The relic really adds a ton of difficulty. I was using the low ammo one. I figured using turrets would offset that, but it really didn't. My turrets kept dying for no reason I could see--I wasn't sure what was going on there, they'd just disappear for no apparent reason even from the beginning of the game. Those morons screwing up the challenges over and over so we didn't get skill points made it harder than it should have been to compensate for the relic. As a result I was constantly out of money and scrounging for bullets. Near the end I got pistols leveled up to carry 2 main weapons and that helped, but one of them was the Saw and the reload times were horrendous since I couldn't get my reload speed upgraded and nobody had equipped the hand speed booster.
I was absolutely sure we were all going to die there. I initially got picked up and was going to take off, then the roadblock showed back up even though it had disappeared earlier. At that point my guns were empty and that rhino was all over me, so I just went down again in no time. Not fun. I'm glad you stuck around and picked me up.
BTW...anybody have any idea what the image in my psnprofile is? I didn't set it to that and it's not a game I've played AFAIK.