Redemption wins on its rural setting, smooth gun fights and familiar mechanics. Co-op is a little sparse, but fun.
Redemption is a sequel itself, following up on Red Dead Revolver, published 6 years earlier on the Playstation 2. While that game had moderate success both critically and financially, Redemption seeks to take the sprawling west to new levels of scale and detail. Does Red Dead Redemption take the top spot for open world shooters? Grab your pistols and broncos and lets head out and see what we can see.
Gameplay:
Your experience in the vast open spaces of Red Dead Redemption are seen through the eyes of reformed outlaw John Marsden. This duality of character works well as you are able to play the game from a white hat or black hat approach. Your honor and fame grow and diminish as you affect the lives of the folks you meet. There is no clear advantage for playing the game one way or the other, but rather based on your personal morals to play it with an angel or a devil on your shoulder. It would have been more meaningful to see this chosen behavior affect the abilities of Marsden and path of his story. That story is a simple one: track down and bring to justice your former gang leader - however you see fit. Everything else that transpires in John's adventure don't necessarily support the main objective and thus you can get lost in what you are supposed to be doing. Reasons for taking on various tasks and quests are questionable at best, but still serve for a variety of entertainment.
Anyone familiar with the GTA series will be right at home with the basics of RDR. Analogue sticks control movement and sight while the triggers and buttons perform actions like running, aiming, shooting and reloading. Redemption has an extremely generous aim assist by default, which can be turned off for more challenge. Targeting enemies was one area of GTA that had issues. Gladly those have been resolved in RDR. If your aim is remotely close to an enemy, pressing the left trigger automatically brings the sites to the middle of their chest, after which you are free to move the reticule for more precise shots. This becomes a 2nd nature operation when you soon discover that headshots are far more effective. However, some missions may require you to take a prisoner alive, in which you will only seek to wound someone by putting a slug in their leg. This targeting system is very effective and enjoyable, if not a little too easy.
Taking this generosity a step further is the "Dead Eye" targeting system which slows down time and allows you to paint multiple targets and then speed back up and watch the bullets and bodies fly. Even if it doesn't feel all that rewarding, it does make for some very cool Clint Eastwood-esque moments.
Along the way you will learn how to be a good cowboy. Missions will ask you to wrangle cattle, lasso and tame wild stallions and guard the homestead from mischievous rustlers. Your trusty steed is your main form of transportation and your best friend in the game. Riding is quite simple and a few presses of the X button (A on Xbox) and your horse goes from trot to gallop. The game also has a fast-travel system. This simply means you can use a transfer station populated around the land, or pitch a campsite and select a new destination to avoid the valuable real time minutes of traversing the distance. This is a welcome mechanic for a map as large as the one in Redemption. You will also find the opportunity to play mini games like liars dice, black jack, horseshoes and poker. Your winnings can be spent on a variety of personal upgrades and equipment.
The main campaign will take you upwards of 30 to 40 hours to complete. The experience doesn't end there. Multiplayer is a major part of the RDR experience. Redemption lays new ground in the way multiplayer is handled in a mode called Free Roam. Essentially this is a lobby-system where the entire map is your room to meet, greet, form posses, take on group challenges and set up matches. Free Roam can be either public or private and up to 16 players can populate a Free Roaming session at one time. Within Free Roam you can set waypoints to lead other posse members to various locations to take on a number of activities. Gang Hideouts are areas where you and your friends will take on an outpost of CPU enemies. For those looking for a more competitive experience, Gang Matches and Free For All Matches are available at a numerous locations on the map. This is where you'll get to test your skills with a rifle against your brethren. There is a Grab the Bag game-type which follows capture-the-flag rules. You can hunt wild and elusive animals or simply travel the countryside with friends looking for adventure. Free Roam is a remarkable idea and is well executed.
One complaint is that aside from competitive death-match game types, there isn't a lot to do for the cooperative player. Clearing out a Gang Hideout quickly becomes repetitive since Gang locations are so few and far between. There doesn't seem to be much of a challenge or variety to it. It would be nice to have more cooperative activities like a true "horde" mode. A future DLC package has been announced and hopefully will remedy the game's current co-op limitations. Online performance is stellar. RDR has a solid cover system that utilizes the environment very well. The duck-and-shoot mechanic has been done better in other 3rd person games, but handles reasonably well here.
