Red Faction Update...

So last night Alex and I got to play some "Guerrilla" online...and it was an absolute blast.

I don't think I've had that much fun playing a game online since the first week or so of "Left 4 Dead," so basically that means that it's the most fun I've had in about 7 months with a game.

The levels are set up well, the weapons are balanced well, the controls are tight, and the game just rocks.

Alex and I played for a good four hours or so and didn't once feel like we were ready to quit. We finally stopped playing when he had to go to sleep so he could get up for work the next morning.

I think the main thing that makes this game so enjoyable to me is the fact that you gain no matter how well your team does. As long as you play well, you still get rewarded with experience. This is a stark contrast to "Halo," where if your team doesn't win you don't get anything to show for it. In "Halo," your team must win in order for you to get an experience point and continue to move up in the rankings. So, if you get 40 kills and only die 3 times, but your team mates all get slaughtered and as a team you end up losing, you still get nothing...even though you played as best as you possibly could. However, in "Guerrilla," you get experience for nearly everything that you do in the game...and don't get penalized by anything. So even if you only get 3 kills and die 15 times, you still get experience for those 3 kills. You get Bonus Experience for doing things like killing opponents in quick succession, getting headshots, and major bonus points for winning games.

But basically, you get experience and move up in ranking almost all the time...even if you don't do so well you get a little experience...and if you do well yourself but your team fails miserably, you can still get plenty of experience. There were a few times last night where Alex and I ended up on pretty bad teams, but the two of us still ended up having the most experience gained in the game because we did well ourselves.

That experience fact alone makes the game amazingly "easy to get along with" if you catch my drift. It doesn't carry the same amount of frustration as "Halo" does, because just as long as you're doing alright, you'll be getting rewarded, regardless of how idiotic your team mates are acting.