Red Dead Review

Here's how it is: I'm standing outside of Chuparosa, an adobe brick town in Mexico just below the border. I had just finished turning in a bounty and purchasing a map of the surrounding area when the skies start to get darker and darker. Lightning flashes up north, I hear the loud crash of thunder a few moments later. The wind picks up and plays at my duster which begins to flap around the more the storm gets closer. Finally, the rain catches up to me and begins to fall heavily across the dusty plains. Puddles form around my feet and the trails get muddy.

I call my horse and I ride out west through the rain with lightning flashing, bringing everything under white light, and thunder rolling through unmercifully.

In Red Dead Redemption, things like that just happen. It's all part of this greater environment that makes up this almost-fictionalized area on the border of the United States and Mexico. A place where revenge can be a philosophy to live your life by, and charity is always in short supply. But ultimately, this game is what you make it out to be. It can be a great story, it can be a world that needs saving, it can be a land worth exploiting, or it can just be a place of leisure. The game demands nothing of you, only offers. And if you think this review is too melodramatic so far, then be prepared to be annoyed. ><

As I mentioned before in my initial impressions of the game, I bought RDR on a whim of circumstance. I had no intention of buying it until the day before, and even then I was hesitant - but more importantly, I was desperate. I needed a new game after using up Fable II, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect 2. I was so totally bored, but I do love westerns, and that's just about my only reason for buying this game: Bored. I like westerns. I knew I'd probably like it, but I didn't think I'd ever like it this much.

I've already gone over the premise of the game in my first impressions, but what I've learned since then is that although the story gets kinda silly at times (on account of John Marston getting pushed around by nearly everyone he meets, across two countries), the ending was downright emotional. I was nearly teary-eyed, and what the game allows you to do afterward was just genius. So, though I had hang-ups, they disappeared after the amazing finale.

Simply put, this is one of my favorite games now. I know I've been saying that a lot, but that just shows how particular I am about video games these days. I won't buy it unless I'm sure I'm gonna like it, and I LOVED this game. I'm playing it right now! But at the risk of repeating myself from the impressions, I'll go down the list of things I loved and didn't love in this game.

PROS:

+The environments are amazing. The world is massive; if I had to make a comparison, it's probably bigger than either Oblivion or Fallout 3. On the fastest horse in the game, it takes a good half hour to get from one corner of the world to the other (there's actually an achievement for that). The weather is completely random, and doesn't repeat itself very much. I played a three times without seeing rain. There are many animals inhabiting the world, all of which can be hunted, skinned and sold for profit. Plants can be picked. Birds can be shot out of the sky. I could go on.

+The story crosses paths with some very unique characters, all of whom are fascinating and, occasionally, hilarious. They're some of the best of any game I've ever played (some of them topping even BioWare's. Yes, BioWare comparisons had to happen), with Nigel West Dickens being an absolute highlight.

+There is so much to do! There are sidequests and minigames, but there are also random events scattered about the world. You might be casually riding along when you find someone being hanged, and you are given the choice to save him or leave him to his fate. You might pick up a little lady who's gone and got herself stranded in the middle of nowheres. There are bounties to hunt down, games to play, horses to break. There are some jobs you can take on, too. This game will keep you busy for a good long while.

+Did I mention this world is absolutely gorgeous?!

+In addition to the main quest, the minigames, the sidequests, the jobs, and the random events, there are also things called Ambient Challenges. There are akin to the World of Warcraft challenges, where you are rewarded a new level once you complete said challenge. For instance, you might be tasked with shooting five birds from a train, or killing a bear in one shot, or shooting the hat off an enemy. Random things that get really fun as you level up, and there's a TON of them to do. If you have XBox Live, the Rockstar Social Club actually gives you more to accomplish every now and then.

+And in addition to ALL THAT, you have the multiplayer. It features literally hundreds of those Ambient Challenges, along with quests that you can do with your friends, a leveling system that gives you better guns, characters and mounts, and the entire world is open to you. You can become public enemy and massacre a town, or you can bring swift justice to the random people wandering the lands. It's up to you.

+There's a settlement called Plainview. I loved that.

+No Indian massacres. Thank you, Rockstar.


CONS:

-There were quite a few glitches that forced me to reset the game a few times, sometimes at the very end of a long mission. Rockstar have expressed their apologies for this and insist that a patch is on the way, so that's good.

-This world is indeed huge, and while there is a fast travel system, it's a little cumbersome. You have to either hop on a stagecoach or travel out a fair distance into the wilderness to set up a camp. And I wouldn't necessarily mind that, since I like to stay immersed and travel by horse most places, the horse mechanic itself is cumbersome, too. To get your horse moving as fast as it can, you have to repeatedly tap the A-button. This can get tiring: monitoring your horses stamina whilst tapping the A-button for long stretches of time.

Again, this is something that I could look over, but it is an annoyance to me. Hasn't stopped me from racking up the miles, though. I have 251 miles on horseback alone. xD

-The trains are awesome, but I wish there was a way to pass the time faster so it's worth waiting for them. If you want to catch one, you either have to jump onto one robber-style or ride out to meet it, which defeats the purpose kinda.

-There are many quests that are only available at certain times, so you'll either have to wait or find a bed to rest, which sucks sometimes. And you'll have to save the game each time for six hours to pass. Yes, I want to be able to wait for the train, and wait for time to pass like on Oblivion and Fallout 3.


RDR is a masterpiece, to be frank. It's fun as hell, there's so much stuff to do you'll likely not get around to it all, and the environments are some of the most gorgeous and fully-realized places in any game EVER. Buy this game if you're in the mood for a good story, or if you want to shoot some folks, or if you want to slap some bears, or tie women to railroad tracks. It's all up to you. The game doesn't demand that you do any of these things, it only offers.