Summary [9.8 out of 10]

A spiritual sequel to Red Dead Revolver (Xbox/PS2), Red Dead Redemption tells the story of John Marston, a former outlaw who has settled down with a wife, a son and a ranch in an effort to change his violent ways. Unfortunately for Marston and his dreams of leaving it all behind, the US Government has other plans. FBI agents Ross and Fordham have Marston’s family seized and threaten to kill them if he does not hunt down the former members of his old gang. Marston reluctantly returns to the life he had tried to leave behind to keep his new family safe by putting an end to his old one.

Red Dead Redemption takes the western theme and applies it to the open world format for which Rockstar is so well known. In doing so they craft a full vibrant world filled with a wide variety of events and activities which serve as a backdrop for an iconic story. The gameplay is very approachable and there is so much to do you could spend hours doing nothing but goofing off. Luckily, the story is compelling and keeps the player coming back to find out what happens next. You couple this with a pretty decent multi-player component and you have a complete and very compelling package.

Introduction

I am not a really big fan of open world games. The very structure of them seems to run counter to telling a good story. When it comes to something like Oblivion, I feel like I am in pretty good hands because the various side missions and such offer up compelling stories, but when it comes to games like Grand Theft Auto I am far less interested. I dug GTA III and Vice City but after those two, I just didn’t have as much fun wreaking havoc and creating mayhem in the world as before and I was really bad at the missions. Somewhere along the line my progression through the story would come to a screeching halt because I couldn’t manage to run the car off the road or win a race or whatever bullshit task I had to perform that I couldn’t. Maybe I suck at GTA or maybe the mechanics are broken. Either way, I haven’t really dug on GTA and games like it since Vice City. With this in mind, I was wary of Red Dead Redemption as it was of course by Rockstar and everyone said in previews it was like GTA in the Wild West. My fears were dashed when I started playing, however, and I found a game that controlled well, offered up compelling missions, a great story and I never got to a point where I just couldn’t do something. The game is very, very well put together and the difficulty is well balanced. There were frustrations, sure, but none that made me want to stop playing. This is the first Rockstar game I have ever finished and it was very satisfying. Even with the story complete there is a ton to do and I am very happy to continue doing it. Red Dead Redemption is really great and one of the early contenders for Game of the Year.

The Great

• Story: I am a sucker for stories in games. If the story is good I am willing to overlook technical shortcomings and if a story is bad I am far less forgiving. In Red Dead Redemption the story will feel well worn and familiar for fans of the Western genre but it is told in a very compelling way. The characters are iconic and archetypal but the writing is good enough that they never feel stale. Each character has personality and no one seems like dead weight. There is some repetition by nature as your character is strung along doing jobs for various characters who are dangling information in front of him like carrots but that is the story. It is about the frustrations of this man trying to get back to his family and having that goal pulled farther and farther away from him. It by necessity serves two masters: gameplay and story and I feel that it does both with flying colors. The use of in game dialogue does a great job of supplementing and supporting the cut scenes and really fleshes the story out with background and motivation without bogging down the pacing since it happens while you are doing other things. The writing is top notch across the board but really shines in these moments as the conversations feel authentic and genuine. The story is just well crafted from beginning to end and I found it very compelling. Even if I had hit snags in the gameplay I would have wanted to continue just to see how it all ended.

• Graphics: This game is absolutely gorgeous. The environments, character design, animation, weather effects and action all look beautiful. I have said it before about other games but it is especially true here: I often stopped what I was doing just to gawk at how pretty it all was. The environments in particular shine in this game and it may have to do with the fact that I live in the Southwest in the Sonoran Desert but the environments looked pretty much perfect and were breathtaking. It is one of the best looking games I have ever seen.

• Atmosphere: This sort of piggy backs on the graphics point but not entirely. The game feels right. The atmosphere is absolutely perfect for invoking the feel of a western and everything inch of this game drips with it. Again, this may be because I have spent a lot of time around old west locations and themes like visiting Old Tucson Studios, Tombstone, Trail Dust Town, et al but I think it pretty much nails the feel of the western and in doing so allows more immersion than similar attempts at the genre have managed. Really the atmosphere of the game is made up of pretty much all of its parts working together in perfect harmony and it makes the game that much more satisfying.

