A LAN session took place today, where we were introduced to a game co-developped by the National Guard, namely Prism - Guard Shield. It features an online/LAN Co-Op mode where you choose a map, set the difficulty to easy, make sure everyone's ready, then as soon as you click begin, watch as you and your teammates practically fall over.

The objective is to kill all the terrorists. Trouble is, there are over 70 of them in any map, and the AI is stupidly strong. You can select between weapon types, Light, Heavy, Assault and Sniper. Considering there were four of us, it was two two manned teams, one with Sniper, other with Assault, going down alpha and/or beta sections. The gameplay is very Halo like, only with Armour and Health Bars that are fixed. Oh, and other than what enemies drop, there are NO POWERUPS! We encountered mainly Assault styled enemies with a few Snipers and one or two rocket launchers. Oh yeah, they can all potentially kill instantly.

99% of the time, we were completely slaughtered. Sometimes due to the game's glitches (its a free "demo", so it doesn't seem finished quite yet), mostly due to stupidity, sometimes due to the AI being smarter than humanly possible. However, one map, by the 8th time, we got lucky. We cleared out our runs, met up and cleared out the big factories. Two died whilst clearing the second factory. The last kill was mine, and I personally killed over 25 of the enemy. I wasn't 1st in kill ratings, that honour went to one of the dead. The rest of the team were quite close in kill numbers, so all in all, a good job.

The main thing about the game, is that its so frustrating, its addictive. On single player, I was told it isn't as good, but with a bunch of friends with this game, then it becomes such a decent team game, you can waste an afternoon/evening/day just trying to complete a single mission! So if you want to play the game, just head here.