The Old West. Rockstar style.
Red Dead Redemption is a story about revenge and ultimatly about past ghosts resurfacing. It begins with an aspiring rancher named John Marston, a man who used to run with a gang now forced to hunt down key members by the U.S. government. He rides a train into Blackwater setting his sights immediately on his ex-partner Bill Williamson. After a failed attempt to bring him in, Marston's wounded and recovers thanks to medical help applied by Abigail, the daughter of a rancher. After doing a few odd jobs, paying back her services, Marston sets off once again after Williamson, eventually crossing the border out of Texas and into Mexico. It's a very long road to redemption.
You know almost immediately that Red Dead Redemption has been tailored by the folks who made Grand Theft Auto 4. Roaming around the world, bumping into random strangers and activating events, unrestricted violence and their own brand of unique dark humor, RDR is simply Grand Theft Auto with horses. Yet, its own atmosphere set in the Old West version of Texas creates a totally different experience.
The fact that there's no artificial cities or locations helps add a level of authenticity to RDR. Roaming around Armadillo and other towns where the dominant residents are cactus makes you feel as if you stepped into a time warp 100 years into the past. Expanses of dust that suddenly give way to weather-worn towns made from wood and Mexican villas built out of stucco are canvases for a terrific Old Western tale.
It's a tale told just like any GTA tale. You start off doing side jobs and missions for a couple characters, and you're introduced to more as the game progresses. You can either focus on the main story missions or you can roam the land on your horse and help out strangers. You'd do yourself a favor to seek out these strangers as their quests are usually more interesting than the main missions themselves.
There's several other things you can do as well. You can lasso wild horses and break them to buy deeds and call them whenever you wish. You can hunt animals and skin them to sell their meat and fur, or you can forage for herbs to make medicines and supplements. If you want to play the role of bounty hunter, you can do that too and even choose to bring them back dead or alive.
Being a Rockstar game, though, is more than just roaming around and getting lost. There's loads of action to be had, and RDR's gunplay is absolutely fantastic. You can take cover from just about any obstacle, popping up for a quick shot. When you need to take out several people at once, you can use Dead Eye, which slows down time and lets you mark your shots for quick, successive hits. The combat can be a bit wonky at times, sometimes sticking you behind cover on a curved obstacle, or very rarely not having a few of your shots register, but it doesn't deplete from the fun of shooting. You can also take part in duels, much the same way that the Call of Juarez games did, but it's not as an elegant system.
John Marston has quiet an arsenal at his disposal. You start out with a basic six-shooter and repeater rifle but as you progress, you unlock more powerful rifles, shotguns, Molotov cocktails, throwing knives and more. You'll sometimes need to do challenges such as shooting so many people in Dead Eye or killing a certain number of animals before you get access to some of the better weapons, but they're worth it. In heavy firefights, the more powerful weaponry you have, the less ammo you need to use. Fortunately, being short on ammo is something you never have to worry about. You can loot the bodies of any fallen foes and even pick up ammo from chests in each one of your houses.
As with GTA, if you commit a crime, lawmen will be after you, but RDR takes a bit further than that. There's an honor system that affects how well you're received by the townspeople and how much shops choose to charge you. If you continue to be notorious, you'll find yourself met with enough hostility and price gouging that you may want to pay off your own bounty to get things back to normal. Yes, being bad in this game is actually quite costly, which is good because you'll find yourself liking John Marston as a character better if you keep him on the straight and narrow.
Unfortunately, the game suffers from one major problem, and that's Marston's agility. RDR lets you climb certain objects and ledges, but it does so very sloppily. Martson has no grace like, say, Altair of Assassin's Creed. You'll most likely never grip a ledge or hurdle a fence if you take the obstacle at speed. Even the simple act of running is cumbersome, as Marston is unable to turn on a dime. This causes you to get stuck on rails, doorways and in the unlikely even you're stuck fighting it out on a dock, even running right into the water. It may not be a major pain during the main game, but this flaw is seriously magnified when you play Undead Nightmare. When playing the expansion, you'll need to save towns by getting atop buildings to interactive with the survivors, and it becomes migraine-inducing trying to get Marston to climb before the horde of undead manage to knock him off again.
Undead Nightmare is a solid expansion pack, taking off at the point where John is reunited with his family on his ranch. After his family becomes infected, he sets off to look for a cure, saving towns along the way. He'll run into a few familiar faces and a host of undead wildlife, but what makes Undead Nightmare even more fun is finding the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. Each one of these special horses has a unique special effect and ability not to mention unlimited stamina. You'll want to rip into Undead Nightmare immediately after you finish the main game.
Even after three years, Red Dead Redemption is quite pretty to look at. The textures may not be as impressive up close, but it's the scenery that truly captures the eye. Rock formations that form the edge of the horizon while the early morning sun struggles to shine through threatening storm clouds gives off a sense of serenity you wouldn't expect from such a violent-natured game. Cactus litter the dusty ground, portraying the desert landscape so well, you'll thirst for a bottled water. The characters themselves are detailed well, but what stands out is how well they're animated. They still possess that bit of stiffness from motion capturing, but the physics of how well they stumble and fall when knocked over and shot down are very realistic.
Of course, for a game that relies so much on its aesthetics, it needs strong sound design to uphold its atmosphere, and it does so with more spades than a royal flush on a poker table. Every sound effect from the clopping of horse hooves on trails to the howling of wolves to the distinct reports of century old weaponry sound just like they came from a Western movie. The soundtrack is expertly composed, fitting each mood from high action to simple roaming perfectly. The voice acting is the coup de grace, with John Marston sounding like a gruff cowboy whose seen it all, the shyster Niles West Dickens who makes you want to punch him every time he tries to take you for a fool, and the creepy Seth who expresses a bit too much a fondness for the dead.
If you haven't gotten around to playing Red Dead Redemption, now would be the perfect time to start. The main story of RDR is told with a great pace, contains a variety of things to do, and has terrific gameplay matched with high production values. The included Undead Nightmare is only icing on the cake, which will further serve to entertain you as much as it will disgust you. Plus, who doesn't want to ride a unicorn that trails rainbows and butterflies? The Game of the Year Edition of Red Dead Redemption contains so much quality content that it's still worth 60 dollars today, but it retails for a third of that price. There honestly isn't any reason to not own this game by now.