A beautiful, immersive, wonderful game from start to finish
Aided by the exceptional graphics, the game truly invokes the atmosphere of the old west (or at least, the Clint Eastwood-style movies that it pays homage to) and provides a world that you can genuinely enjoy exploring merely for exploring's sake.
There are many high-points - the story, the characters, the entertaining side-quests; whether you're chasing a bounty, searching for hidden gold, or hunting buffalo, there is always something to do and something to look forward to. The clearest sign of how much I enjoyed this game is how little I used the auto-travel facility - even 30-40 hours in, I was still choosing to manually travel by horse-back (and often not at full speed!) rather than skipping to the destination - of how many games can you say you spent time just wandering around the game world looking at the scenery!?
I could rave at length about how great Red Dead Redemption is - and I think it thoroughly deserves the "10" I've given it - but there are a couple of imperfections worth mentioning in the name of balance:
* The hand-to-hand combat is a bit weak - a bar-brawl in the saloon isn't as much fun as you might expect.
* The single-player campaign takes a strange twist near the end and forces you to spend a couple of hours working through some fairly simple and tedious missions before getting back to the finale.
* Horses can be a bit dumb and have a disturbing - and frustrating - tendency to jump off cliffs or in front of trains.
* I wasn't that impressed by the online play - fun at first, but the game engine dosen't really work like the FPS it's often trying to be. I don't play much online, though, if I did I might knock a half-mark off.
If you've ever enjoyed a Western at all, you should give this a go as soon as possible!