Red Dead Redemption is definitely a big step forward for gameplay both in terms of design and execution over GTA. Aiming feels a lot better which is the foundation for these kinds of games. This alone brings playability to a new level.
Gameplay = 9/10
Graphics
What sets Red Dead Redemption apart from other open world shooters is simple: the environment. This is the game's best asset. The size of the map is impressive and may only be eclipsed by the one in Just Cause 2. But the details in RDR set new benchmark for beauty in the open-world game. The land is harsh and dusty. The skies are ever-changing paintings of beauty. Clouds form and roll through the sky, sometimes forming into violent thunderstorms. These environmental details are important for a game when you are often set in a wide open space with nothing but nature around you. Most of the RDR world takes place on an arid rocky landscape littered with cactus and tumbleweeds. Heading to the north and the scenery changes to a mountainous snowy region. The East inhabits a wetter marshy land. South of the border, down Mexico way is a rough world of canyons and majestic rock formations. All of these slightly different looking places feel well tied together. Complaints that things all look too familiar may be justified, but where else can a game set in the old west take place? Rockstar gives us a dramatic and desolate experience. Small towns are scattered with miles upon miles in between. There is an underlying sense of loneliness and lawlessness that permeates through the map.
The towns themselves are also well conceived. Rustic western buildings running down a solitary street are common. Visiting any one of these places and you will find local blacksmiths, saloons, whore houses and general stores. Everything is very well lit and detailed. Watching a village's lanterns light up at dusk is very cool to see. The changing time of day and weather looks great.
The player models are fairly good. John Marsden is well designed as are most of the main characters he meets in his travels. Rockstar has definitely outdone their work in the GTA series here. Facial details and animations greatly succeed anything we've seen from the developer before. However, they don't break new ground. Players walking and bumping into one another still look stiff and unresponsive at times. Many of the folks who inhabit the towns walk around like zombies with a blank expressions and wooden joints.
Red Dead Redemption is not the best looking game on the market, but it is a beautiful one nonetheless. As far as massive open world games go this one is very impressive.
Graphics = 9/10
Sound
The audio in Red Dead Redemption is fantastic. Bringing the land to life means making it sound as good as it looks. The folly artists who collected the sound effects for this game should be commended. The collective gallop of a herd of horses. The rustling of the wind on the plains. The roll of distant thunder. There are so many small details in the audio track that help to make you feel like you are outside. If only we had the technology to smell what is happening.
Another trophy for RDR is its voice acting. John Marsden is well acted. His soft spoken yet dangerous undertone is perfect for his teetering character. The Marshal's gruff and experienced confidence is superb. Crazy Seth's shrill and desperate voice are perfectly pitched to tell us of his plight. There are so many strong characters in this game based mainly on the performances of the voice actors portraying them. Coupling this excellent audio with the graphics really gives you a feeling for each character.
The soundtrack is very good too. Most of the time when traveling through the world you'll hear ambient harmonic cues. Then as you near an area of danger, the tension builds and the music becomes more ominous and threatening. Finally in the midst of a 6-shooter duel you're surrounded by the sounds of dramatic Spanish horns billowing around your gunfire. There is not a lot of variety with the music and you will hear the same few tracks throughout your campaign. Luckily none of these become annoying or obtrusive thanks to their subversive inclusion in the game.
Sound 9/10
Overall
Red Dead Redemption is a refreshing spin on the open-world concept. Moving missions from an urban to a rural setting is brilliant. John Marsden is a compelling character given a blank canvas to leave his mark. The game has excellent visuals - especially for one as vast and expansive as this. The main campaign offers plenty of unique mission types and does better to avoid the trap of repetition as much as GTA did. However, Marsden's main story is not always supported by the quests you take on and thus a strong narrative is not always present throughout. There may be a lack of "big moments", but that doesn't seem to be the point of Redemption. Its mutiplayer portion is fine for those gunslingers looking to take on others in a rugged western setting. But it feels a little sparse when judging it on its cooperative experience. The controls are what you'd come to expect from a game of this nature. Red Dead Redemption walks a fine line between giving you a sense of the wide open wild west and giving you enough to do so you don't become bored. Rockstar has walked that line with careful precision. This is one of the better games of its kind. A refreshing spin on an old concept.
Final Rating = 9/10