Red Dead Redemption = Overrated

It gets the story and characters right. It gets the mood and atmosphere right. The gun-play is good, but in the end, I never found the game to be all that fun.

If Grand Theft Auto IV is slow, dull, and repetitive, isn't Red Dead the exact same thing but with horses?

Most of the missions follow a predictable and boring structure (just like many of the GTA games)

1. Enter a marker

2. Watch a cutscene

3. Drive, err I mean "ride", to some canyon or hill

4. Shoot out a bunch of outlaws

5. Ride all the way back home

6. Watch a cutscence

This really didn't create a lot of excitement to load up the game and continue my progress with the story. Much of the thrill of video games is wondering what you'll do next and being pleasantly surprised when something new happens. But it feels like once you've played 1 mission of Red Dead, you've played most of the rest.

This is one of many examples of how games are like diluted movies. There's 3 hours of core content in your average game, but that's not enough content to sell it to a customer for $60. So, deliver the core content in carefully administered doses, little chunks, after the player does a series of actions

I dunno if I'd agree with that. I mean don't get me wrong, I respect your opinion. I just don't share it.

When I played RDR I didn't just go through the campaign though. Being a fan of westerns anyway, I found the world incredible. I explored the landscape to find the "strangers" missions, random encounters, found all the secrets, did the bounties, completed the hunting challenges... you get the idea.

For me, games are better than any movie. The interactivity appeals to me way more than a passive experience like a movie or television series. Not that those aren't great in their own right, but if we're putting them up for comparison then there is no need to pull out a quarter to flip it. Games already called tails, won 3 out of 5 in a sweep, and put the coin in the piggy bank.

I think games are potentially better than movies because of the interactivity. However, the interaction you do have with the game is limited. This is an issue for many Rockstar games but for a world based on open-ended, there is a very linear structure to the missions.

Grand Theft Auto IV is fucking awesome and so is Red Dead Redemption, only slightly less so. There's an extreme amount of variety in both games, but only IF the player chooses to engage in some of its emergent gameplay. If the player is playing it like a linear game, that's what he'll get. The gameworld is there, you just have to use it.

@UpInFlames: Yeah,it needs to be played properly.

I agree here

GTAIV was a awesome more mature dark GTA and took the franchise in a great new direction.

Red Dead was also a decent game, never got into it tho as much i wanted to but it was a great western open world game.

You can over simplify what you do in pretty much any game like the OP did.

There's a sizeable amount of shit to do in RDR outside regular missions. Card games, wildlife hunt (or wildlife hunting you), bounty hunting, cattle herding. They're not the deepest minigames ever, but they'll spice up anyone's playthrough in a sufficient way to prevent boredom.

My main gripe with RDR was its lousy spanish VA. Other than that it was a great game, and one of the nicest western stories I've ever seen in games, along with CoJ: BiB.

It's always funny to see people arriving late to the party and calling it overrated.

Well yeah, story missions are linear. It wouldn't make much sense to have non-linear story progression. You don't watch Return of the Jedi before Empire Strikes Back either.

But there is plenty of interactivity in Red Dead, and like most games; you get out of it what you put into it. Open-World sandbox games are more about emergent gameplay and building your own story.

Sounds to me like maybe you were rushing or you don't care for the narrative or the genre so you weren't engaged. There's tons of stuff to do in Red Dead, but the onus is on the player to go out and create their own experiences. It may not be things you like to do, and that is fine. But that doesn't make it overrated. That just makes it a game that you don't like. I don't care for Final Fantasy games, but I'd never call one of them overrated. Because I'm not their target audience and I recognize that.

Nope, not at all.

I didn't find it repetitive. I just found the atmosphere boring as heck,

You didn't even mention the best part of the game. Those sharpshooter, hunting, treasure searching missions were so incredibly addicting. It just completely immersed me in that western world. A world and setting I've always loved.

Never played it and don't think I ever will want to. I do not like anything cowboish or transformarish, at all.

Its probably the best overall experience I've ever had with a game and the ending sealed it.

I sat there as the ending credits rolled and felt like I had experienced something special(within the realm of gaming).

Yes.

It was over rated. 8/10 at best.

GTA IV is shit. RDR is good but starts but the story starts to drag midway through Mexico where I started wondering 'when will John finally reunite with his family and stop with this fetch quest bullshit?' Blackwater was my least favorite part as the whole town is populated with self entitled, technology driven pricks.

