Red Dead Redemption: Buy for More than a Fistful of Dollars
Just to make this clear: this is a Red Dead Revolver sequel, but it has none of the characters that the 2004 original did. Red is not the protagonist, replaced by John Marston, who is, in my opinion, the most likeable protagonist Rockstar Games has ever made. He is a scarred man, with a past that he wants to forget; the government don?t want this, though, and so they take his wife and son to make sure he gets his priorities right. He is given the task of hunting down the members of his old gang, but this, like so many plans in video games over the decades, doesn?t go to plan. John ends up left for dead by his old friend, Bill Williamson, and is rescued by a rancher, Bonnie McFarlane, and her father. He is taken back to their ranch, and this is where the game begins.
I?m just going to say this now, and get it over with. Get. This. Game. 2010 has had some great releases during the first half, and will undoubtedly have some memorable ones during the second half. Mass Effect 2, Super Street Fighter IV, Alan Wake, Battlefield: Bad Company 2. All excellent games (Mass Effect 2 made its way into my list of my five favourite games ever), made by some top-notch developers. Red Dead Redemption joins their ranks, and has also joined my top 5 favourite games. It is just that good. Why? I will tell you now. But to warn you before you read, I will be making comparisons to the last great sandbox game, Grand Theft Auto 4. Characters, setting, story, side missions, they will all be compared. Don?t consider this a comparison review, because Red Dead Redemption does things which Grand Theft Auto IV didn?t. Namely, it has the ability to be so much more fun.
The setting of this game is one that will fill the player with awe. The dusty landscapes may seem empty and drab, but they?re so much fun to wander around on your trusty steed. You will witness many goings-on during your travels, such as stagecoach robberies, people being chased by ravenous wolves, and, my personal favourite, NPCs having to be saved from hangings. That may sound morbid, but shooting the noose that is choking them is always satisfying, and makes you feel like a true sharpshooter. The wild animals that you will spot in the desolate wilderness of the fictional New Austin range from the harmless (armadillos, rabbits) to the satanic (grizzly bears). That last adjective may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but trust me, when you get into the later stages of the game, those powerful beings will be around, lurking in the trees, waiting to kill your mount and feast on your defenceless arse. One of the scariest moments I have ever had in gaming involved the grizzlies, and the people in my Xbox Live Party at the time of this event heard my screams, so yeah, it was unbelievably scary, but all the while it was hilariously enjoyable.
The story is also a strong point, purely because the characters aren?t irritating (except possibly Nigel West Dickens) but they never become as annoying as the perverted Roman Bellic of GTA4 fame. Thank God the Wild West didn?t contain strip clubs or mobile phones; if all I heard from my TV was ?BIG AMERICAN TEETIES!? I think I would have exchanged the game there and then. But it doesn?t, and that?s what makes this all the more enjoyable. You can choose whether or not you do the side missions, and never have the petulant voice of a Serbian arsehole drilling into your brain (he is not Russian. This is what nearly everyone playing that game didn?t understand). Well, in GTA4 you didn?t have to do them, but it was practically non-optional due to the frequent reminders that you were neglecting your friends. Think the only one I established a connection with was Little Jacob, but that was because he was Rastafarian. And Rastas are awesome. The side missions in Red Dead Redemption sometimes feel like proper full blown story missions, the Stranger missions being a highlight. These missions begin randomly after encountering someone asking for assistance, and they can last for a while; I didn?t even finish some until after I had completed the game! They can range from killing a certain person, locating someone, picking flowers, hunting beavers, and defending women?s honour. They are very, very entertaining, and the end of these missions can be saddening, humorous, or just plain disturbing in some cases. They are so much better than GTA4?s side missions, that were tedious, boring, and chock full of unfunny lines from people such as Roman with his obsession with ?BIG AMERICAN TEETIES!?, and possibly Brucie with his massive ego (and he turned out to have homosexual tendencies in The Ballad of Gay Tony, how much I LOLed when I found out about that). Getting back to Red Dead now, one of the Stranger missions, trying not to give too much away, involves John trying to find out why a child and a woman have gone missing. The name of the mission did give it away in a sense, but I still got a surprise when the last segment appeared, and the culprit was revealed. You got to choose the ending too, and, being the vicious bastard I am, I opted for the immoral ending. This brings me onto the morality system.
