Time to enter Rockstar's recent open world game.
Score:9.6
Time Spent: 20-25 hours
BOTTOM LINE: Saddle up partner, it's time to ride into the Wild Wild West.
Rockstar has given us the famous game series known as Grand Theft Auto. They are full of violence, vulgarity, car jackings, and open world entertainment. Red Dead Redemption gives us more of the same except in the Western genre this time around. While gamers will realize the GTA type of gameplay, Red Dead is still the best Western game in a long time.
STORY - The protagonist is John Marston, a gunslinger with a haunting past, who is asked by the government to take down his old friends. These friends are dangerous outlaws, who are basically "America's Most Wanted". As if Mr. Marston has any choice, his family was taken away from him and would be returned when he completes the mission. After nearly getting killed trying to enter the outlaw's hideout, John soon meets many likeable characters who help or hurt him along the way. Each character tries to help Mr. Marston in their own ways. The voice-overs fit perfectly with every character and the well written script truly pulls in the gamers.
The story in Red Dead is well . . . nothing special. It's sort of cliched but it doesn't have to be unique. Red Dead still gives us a solid 25 hour single player experience full of vengeance, loyalty, and trickery
Score: 9.1
GRAPHICS - Red Dead Redemption has more hits than misses in its visuals. First the good news: This is probably the most beautiful Western open world game. The different towns and villages look fantastic and truly brings the Western world to life. The characters look nearly perfect. John Marston looks scared up and deadly and made me bring this question up while I was playing, "What the hell happened to this guy?". The horses to great and the shadow animations almost look real. But this game does have a few bugs that are noticeable. I found one instance while John was sitting down; his jacket was shot up over his face. While this was funny, as he was talking in this scene, it was also unpleasant as I found that his legs were also lost. Another example was when the cinematic scene opened up and John's stomach disappeared and then reappeared a second later. Also when I was riding into a town I never entered before, the game lagged for a few seconds and then ran normally. I didn't loose anything but I never saw that before. I was a pretty bad lag as I appeared on the other side of the town. Still with these bugs, this is probably the best looking Western game artistically. Score: 9.3
GAMEPLAY - This is where Red Dead truly shines. While walking around, you will have a 3rd person look and when shooting, it is an over-the-shoulder look. John has many guns at his disposal. You have the revolver, springfield rifle, sniper rifle, double barrel shotgun, knives, dynamite and many more. In the missions, you will either have ground shootouts or horse back shootouts. I found the horseback shootouts to be a little more difficult than it should be as the enemy took more bullets (or maybe I was shooting his horse). Missions aside, I found just riding on your horse was entertaining enough. Racing along the train or just helping marshals or strangers on the roads to be fun enough. Though I got really mad when someone tried to steal my horse. Note: If you do want to travel in the country, go by horse. If you go by foot, vicious animals will come after you from behind. I found that to be a real cheap was to be instant killed.
When in gun battles, you can get into cover and can pop up and shoot with very accurate weapons. If you get close enough to an enemy, John will do an instant kill cinematic. Now a Western game wouldn't be anything without duels. In many instances, John will be asked or forced to enter duels. Time slows down and you have to aim at your enemy and shoot him. These duels are very fun. Though I thought the Dead Eye feature felt out of place. When in a gun battle (on or off horse) you can press the RS and time will slow down. I felt that slow motion shouldn't be in a Western game. While it is easier to get head shots and kill more than one enemy at a time, Dead Eye should be in GTA. That's my opinion.
When you aren't doing missions, you can do many things. You can search for the fastest horse in the game, look for treasure, capture hideouts, drink at bars, play poker and blackjack, arm wrestling, skin animals, drag people while riding on your horse, look for outlaws on "Wanted" posters, and many more. As you can tell, there is a lot of GTA in this game as I said before. But it works, it really works. Probably just as good as in the GTA games. Score: 10
FUN O'METER - By just reading my gameplay section of my review you can tell that gamers will have a lot of fun with this game. Score: 10
Red Dead Redemption is a beautiful world, excellent gameplay and great characters that gamers will fall in love with. I truly loved this game. Maybe it is because I'm a real fan of Clint Eastwood and love his Western movies. Maybe it is because I love the duels in this game. In fact I don't have one reason why I like this game, I have many reasons. Red Dead will pull you into it's world and won't let you go until you have finished the single player campaign. Now I left out the multiplayer in this review. I do apologize as I have not tried it out yet. Red Dead Redemption is a must play and a worthy addition to your game shelf.