4:00 AM CST

I'm awake. Haven't slept at all, in fact. In eager anticipation of the new survival pack for Left 4 Dead, I'm running on the hopes and dreams of so many childhood Christmases, looking for that one amazing present hidden under the proverbial tree. And yet, nothing.

4:10 AM CST

Still nothing. The release date is today, I know, and the time was ten minutes ago. What's a few minutes in the scheme of hours of fantastic game play?

4:15 AM CST

The content is finally available. Fifteen minutes is totally forgivable, considering the effort Valve went through to make the content free. I start the download and go to fetch a drink.

4:30 AM CST

I'm in front of the XBox again, content is downloaded and the game is running.

And there's no update. Surely you jest.

There is little more frustrating than staying up all damn night to download and play the much anticipated content released for a favorite game, only to find that it doesn't work. If there was one thing that really needed to be fixed, it would be the installation issues with the new survival pack. It took me no less than an hour and fifteen minutes to get the patch running so I could actually play. By the time I actually jumped into survival mode, the sun was nearing the horizon and my wife was waking up. Not only would I have to face the deadliest, most tenacious horde of infected ever, I would have to contend with sleep deprivation and an unhappy spouse.

But it was worth it.

While I have had less than an hour of actual play time on the new versus maps, and my best time for survival mode is seven minutes and three seconds, I can easily attest that there will be hours and hours of giddy replay on the new content. Sadly, I can't offer much of a review yet save to say that the lack of experience on Dead Air and Death Toll Versus has evened the playing field and made it much more exciting. Unfortunately, my play time was hindered by the need for sleep, to which I finally succumbed after struggling through an uneven match on Dead Air.

5:20 PM CST

Once more into the breach. Check back later for a full review.