You know in GTA4 where you could choose whether to kill or spare people in various missions? Well, that was OK and all, but Red Dead Redemption makes it a whole lot better. Niko kept on talking about how he wasn?t a killer whilst mowing down pedestrians in his Banshee, but John Marston IS a killer, and he DOES tell people about his days in a gang. This makes him a more believable character when you go out and kill people without bullshitting about not wanting to spill blood. Anyway, when you kill an NPC who isn?t a bandit or a wild animal, your morality will decrease, and this will be shown by a bar on the bottom of the screen. It will go down when you slay innocents and officers of the law, but will increase if you help civilians with tasks such as subduing robbers or doing night-watching duty. High morality will make you a known figure around the in-game world and will make it easier to get away with crimes such as horse-snatching and hogtying innocents. Low morality, however, will cause widespread panic whenever you enter an area, but it also has its benefits. Your actions actually CHANGE the world, unlike other games such as GTA4, where you will still end up losing a loved one and killing the same dude at the end. Not naming names just in case you haven?t finished the game. It?s been released for two years though, so if you haven?t, where?ve you been all this time?
In the graphics department, the game is breathtaking. Dust erupts from dirty tracks in a realistic fashion when your horse gallops along it, the weather effects make you feel as if you?re in the Wild West, and the textures are amazing; a bit blurry up close, but you never really need to study rocks up close in games?ever. The horses are the best looking I have ever seen, and you can really grow attached to them. One horse I owned I had actually given the name Ridey, and when I jumped off a high ledge only to be greeted with the ground I realised my horse was doomed. I felt sad as I had lost my horse, but then realised its beautiful hide was worth money (an actual fistful too!) and so skinned it without hesitation. Call me evil, but that happened to about twenty horses throughout the twenty or so hours I played through the single player. One horse dead an hour?not bad going if I must say so myself! That?s animal graphics out of the way, onto the facial animations of the human characters. John Marston looks like a believable outlaw, what with the scars on the right hand side of his face, and supporting characters such as Nigel West Dickens and Marshal Johnson have some of the best facial animations I have seen in any game in the ten years I have been a gamer. I would go as far to say they have beaten the facial animations in Half Life 2 (Alyx Vance seemed nearly human at some stages in the epic story) and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Well, nearly anything can beat the latter; their frozen, emotionless faces made the excellent RPG almost cringe-worthy. Can?t believe I thought they looked great at the time, how misinformed I was. People complained about the dated look of Grand Theft Auto 4, and how the faces looked kinda plastic. OK, maybe that?s just me, but Red Dead Redemption is the most realistic game I have ever come across. The characters don?t seem stereotypical, as all have their own personalities and sense of humour. For example, Seth talks to the dead, and Nigel West Dickens is an aged con artist who, upon encountering him for the first time, praises the Lord for your presence and his rescue. None of them shout about ?BIG AMERICAN TEETIES!? either, which is a godsend. I will stop with that now.
With one of the best stories I have had the pleasure of playing in a while, how does the multiplayer shape up?
I am curious myself, as to whether it will last as long as Halo 3 in the replay stakes. Halo 3 is my favourite Xbox Live game, closely followed by Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare 2. Red Dead Redemption is definitely fun, and the Free Roam is SO much better than Grand Theft Auto 4?s. The whole of New Austin is your playground, and you can do as you please, be it killing other players or annihilating the whole of a gang hideout, of which there are seven, all of them awesome. The game modes, such as Grab the Bag and Gang Shootout, can be really, really hectic, and depending on the skill of the opposing teams, can take a while to conclude. You get to customise your online avatar, but not by creating your own character: you must pick from a generous range of characters, which consist of tubby Mexicans, dirty, bearded men and, so female players won?t be discriminated against, women. You can also choose horses, the first choice being a donkey. Called El Senor. Which can?t jump. But is still awesome. A lot like the rest of the game, really, but the adjective ?awesome? really shouldn?t be used as frequently as I use it, so I must apologise for my lack of creative descriptions. A co-op mission pack is being released soon, which will make multiplayer longer lasting, depending on if the missions are any good. Rockstar?s track record with downloadable content has been impressive to say the least, so they won?t disappoint.
Any downsides to the game? Yes, but they are relatively minor. It can glitch from time to time. One of the side missions wouldn?t let me pick up an item as the button prompt refused to appear, so I had to reset my Xbox. Pop up is rife in the Wild West also, but it?s forgivable with a game this size and scope. My advice? Install this to your Xbox 360; glitches are less frequent, but still existent, unfortunately. Hopefully updates may sort this out, but it?s not an overblown problem.
All in all, this is a must buy. It is worth the registered retail price, the game is pure quality throughout, and, if Rockstar are lucky, the multiplayer will last as long as other games already on the market. Just go and buy it before I force you to?at gunpoint?on a Hungarian Half-Bred?in Mexico.