• John Marston: I don’t think I have been this invested in a main character that I wasn’t role-playing in years. Marston is an iconic tragic hero in the same vein as Clint Eastwood’s William Munny in Unforgiven. He has a dark past he is trying to escape from but is pulled back in by forces beyond his control. This is nothing new, especially for westerns and video games but the characterization here feels fresh even with an iconic and often used archetype. Marston’s attitude is neither one of overwrought guilt nor cold hearted indifference to his past but is rather one of resigned acceptance. He isn’t sure if a person can change but he wants to try…if only they would let him. He doesn’t want to go back to a life of violence and killing but he has no choice. We don’t get a character who is racked with sorrow every time he takes a life but rather one seething with anger at being put in such a position. He isn’t remorseless but at the same time can kill when he has to (which is an awful lot) without being crippled emotionally. He is a man doing what he has to do in service of something better for both himself and his family. And given that he does as much good as he does along the way speaks to how much he wants to be something better than he has been. I cared an awful lot about Marston and that went a long way toward drawing me in to the experience. Of course, it is up to the player whether to do awful things or righteous things during the gameplay but regardless of your honor meter in the game, the character is on a particular arc and it is an arc toward, obviously, redemption. I really wanted things to work out for Marston and he was a character I truly enjoyed spending time with.

• Music: Tying in with the over all atmosphere the music is really pitch perfect and sets the mood just right. The tracks range from quiet contemplative sounds to convey the loneliness of the naked plains, the odd creepiness of encroaching progress and the discomfort of being out of your element, to the rising adrenaline of action and combat. The game also uses full songs to punctuate particular emotional beats in the story to great effect.  The only misstep musically involves a horn number that sounds like something out of a cheesy 70’s cop show and pulled me out of the moment entirely. When my character started soaking up damage like a Bounty towel I was pulled back in. But that piece aside, all of the music sounds awesome and sets the mood brilliantly. My favorite is a piece called Triggernometry which features crashing drums, driving bass and reverbed guitar that sounds like if Dick Dale were to score a spaghetti western. Awesome.

• Replay: There is so much to do here I have a hard time imagining a moment in the near future where I will feel like I am done. Just riding around the environment on my horse is fun but there is so much to do in this game that you can just play and play without fear of running out of activities. After the story is completed you can still continue playing and while there’s not a story to play through there are still stranger missions if you haven’t done them, ambient challenges, gang hideouts, bounty hunting missions and random encounters. That is to say nothing of the other activities available to you. Which leads me right into the next point…

• Variety: The amount of different things to do and play styles to do them in is truly staggering. Amongst activities you can play cards, dice, horse shoes, arm wrestling, cattle herding, hunting, bronco busting, plant gathering, dueling, roping, sharp shooting, bar brawling and treasure hunting. All of the various activities have unique play styles with their own controls and mechanics and most are deep and fun enough to spend hours just doing that. If you like Texas Hold Em them you can spend an afternoon just playing cards. Like horseshoes? That is right there for you. Suck at Liar’s Dice? That is okay cause your girlfriend will probably rock and have to do it for you (I am so ashamed, but thanks Summer!) If you like busting broncos you can take a job doing that in a corral or you can go out into the wild and rope and break one in nature. Even the combat oriented activities allow for variety as you can choose to kill bounties or hog tie them and bring them in alive. You can disarm dueling opponents or kill them. You can play however you would like and do it in a ton of different ways doing a ton of activities. And the majority of them are very fun to do on top of it.

• Ending: Obviously I can’t go into much detail here without spoilers but I found the ending to be very fitting and poignant. This is a source of contention amongst players as they either love it or hate it, but I thought it was a great ending and while I saw the broad strokes of  it coming it was still surprising and impactful in the details. It is important to note, as it seems like some people have missed it, the story is not over until the credits roll. If you haven’t seen that you haven’t seen the end.

• Voice Acting: A lot of games nowadays pad their cast with celebrities and for the most part that has raised the overall quality of the voice acting. Red Dead Redemption doesn’t do that using voice actors who are not as well known and, in the case of lead John Marston, fairly new to the game. You would never know it listening to the performances. Rob Wiethoff as Marston in particular is very, very good and he is able to convey the necessary emotion without over or under doing it. He sounds so natural in the role that you would think he has been doing this for years as opposed to only having a few credits to his name. Everyone is good in this but Wiethoff really knocks it out of the park.

The Good

• Controls: I have never looked to GTA games to have good controls. The targeting is always broken or the driving and navigation is jacked and my heart fills with hate and I stop playing. Here, while the controls aren’t perfect, they at least don’t actively get in the way. From shooting to riding your horse everything is fairly accessible with little real time commitment. This is a far cry from GTA IV’s broken vehicle controls. The targeting is typically faulty in these games as well. Not so in Red Dead Redemption. You have a tight auto aim, an easy to use manual targeting system and Dead Eye mode if you need to slow things down and get more guys at once. The game controls so smoothly with such good button mapping and response that I never felt like I was fighting the controls and in fact didn’t even really think about the controls at all. That is the sign of a good interface and that is the case here.

