First time I played this game, I went straight to Live play. And I did not like it at all. It just seemed like senseless killing with absolutely no point. Then I tried the single player mode. It helped me ease my way into this game and reduced the learning curve immenseley. Now, I only played Team Deathmatch mode in single player before I had to return it (it was a rental), and that was the only mode of play I could get into. So maybe if I played the the other modes offline I would have enjoyed them more. Nonetheless, Team Deathmatch was still more fun than any other Live game, once you get into it. To me, it felt like some kind of extreme basketball game where instead of getting points you had to kill. At one point when we were winning we all decided to get together and find a hiding spot. I had never experienced such levels of teamwork in any Live game, even Ghost Recon (the fact that you have to press the white button to to talk leaves many players mute)!Also, no other Live game takes advantage of the service better than this game. It has better than average Quick Match and Optimatch features, player rankings, 4 player guest support, downloadable content (coming soon...), and more!!! It will be a long time before another game uses Live as well as this one.Though you really need to play aat least a little bit of the single player mode first, I don't reccomend this game to anyone who doesn't have Xbox Live. Otherwise, this is definately the game to get with your XBL Starter.