Just to make this clear: this is a Red Dead Revolver sequel, but it has none of the characters that the 2004 original did. Red is not the protagonist, replaced by John Marston, who is, in my opinion, the most likeable protagonist Rockstar Games has ever made. He is a scarred man, with a past that he wants to forget; the government don?t want this, though, and so they take his wife and son to make sure he gets his priorities right. He is given the task of hunting down the members of his old gang, but this, like so many plans in video games over the decades, doesn?t go to plan. John ends up left for dead by his old friend, Bill Williamson, and is rescued by a rancher, Bonnie McFarlane, and her father. He is taken back to their ranch, and this is where the game begins.
I?m just going to say this now, and get it over with. Get. This. Game. 2010 has had some great releases during the first half, and will undoubtedly have some memorable ones during the second half. Mass Effect 2, Super Street Fighter IV, Alan Wake, Battlefield: Bad Company 2. All excellent games (Mass Effect 2 made its way into my list of my five favourite games ever), made by some top-notch developers. Red Dead Redemption joins their ranks, and has also joined my top 5 favourite games. It is just that good. Why? I will tell you now. But to warn you before you read, I will be making comparisons to the last great sandbox game, Grand Theft Auto 4. Characters, setting, story, side missions, they will all be compared. Don?t consider this a comparison review, because Red Dead Redemption does things which Grand Theft Auto IV didn?t. Namely, it has the ability to be so much more fun.
The setting of this game is one that will fill the player with awe. The dusty landscapes may seem empty and drab, but they?re so much fun to wander around on your trusty steed. You will witness many goings-on during your travels, such as stagecoach robberies, people being chased by ravenous wolves, and, my personal favourite, NPCs having to be saved from hangings. That may sound morbid, but shooting the noose that is choking them is always satisfying, and makes you feel like a true sharpshooter. The wild animals that you will spot in the desolate wilderness of the fictional New Austin range from the harmless (armadillos, rabbits) to the satanic (grizzly bears). That last adjective may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but trust me, when you get into the later stages of the game, those powerful beings will be around, lurking in the trees, waiting to kill your mount and feast on your defenceless arse. One of the scariest moments I have ever had in gaming involved the grizzlies, and the people in my Xbox Live Party at the time of this event heard my screams, so yeah, it was unbelievably scary, but all the while it was hilariously enjoyable.
The story is also a strong point, purely because the characters aren?t irritating (except possibly Nigel West Dickens) but they never become as annoying as the perverted Roman Bellic of GTA4 fame. Thank God the Wild West didn?t contain strip clubs or mobile phones; if all I heard from my TV was ?BIG AMERICAN TEETIES!? I think I would have exchanged the game there and then. But it doesn?t, and that?s what makes this all the more enjoyable. You can choose whether or not you do the side missions, and never have the petulant voice of a Serbian arsehole drilling into your brain (he is not Russian. This is what nearly everyone playing that game didn?t understand). Well, in GTA4 you didn?t have to do them, but it was practically non-optional due to the frequent reminders that you were neglecting your friends. Think the only one I established a connection with was Little Jacob, but that was because he was Rastafarian. And Rastas are awesome. The side missions in Red Dead Redemption sometimes feel like proper full blown story missions, the Stranger missions being a highlight. These missions begin randomly after encountering someone asking for assistance, and they can last for a while; I didn?t even finish some until after I had completed the game! They can range from killing a certain person, locating someone, picking flowers, hunting beavers, and defending women?s honour. They are very, very entertaining, and the end of these missions can be saddening, humorous, or just plain disturbing in some cases. They are so much better than GTA4?s side missions, that were tedious, boring, and chock full of unfunny lines from people such as Roman with his obsession with ?BIG AMERICAN TEETIES!?, and possibly Brucie with his massive ego (and he turned out to have homosexual tendencies in The Ballad of Gay Tony, how much I LOLed when I found out about that). Getting back to Red Dead now, one of the Stranger missions, trying not to give too much away, involves John trying to find out why a child and a woman have gone missing. The name of the mission did give it away in a sense, but I still got a surprise when the last segment appeared, and the culprit was revealed. You got to choose the ending too, and, being the vicious bastard I am, I opted for the immoral ending. This brings me onto the morality system.
