Red Dead Redonculous

I have recently been besieged by a friend to consider investing in a copy of Red Dead Redemption. Under his constant recommendation every time I get on Xbox Live to talk with him, I looked into the game and it's videos. One video in particular really took my interest and made me take a second glance at the game. The video stresses the idea of a free roam multiplayer experience that seeks to combine the best parts of an action game with the addictive and social environment of an MMO. They have created an environment in which players from around the world can get together and form raids and work together in the same vein as an World of Warcraft, but instead of the massive amounts of gameplay jargon that is associated with MMOs like that, you can simply turn to a friend and yell at him to put a bullet into the crotch of that bandit up there. No need to silly the experience with words that only a tenth of the gamer population understand (while I made this statistic up, I believe it fits). It really looks like it could revolutionize multiplayer, and if it works well enough, it may be copied for years to come.

Halo Reach is still a large part of my gaming experience though, and until they shut it down, I'm afraid it will be for the longest time. I can't get enough of it. It feels like even the pregame lobby is better under the new game, though this may be because of the localization of all your friends under one roof again. I'm always in a party of six guys playing around and jumping from game to game. When we get into a lobby, everyone on both sides had mics and it the lobby turns into a verbal battleground of poorly worded phrases and repetition of the words "your mother" and "balls". It feels like I'm in a gang of sorts, trolling other peoples turfs looking for fights. Not a real gang mind you, more like the Jets from West Side Story, but with an NSFW rating