Finished Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare. Or got as close to finishing it as I'm gonna. I made it down to Mexico, was pretty much done with clearing out the Selpheco graveyard and the my PS3 decided to go on strike and I can't get it to boot back up again(I did manage to get the disc out when i managed to get it to the "you had an error" screen). I ended up watching the rest of the cutscenes on youtube and I'm fine with that, because I was getting a bit tired of the gameplay. When each encounter is more or less just more and more zombies tossed at you and only headshots count for anything(the blunderbuss is a nice alternative though), yeah, it all feels a bit samey.
With that done, and my PS3 OOC for a little bit, I decide to go ahead and fire up RDR2 and got to chapter 2. So far I'm digging it. I love the first chapter giving a very clear sense of the gang being cut off, on the run, low on supplies and well, pretty much down and out, while acting as a justified tutorial. It's kind of surreal seeing all these characters I recently faced as enemies(Javier, Bill and Dutch) as comrades and friends, and seeing John being the kind of dumb kid of the group. Not sure how I feel about Arthur. He's a different character then John to be sure and not quite as likeable(at times he's quite an asshole) but still getting a sense of his character.
Seeing Dutch as a somewhat reasonable leader is fascinating and I can see why he has a reputation he has from his former gang members, especially how he's fairly egalitarian in how he treats the rather diverse group in the camp. OTOH, I am seeing hints of insecurity already, his notable concern about people questioning his plans, and there's the fact that the whole "We need to lie low and let the heat die down" directly conflicts with his plan to rob a fucking train so soon afterwards. Robbing a train that belongs a robber baron is the very opposite of lying low. There's also the "incident" during the blackwater heist where Dutch did something out of character that keeps coming up(which I suspect is him shooting the girl in the head mentioned in RDR1).
I have noticed in Chapter 2 that the gang is supposed to be lying low, but also doing work to support the camp. The mission where you take the ladies into Valentine shows they're all trying to either gather intel or scam people, which I can kind of see, but also seems like it might run counter to the whole "don't attract unwanted attention" idea. Dutch was rather unclear exactly what work he wanted to keep the camp supplied so maybe it's ok?
The new control scheme is kind of hard to get used to and I've accidently pulled a gun several times I didn't want to, making me restart one mission in particular a number of times. It wasn't a hard mission but it was annoying. The level of detail is kind of amazing and possibly pedantic(fixing the wagon wheel at the beginning of chapter 2) but so far I'm really impressed by the immersiveness of it. The camp is also quite nice as a home base, just getting to take a load off and walk around to chat with people. I have no idea how much it really matters to contribute to and upgrade it(a lot of them seem to need "PERFECT" skins, which are apparently a massive pain to get. Anyway, I'll be playing this for a while so I'll have plenty of time to find out.