OK, now this is just getting crazy. If you aren’t planning to be out and about celebrating Independence Day this weekend, you must play videogames. Uncharted 2 is giving players wads of cash for shooting each other up, Halo 3 is offering double EXP for slamming hammers and detonating bombs, and now anyone who logs time in Epic Games’ Gears of War 2 will earn 8 times normal experience point generation for slicing virtual foes up and down.

Only Epic Games’ official description can do this post justice: “We’re lighting up Horde with one hell of a fireworks display—nine solid waves of Tickers followed by a single wave of pure Boomer action. Best of all, we’re capping it off with eight times the experience across all multiplayer modes. It’s insane! It’s pyrotechnic! It’s this weekend!”

The insane promotion runs now through 9 AM Tuesday, July 6. What are you waiting for?

I’m headed out to a large lake that touches both California and Nevada this weekend for the holiday (can you guess!?), and I wasn’t planning on bringing my systems. But c’mon, do I even have a choice now?