You know in GTA4 where you could choose whether to kill or spare people in various missions? Well, that was OK and all, but Red Dead Redemption makes it a whole lot better. Niko kept on talking about how he wasn?t a killer whilst mowing down pedestrians in his Banshee, but John Marston IS a killer, and he DOES tell people about his days in a gang. This makes him a more believable character when you go out and kill people without bullshitting about not wanting to spill blood. Anyway, when you kill an NPC who isn?t a bandit or a wild animal, your morality will decrease, and this will be shown by a bar on the bottom of the screen. It will go down when you slay innocents and officers of the law, but will increase if you help civilians with tasks such as subduing robbers or doing night-watching duty. High morality will make you a known figure around the in-game world and will make it easier to get away with crimes such as horse-snatching and hogtying innocents. Low morality, however, will cause widespread panic whenever you enter an area, but it also has its benefits. Your actions actually CHANGE the world, unlike other games such as GTA4, where you will still end up losing a loved one and killing the same dude at the end. Not naming names just in case you haven?t finished the game. It?s been released for two years though, so if you haven?t, where?ve you been all this time?
In the graphics department, the game is breathtaking. Dust erupts from dirty tracks in a realistic fashion when your horse gallops along it, the weather effects make you feel as if you?re in the Wild West, and the textures are amazing; a bit blurry up close, but you never really need to study rocks up close in games?ever. The horses are the best looking I have ever seen, and you can really grow attached to them. One horse I owned I had actually given the name Ridey, and when I jumped off a high ledge only to be greeted with the ground I realised my horse was doomed. I felt sad as I had lost my horse, but then realised its beautiful hide was worth money (an actual fistful too!) and so skinned it without hesitation. Call me evil, but that happened to about twenty horses throughout the twenty or so hours I played through the single player. One horse dead an hour?not bad going if I must say so myself! That?s animal graphics out of the way, onto the facial animations of the human characters. John Marston looks like a believable outlaw, what with the scars on the right hand side of his face, and supporting characters such as Nigel West Dickens and Marshal Johnson have some of the best facial animations I have seen in any game in the ten years I have been a gamer. I would go as far to say they have beaten the facial animations in Half Life 2 (Alyx Vance seemed nearly human at some stages in the epic story) and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Well, nearly anything can beat the latter; their frozen, emotionless faces made the excellent RPG almost cringe-worthy. Can?t believe I thought they looked great at the time, how misinformed I was. People complained about the dated look of Grand Theft Auto 4, and how the faces looked kinda plastic. OK, maybe that?s just me, but Red Dead Redemption is the most realistic game I have ever come across. The characters don?t seem stereotypical, as all have their own personalities and sense of humour. For example, Seth talks to the dead, and Nigel West Dickens is an aged con artist who, upon encountering him for the first time, praises the Lord for your presence and his rescue. None of them shout about ?BIG AMERICAN TEETIES!? either, which is a godsend. I will stop with that now.
With one of the best stories I have had the pleasure of playing in a while, how does the multiplayer shape up?
I am curious myself, as to whether it will last as long as Halo 3 in the replay stakes. Halo 3 is my favourite Xbox Live game, closely followed by Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare 2. Red Dead Redemption is definitely fun, and the Free Roam is SO much better than Grand Theft Auto 4?s. The whole of New Austin is your playground, and you can do as you please, be it killing other players or annihilating the whole of a gang hideout, of which there are seven, all of them awesome. The game modes, such as Grab the Bag and Gang Shootout, can be really, really hectic, and depending on the skill of the opposing teams, can take a while to conclude. You get to customise your online avatar, but not by creating your own character: you must pick from a generous range of characters, which consist of tubby Mexicans, dirty, bearded men and, so female players won?t be discriminated against, women. You can also choose horses, the first choice being a donkey. Called El Senor. Which can?t jump. But is still awesome. A lot like the rest of the game, really, but the adjective ?awesome? really shouldn?t be used as frequently as I use it, so I must apologise for my lack of creative descriptions. A co-op mission pack is being released soon, which will make multiplayer longer lasting, depending on if the missions are any good. Rockstar?s track record with downloadable content has been impressive to say the least, so they won?t disappoint.
Any downsides to the game? Yes, but they are relatively minor. It can glitch from time to time. One of the side missions wouldn?t let me pick up an item as the button prompt refused to appear, so I had to reset my Xbox. Pop up is rife in the Wild West also, but it?s forgivable with a game this size and scope. My advice? Install this to your Xbox 360; glitches are less frequent, but still existent, unfortunately. Hopefully updates may sort this out, but it?s not an overblown problem.
All in all, this is a must buy. It is worth the registered retail price, the game is pure quality throughout, and, if Rockstar are lucky, the multiplayer will last as long as other games already on the market. Just go and buy it before I force you to?at gunpoint?on a Hungarian Half-Bred?in Mexico.