But I guess that was the whole point of Blackwater to show how civilization was advancing and the 'men of the wild' are becoming forgotten fossils. Very similar to current day society. nyone who enjoyed RDR would love The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

overall I really enjoyed Red Dead Redemption, but I feel much of the charm of the first game is missing, like the unique bosses and stages

i think the game is okay, but what i like/dislike is pretty much flipped from what you liked.

i enjoy a lot of the moment-to-moment stuff. the shooting is pretty fun (if not the greatest, to be sure) in that a lot of it comes down to how fast you can pull the trigger like in the westerns rockstar was looking at. the free form stuff was largely good, with my favorites being the treasure hunts as puzzles for variety. the economy pulled a lot of things together as it gave incentives for hunting, added tension to gambling, and things like that.

it's the storytelling and purpose that really pulled me out of it. i will give rockstar credit in that for once they weren't so afraid of not being cool that they actually showed the slightest bit of empathy for some of their characters (i don't know that i'd call the cast good, but it was a brief step forward). it's just that the game world and the cut-scene worlds seemed to have completely different rules for what marsdon can and cannot do.

I had to double-take cause reading this I thought I had already posted in this thread. The game kinda peaks right after entering Mexico and then by the time you get to Blackwater I got sick of it. The story was pretty good and all the peripheral stuff fleshed the game out but the gameplay wasn't enough to carry the game that far.

nope

Blasphemy!!

Never completed more than 10 missions on Red Dead Redemption. Game looks and plays boring as hell.

I bought it on release day. I loved it. Top 10 of this gen for sure. Did you just play it TC? I don't know what you want from a game, but RDR has alot going on for it.

I consider myself a connoisseur of open world games and RDR is among my favorite, eclipsed only by the recent and brilliant GTAV.

The game mechanics are outstanding, specifically the shooting, which perfectly encapsulates and emulates the gun fighting and weapon handling of that era. The horses are also excellent in their execution, rendered as autonomous creatures that you must actually ride and control rather than treat as mindless, four-legged vehicles.

Even more impressive is how astutely and brilliantly R* managed to capture the spirit of the era: a massive, unsettled landscape punctuated by small communities and shantytowns spread over an expanse of territory replete with a fully viable ecosystem that presents its own perils and bounties. There have only been a smattering of games that employ a western thematic and RDR soundly trumps them all by embracing the aesthetics and culture of a bygone era while making the core gameplay mechanics solid and compelling.

So personally, I don’t think the game is overrated by any metric and truly, I’m sorry the OP’s own experience was so mundane.

I certainly didn’t play the game as he described in that initial post however and the thing I remember most about my copious playtime with RDR are those solitary moments wandering the wilderness, contemplating my surroundings and soaking in the ambiance and minutia that only Rock* thus far has managed to achieve in their open-word constructs.

I tried so damn hard to like that game, but just couldn't get into it~

I found the shooting to be fun, production values good and the atmosphere good. Outside that, it's a hugely overrated game.

Another user to add to my "Never listen to the opinions of" list

Those were certainly amazing moments.

That is, until an asshole mountain lion came out of nowhere and killed my horse. I used to be a cougar magnet in that game.

I'm still trying to get through the game and it is a bit of hit and miss for me as well. I certainly appreciate the game for what it is and i can recognize all of the hard work that went into making it. It still just feelis like a 'go do this for me' type of game that i wish they could have gotten away from.

My friends and I call the mountain lions "Prairie Ninja". Or is it "Ninjas"? I'm never sure of the plural for the word Ninja, but my points remains valid. Those bastards were never heard until they're chowing down on your delicious brains for dessert.

I thought it was one of the best games i've played in a long long time. Yeah it wasn't all in your face boobies and lasers, but it didn't have to be. It was a laid back virtual world that was amazing to explore, with a great atmosphere to boot. I'd easily put it in my top 10 and more than likely in my top 5 games of the last gen.

No it's not. It totally deserved all the praises it got from critics and gamers. I think R* really nailed the atmosphere and gameplay, story and characters ... It's the best R* IMO , even better than GTA V and this is coming from a guy who has never gotten into Western genre.

Why the f*ck do I need to play the extra shit when the main campaign is 25 hours of mind numbing bullshit over and over again?

This is such a terrible attitude to have. Let's take the meat of the campaign out of the equation and judge the game by it's side missions for its 'emergent' gameplay. What a load of horse shit.

It's not about the main quest vs. emergent gameplay, it's about the whole package. If you only go from point to point, then that's the experience that you'll have. Faulting a game for linearity when you seek linearity is strange - which is the entire basis of the OP. The open world construct is there, the emergent gameplay is there. But the game doesn't force you to partake in it. That's the whole point of non-linear design and open world constructs.

@ SteelAttack "There's a sizeable amount of shit to do in RDR

outside regular missions. Card games, wildlife hunt

(or wildlife hunting you), bounty hunting, cattle

herding. They're not the deepest minigames ever,

but they'll spice up anyone's playthrough in a

sufficient way to prevent boredom."

