Red Dead Redemption

My memories of Red Dead Revolver are brief and negative. I didn't like it because what I expected was Grand Theft Auto meets the Wild West and what I got was a game that bored me so I quickly moved on to Gun. Skip forward five years or so to Red Dead Redemption. It's Grand Theft Auto meets the Wild West...and a damn good game.

I actually put off playing this game for a long time because of my growing hatred for the GTA series. While I would never dispute that Rockstar are fantastic at making living, breathing worlds, I would argue that they don't make good games. Level design, mission designs have always been horrendous and the controls for driving and combat have always been frustrating as hell. The only GTA game I can honestly say was well put together and a genuinely enjoyable experience was Chinatown Wars...a game that exactly four people played. So it really took me by surprise by just how much better this one is.

If you strip it to its bare bones it plays a lot like GTA IV, so comparisons are unavoidable, but what I've found is that the core mechanics are so much better in this one. Combat, for example works a lot better. It's the same cover based shooting we've gotten use to, but thankfully a lot of the irritation is now gone as people go down in a shot or two. It's becoming very out-dated for enemies to be able to absorb a clip full of ammo before falling down and while this does make combat a bit easy, I think this game is less concerned with giving you a challenge and more with giving you a fun experience. It wants you to feel like John Wayne when you pull out your pistol and shoot a dude between the eyes. Shooting bad guys, storming forts and taking on small armies are meant to remind you of those fantasies you had as an eight year old when your index and middle finger were the nozzle of a gun.

Horse riding too is a lot of fun. The one thing that always turned me off in GTA was racing. Let's face it, the car controls were shit and I always knew that a racing mission was where the whole game would grind to a halt for a week while I tried to win the damn race. Racing in Read Dead Redemption is a lot more fun because it's a nice change of pace and visuals, and you don't have to worry about taking a corner to fast and crashing into a lamp post. It is also fun and easy to pull of action sequences while riding. Often missions will call on you to defend a coach from bandits and so you will have to ride and shoot at the same time. If a non-lethal take-down is required, you can ride your horse and lasso someone at the same time. Much like combat, it's easy to pull off and gives you that feeling of being the cool cowboy type in a western movie.

The story and characters are typical GTA: John Marsdon is both dangerous and deadly, yet always polite and loyal to his friends. The story, while retaining elements of Grand Theft Auto, had filtered out much of the immature humour. It retains a healthy dose of it, but really the story has more of a threatening tone hanging over it. Marsdon obviously cares a great deal about his family's safety and being forced into hunting down his former gang weighs heavy on his mind, so jokes about titties and blowjobs would have been out of place here. The pre-mission cut scenes feel more dedicated to adding to the story than just having someone say “I'm going to go shoot people, wanna come?” and the dialogue exchanges during the long horse rides help to add some extra characterization or fill up some little holes in the plot.

The supporting characters are the usual mix of crazy people in a crazy world, however I felt like some of them, instead of getting a grand exit they deserved, just dropped out of the game. You spend the early part of the game building up a team to story Bill's fort and once the task is over they say their goodbyes and leave. I enjoyed their company and wanted to continue to see them turn up in the rest of the game. The Mexico sections were more satisfying in this regard because Mexico is full of some evil bastards and naturally you get caught up in the middle of it all.

There's plenty to do when not doing the story, there's a lot of side missions you'd expect from a western game, like herding cows and breaking horses, but there is also a lot more random encounters with strangers that open up missions as big as a main story mission, sometimes even missions that take place over several encounters with strangers. There's also treasure hunts for extra money and gang hide-out's to clear, so even when you aren't doing the story, there's still plenty to do.

The only major thing I can think to criticize is this: While the games main strength is that you can pull off a lot of cool stuff really easily, the games main weakness is that you can pull off a lot of cool stuff really easily. I'm not saying I want the game to be frustrating, but and option for difficulty would have been nice because this game is really, really easy. You'd have to be pretty crap at computer games not to see this one through to the end. The few times that I did see the game over screen was down more to my own stupidity rather than the game being difficult. If your looking for a challenge, this isn't the game for you. But for me, Red Dead Redemption was everything I ever wanted from Rockstar but never got from Grand Theft Auto. It's characters are interesting, it's story more mature and emotional engaging, and its game play is never anything less than fun.