain games against celebrities, download special high-definition performances from musicians and more.

Consumers will also be able to play against Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls professional video game team.

Owners of both the original Xbox and the Xbox 360 can use Xbox Live.

– News.com

A new backward compatibility update is now available for the Xbox 360. You can see the complete updated list here.

Don’t have Xbox Live? Download the update to your PC here.

New:
BLACK™
Star Wars Battlefront™ II
World Soccer Winning Eleven 9

Updated:
Darkwatch™
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas™
Half-Life® 2
Fable®
Fable®: The Lost Chapters™
Forza Motorsport™
Ninja Gaiden®
Ninja Gaiden® Black
SSX 3
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® Chaos Theory™
kill.switch
World Series Baseball® 2K3

So, my friend decided to order Oblivion for Xbox 360 for me since I am poor at the moment. It’s nice of him to do that and let me pay him back later. So he orders it on Thursday and goes for 2 day shipping. It arrives on Tuesday after I get back from class. I am pretty excited that I am going to finally play this game that everyone is raving about. I open the package and come face to face with…

That’s right; BestBuy.com confused a soccer game with oblivion. Not only that, but it’s a PS2 game. I don’t even have a damn ps2. So now I have to figure out what to do. Thanks a lot Best Buy.

So I rented this game the other night and finished it the next day. The campaign itself is pretty varied. You fight in a lot of different places throughout which helps to keep it fresh. In some levels you will be driving a tank around the desert, in another you will be flying around in a B-24 Liberator manning the guns and dropping bombs. You can even call in artillery strikes at some points in the game. There is also a pretty wide range of weapons to use. Unfortunately the game does not nail down the feel of actually shooting the guns. The infantry combat can be pretty weak at times; it just seems to lack that visceral intensity that other Call of Duty games have. The AI in the game is actually pretty bad and makes the shooting even worse. Teammates can’t seem to hit anything at all and like to get in the way a lot. They are constantly trying to shoot through walls to hit enemies as well. Overall the teammates are pretty useless besides just being extra targets for the enemy to shoot at. The graphics in the game are good. The fire and smoke effects (which you see a lot of) look pretty good. The characters, weapons, and vehicles look nice and have a decent amount of detail. While the levels are completely linear, they are actually designed pretty well and look good.

Overall the game can be pretty fun at times. Although it’s clearly inferior to the original pc game, it’s the best Call of Duty game on a current generation console by far. Since the campaign was pretty short and the multiplayer wasn’t anything special, I would suggest this as a rental.