Riding off into the Sunset with Red Dead Redemption
Posted: 6/3/2010 12:00:00 AM
By: analogfight

I want to preface this by saying that I did not care for HATED the GTA games. Yes I know I lose gamercred for that,but I have never been a fan of the sandbox environment games where you run around forever only to be told you have to go to the opposite side of the world.

Enough of my whining lets get to the review. I'll break this down for you Clint Eastwood style, as in The Good The Bad and The Ugly. I am doing this Because this game made me feel like an ass kicking cowboy.

THE GOOD:
Rockstar did an impressive job of getting you involved in the characters lives from the beginning, I was expecting a 'lil John Marston after seeing how Bonnie MacFarlane and John interacted but no luck so I just had to shoot my revolver (no reference to my personal piece intended) at wild animals and watch some blood splatter on the screen as I skinned them. The sandbox environment that I had hated before didn't become so bad to me because I wasn't bound to roads, I could roam around wherever I wanted. This lead me to the side missions of the game. Also seeing the rich landscapes and visuals that Rockstar has put together was a nice treat. Finally and what I still enjoy the most is the multiplayer portion of the game, Free roam is enjoyable to just roam around snipe some gringo off his horse, steal it, than chase him down and shoot him again…yes I am that guy in free roam! There are also all your standard multiplayer options, but picking off the unsuspected player in free roam is my favorite.

The Bad:
I may be bitching here but hey, it's my review if you don't like it write your own. It seemed like you could tell who was an important person to the story and who wasn't by the volume in which that character spoke to John. For example some of the Marshal's men spoke so quietly that I had to turn it up to hear their dialog only to get a booming response from John that woke up the homeless guy that was sleeping on my front steps. A few times I would be starting to go on a mission and whom ever I was helping would not do a thing. One controller busting moment was when I was told to protect Seth and to ride shotgun on the Carriage, after climbing up and readying my repeater Seth decided he wasn't gonna do shit. I had to re-load from an earlier state and get to that mission again. It worked the second time and that's good cause I don't have fifty dollars to throw away every time a cracked out treasure hunter decided to be a lazy ass.

The Ugly:
Sometimes the good and the ugly go hand in hand, but that is usually after a long night at the bar. The ugly I am referring to in this case is the clipping that happens A LOT in multiplayer. Nothing pisses me off more than killing all 17 thousand bandits so I can go raid a mine, and then having a bandit stuck in the environment (in this case inside a rock) and being able to shoot me no matter where I stand on the map. The other thing that throws me into a huge episode of controller breaking nerd rage is when some dirty ass towns person NPC walks in front of you on a mission, you brush up against them… and then BAM! You get mission failed you harmed a towns person or whatever the message is I can't read it cause my plasma tv doesn't display right after I pitched my controller at it.

The Morning After… AKA Overall:
I only broke 2 controllers in prepping for this review, overall that isn't bad. I do like this game and long after the main story is over you are left with a lot of things to do. Think of it as getting invited to a Sorority and then after a few days invited to move in. You may wonder away from RDR from time to time, but you will probably come back and play it from time to time. The replay value is pretty high because of all the different things you can do, from helping strangers to treasure hunting. You can also pass the time by playing horse shoes, poker, liars dice, mumbly peg, Arm wrestling or my personal favorite shooting people in free roam and watching their horse drag them down the road.