Amazing vision of the west from early 1900's, lots of things to keep you busy, but it chokes on glitches galore.
A Rockstar make of the wild west from 1911.
We see John Marston AKA Red trying to settle himself down with a family and live the rest of his days raising his boy with his wife on a peaceful farm. But the government decides to take his family and wont give them back unless John takes out 2 wanted criminals.
everything about the game is a great breath of fresh air... actually...
Anybody who has played the GTA series would not say the same. To anyone who didnt... this game is a breath of fresh air and a brilliant welcome to the west with great graphics, physics engine, and story.
But to people like me It felt like i was a rough version of niko belic walkin around with spurs on my boots. Instant similarities are noticed when you start the game like the minimap; its bottom left with roads marked dark on a lighter plane and it rotates according to your camera view, and missions are started by locating the giant letter associated with the character you want to work for. Missions are very similar; starts with a cutscene and then when put back into gameplay it has a sentance that tells you what you need to do, highlighting bad guy names or targets in the color red, locations in yellow, and friendlies in blue. You can also set a waypoint so that the path is seen on the minimap. And theres 3 sections to the whole world.. unlocking one at a time as the story moves on.
But that aside..
The story is well done, you go through series of ups and downs, climax and then calm parts, and they do it well, i didnt really know what to expect next. And the characters were easily able to submerse you into their world with their personality. You start with basicly no weapon stash but the ongoing story will give it to you and teach you how to use it as you move on. The story does well with taking what would usually be a training session and made it into a story-based mission, kinda like GTA but oh well. The missions dont need to be done until you want to do them so you can roam free (in the unlocked area) and do other things like ambient challenges. These are great time wasters where you can either go hunting for certain animals.. Sometimes you'd have to kill 5 bears and one needs to be killed with a knife. or you might need to collect certain plants and it tells you what area they are found in. Those definately add fun to the game and depending on if you want to pretend your a flower pickin cowboy, it would also add depth :P.
The transportation is your trusty stead and they did it well i have to say.. the horse animation are beautiful and must have taken alot of time to perfect. Your horse acts according to what happens around it and you can also break (catch wild horse and tame it to be some-what domesticated) a better horse if you find it and ride it for the rest of the game. Though somethings its self-preservation AI gets annoying when you are near a 1 foot high drop and its too scared to jump down while your enemy rides freely away..
Other things in single-player like card games, horse-shoes, and small jobs also add fun so you dont get bored while in such a plain enviroment.
The multiplayer:
This mode by default starts you in the free roam, which is the funnest thing to date so far when dealing with cowboys. You get a maximum of 16 players and you can posse up to a max of 8 players. You and your posse can ride around and swap horses on all corners of the map. Great fun can be had with a posse when together you take on a gang hideout. Almost a mimic of call of duty (in my eyes) multiplayer has a level-up system that includes prestige mode, titles, and many unlockables. You can unlock different characters (clothes arent customizable on the characters) mounts, and titles. and when you get to max level 50. you can prestige which lets you get more unlockables, one including a very fast donkey with zebra stripes. Also like COD there are challenges in many categories for you to complete while in free roam.
The game is a great thing to see and hear, but i get the feeling that about 3/4 of the way through they had to start slapping things together so they could reach the dealine. There are so many varients of glitches in this game it almost makes it hard to beleive that this is a new game. The cover system sometimes glitches, sending you into the air so far that when you drop you die. online, 2 people have grabbed control of a single horse who was taking orders from 2 different players at once. In single player i took a stage couch that had to cross a rail road, a train was coming and it didnt bother to stop, it sent me and the stagecoach sideways until we hit a building, causing a spazz attack. People are sometimes invisible online. In single player when i was bounty hunting some1 knocked me off my horse and then the mission was over ... leaving me to start a new bounty hunt. Ive seen cops shoot through walls and kill me. theres alot more but its just a whole wack of small things.
Very enjoyable game even tho its got a basket of glitches, i hope they are fixed soon. And even though i see barely ANY connection between red dead revolver and red dead redemption other then the fact that its the same main character and that i think "Bonnie" from red dead redemption is a differently named (or nameless) character in red dead revolver, the story is good and it lets red dead redemption stand alone as a great valued game fit to buy.