• Missions: While they can get somewhat repetitive over the course of the game the missions are generally well paced and well thought out. The length is very manageable and you won’t find yourself getting nervous because you have to leave for work in an hour and you hope you can find another save point by then. The missions are robust but they are not overlong and I never felt like I was about to hit a brick wall. Like I said earlier there is always something in GTA games that I just can’t get passed and I eventually stop playing altogether. That was not the case here. I never felt like I was in any real danger of getting stuck and each mission clipped along a brisk, manageable pace.

• Multiplayer: It isn’t the best multi-player I have ever played but the free roam portion is super fun when you get with your friends to take on outlaw hideouts and form posses to cause mayhem. You can do more traditional death matches and the like but riding around in a posse is much more fun. You earn experience and unlock skins, weapons and horses as you level up which gives added incentive to keep playing. The only drawback here is that people are dicks and when you encounter other players in the game it is often to get sniped off your horse while you are trying to do something else. When I first started playing I was trying to get to the same town as the leader of my posse but one douchebag kept shooting me with a high powered rifle whenever I respawned. I had literally been playing less than five minutes and I had already died about 10 times. Oh sure maybe I just suck and that is true enough but it also had to do with the fact that I was started out with the worst weapons and a donkey and this jackass is rolling with high quality weaponry and has the benefit of knowing what the hell he was doing. I understand that in this kind of multiplayer pvp is fair game but common courtesy would be nice when someone obviously just started playing and is not in need of some grief.

• Unlockables: As you meet certain conditions you start unlocking costumes and items that have special benefit for play. Some outfits just look cool but others will give you boosts and items available for purchase or for earning will do the same. With the outfits in particular, there is a list of criteria to meet before that outfit is unlocked. These aren’t always easy but they do always make you play some aspect of the game or do something a particular way that you might not have on your own. Incentives like this really open the gameplay and encourage you to try more things and step out of your comfort zone. Since these are purely optional the game is never forcing anything down your throat but they are a nice bonus for people looking to accomplish a little more and experience the most of what the game has to offer.

• Humor: As is standard with Rockstar games there is a sturdy sense of humor here. Some of it is conveyed through bizarre characters or antics of various kinds, some through somewhat sick twists to stranger missions and some of it is just through clever dialogue. It certainly isn’t as over the top as in something like GTA nor is there as much of it but what is there helps to break up the drama and is genuinely funny.

The Bad

• Glitches: There have been a lot of glitches reported from wagons and horses who seem to hover in the air to double exposures of characters moving and talking three feet in front of a version of themselves standing there motionless. I didn’t encounter those but I did encounter one glitch where the whole screen went black but the dialogue continued. The only way to get things back to normal was to turn off the power to my system and turn it back on. Of course, I had to do the entire raid on Fort Mercer a second time which was annoying but it only happened once and wasn’t too bad. I also found that occasionally the game would decide that I needed to go into battle with only my fists regardless of the guns I selected. Obviously this did not work out very well for me and led to a few restarts. None of these glitches happened a lot but just enough to be kind of annoying. Hopefully they will get patched. There is nothing really game breaking here, it is just a bit annoying.

• Combat Navigation: The one aspect of the controls that doesn’t work well is any time you are trying to move into a small area like through a door or up some narrow stairs. The controls seem to auto-correct and you can’t move straight forward. I’ve had to hostler my weapons to get through doors and upstairs and then whip them back out once I get into the room, which is often a world of bullets. Again this isn’t something that happened a lot or was a big issue, it was just kind of annoying.

• Repetition: As mentioned earlier, the missions start to get a bit repetitive after you get into the latter half of the game. I didn’t really find this to be that much of an issue personally as I generally enjoyed the gameplay but it does wear a little thin when you are at a point where you have to go through the same motions over and over again. Still even into the end of the game it throws unique moments at you so it isn’t all exactly the same. Still a little more mission variety over all in the latter part of the game would have been nice.

• Last Bronco Busting: There is a bronco busting segment very late in the game where you have to rope and bust three broncos. The first two go down easy. The last one is a BITCH. I am not sure why this is or what is going on but it took so many tries to do this that it turned from day to night in game while I was  attempting to do this and I seriously wanted to throw my controller through my window. I was a bubble away from a full on wild horse apocalypse when I finally busted the last bronco. Now I never want to bust broncos ever again.

Conclusion [9.8 out of 10]

Red Dead Redemption is simply incredible. It was fun, immersive and engaging from beginning to end. Western games are notoriously difficult to get right but here Rockstar has provided a clinic not only on how to make a western game but how to make a tight cinematic open world game in general. There are a few small issues but nothing that takes away from how good the rest of it is. And it is very, very good. That it keeps on giving fun experiences long after you have finished the story further extends its value which is remarkable if only because there was so much great content in the story itself. This will definitely be a game of the year contender and should be held up as an example of how to make a fantastic game. Well done Rockstar.