AHA ! Gotchya ! I knew it, I freaking fucking knew it ! Rockstar makes games for Novelist, people who who are distracted by shiny objects with zero significance or depth what so ever. Its for people with ADD, people who can't focus on a single task for 60 seconds. Classic quantity over quality scenario. I called it! Also a Shout out to Drekula for making awesome threads lately: you're on a role.

@ LoG-Sacrament "it's just that the game world and the cut-scene

worlds seemed to have completely different rules

for what marsdon can and cannot do."

Classic Ludonarrative dissonance, and most of the story is delivered in cutscenes, yeah this is great progress for storytelling..........in movies !

Then by all means, give me another open-world game that features more depth than Rockstar's current output.

That shouldn't be difficult for somebody who continuously slanders both the developers of these games and the people who play them.

I don't know exactly what you mean by depth, but there are plenty of open world games that are way more fun that RDR. The key word being fun.

More depth ? Arkham City. Lol, its only got like 8 side missions and 6 of them are a whole better than yoga and scuba diving and golf or whatever it is Rockstar likes half assing these days. As for Quantity Rockstar has that in spades.

Welcome to the R* formula. I enjoyed it because good Western-setting games are few and far between.

Instead of bitching about the game I will just say that playing poker and the knife minigame were awesome. Also the silent movie house you can go to had me in tears laughing. Hunting was ok, the atmosphere was impeccable. The only problem I had with the game was the story. Otherwise it's side stuff was actually very good.

@Grammaton-Cleric

I don't quite understand how someone like you could be a sucker for Rockstars methods. Its like you go from decent human being to fanboy whenever GTA is brought up. Why does it only happen with open world games ?

RDR = best game this gen.

rdr > all gta games period.

Fun is a nebulous and abstract term that is also entirely subjective.

I love open world games and I consider RDR one of the most “fun” I have experienced.

You don’t understand my affinity for Rockstar games because your analytical deconstruction of their work is puerile, vapid and entirely inconsequential. You’ve made the mistake of believing that your own dissatisfaction with their software is some greater universal truth known only to vocal dissenters such as yourself and you hide behind pedestrian and vague derision because you lack, in any capacity, the ability to put forth viable criticism of substantive merit.

Worse, you have mustered the audacity to use pejoratives such as “sucker” when describing my veneration of their games in some infantile attempt to denote my accolades as being a purely emotional response bereft of logic or a clearly defined rationale when in actuality, I have repeatedly offered considerable evidence, both objective and subjective, as to why I consider their games among the best on the market.

What I find offensive isn’t that you dislike Rock Star games but that you are delusional enough to believe that anyone else who does is somehow being suckered or blinded by fandom, a harsh decree that rings as particularly hollow by somebody who is unwilling or unable to actually defend that position outside of vagaries and passive-aggressive insults.

As to Arkham Asylum being your rebuttal to my earlier challenge, I will first concede that it is one of my very favorite games or all time. (Top Ten, easily)

That understood, the notion of it being deeper is nonsensical given that the entire game is comprised of three primary components, all of which are essentially recycled throughout the entirety of the game. To be certain those elements are brilliantly executed and contain a measure of depth yet when taken as a whole there is nothing deeper about the game than any of R*’s own offerings.

And yoga and scuba diving are merely two of many ancillary activities in GTAV, a game I assume you haven’t actually played. And while yoga is most certainly a bit shallow the scuba diving is actually pretty slick and gives you access to an entire underwater landscape replete with a variety of sea life and plenty of interesting places to explore. Considering that the number of games in existence that allows a player to actually go diving or use a submersible can be counted on a single hand, I’d venture to state its inclusion is a nice and unique diversion.

However, setting aside the ancillary, what you continue to misunderstand is that the core components of their games are excellent and match and often exceed those games within a dedicated genre. The shooting in RDR is as good as the best TPS I’ve played this gen and the driving in GTAV rivals many dedicated racers. (As it should given the developers who tweaked the mechanics)

I’ve been gaming a very long time and when I publically call GTAV the best overall gaming experience of my life, you would be very mistaken in believing that such an opinion is rooted in blind fandom given both my considerable gaming experience coupled with my encyclopedic knowledge of this medium.

That doesn’t mean I expect everyone else to share that view but I do have very good reasons for that assessment.

And given what you’ve posted in regards to this subject and how you have chosen to deliver those opinions, I really don’t expect you to fully grasp those reasons.

No, no, no. This is one of the best games ever. The atmosphere, the main character, the story, the voice acting... Stunning.

@ Grammaton-Cleric

its been a long day. I'l read that tomorrow

Red Dead Redemption was good, but definitely overrated just like all rockstar games imo. I'm not saying Rockstar is a bad company, actually quite contrary I don't recall them ever making a bad game, but every one of them is overrated.

I don’t much care if you read it at all because my points stand.