So it seems that gaming is still alive and the modern age still shows that perhaps there is hope for the release of brilliant classics! Although the console age has been wearing thin and people take the consoles themselves for granted, there still exists games that keep these consoles at the edge of exclusive prowess. And yes, I mean the Nintendo Wii, XBOX 360, and PS3. "Red Dead Redemption", though not the most perfect game in the world, still proves to be one of the best games on the console as well as the PS3 console. Unfortunately the game was not ported to the PC, which is very unfortunate for PC gamers such as myself. Although I didn't finish the game, I got far enough through it to judge it wholeheartedly because unfortunately I had to give the game back to my freind before I had the chance to beat it.
"Red Dead Redemption" just seems to be one of those games that was hyped to the point that people claimed it was the most perfect thing since so and so. The truth of the matter is "Red Dead Redemption" is not the most perfect game ever. In fact its far from being perfect. Ironically though, the game seems entirely based off a movie released in 1957 and remade in 2007. Can you guess the name of that film? Its none other than "3:10 to Yuma". Making that relation, if its not obvious to you that the game already shows some lack of creativity before I brought that up, then I'm sure you just made that realization. Actually, it might be completely inspired by the film in general only with some stitches put in the story so it wouldn't be so obvious, which is of course the greatest news of all. This similarity the game shares with an old film does not by all means declare the game as rubbish. Theres plenty to the game that stands out at the same time flaws still are apparent.
The game takes place in the olden days of the American wild west. You play as a cowboy known as John Marston who was formerly involved in a gang of criminals. He soon decides to leave behind his life as an outlaw, feeling compelled to do what he feels is righteous. Failing to negotiate with Williamson, the new leader of the former gang of outlaws Martson was once a part of, John becomes enraged and seeks to hunt the bastard down for not only nearly ending his life, but also keeping him away from his own family he was promised to be reunited with once he hunted down the remaining gang members. Thankfully, the story plays out quite well and remains efficient.
This opening scene shows the proficiency of voice acting and cinematic usage the game uses quite well to its advantage throughout. Some footage is also included.
Portrait of main character John Marston.
Many people claim this game to be a Grand Theft Auto clone. Well, its not exactly a Grand Theft Auto clone since the game itself does distinguish itself from the GTA franchise simply due to the fact that not only it marks its time period in the past in comparison to GTA, there is also not that much of an emphasis on the gangsterism, even though it is existent with the role of outlaws. Being an open world sandbox game sharing relevance to the structure of GTA, Red Dead Redemption plays as its own game but does not reinvent gameplay or schematics in any way whatsoever. The layout of the game even goes to show that it does set itself aside from GTA with the feature of an actual still-framed title screen with options instead of automatically deploying the player into the environment.
Its fair to say that Red Dead Redemption stands as a well made game overall. Unfortunately like most games, it's not perfect. Revolving around the RPG oriented sandbox environment, the player goes from mission to mission travelling from person to person and place to place just as in Grand Theft Auto or any other open environment game that is relative.
Graphical representation of the environment.
Luckily there are multiples of mission varieties that attempt to try to keep the player engaged as well as astounding cut scenes and voice acting that remains over the top throughout especially with over the top graphics that only add to the realism. I only hoped that the missions became more interesting instead of more tedious and repetitive after the first hour of the game. However, there are still some pretty interesting encounters throughout the game that do come in a bit late to keep the player's full interest.
The first kind of missions the player starts out with are the ranch missions. Basically going around herding animals, taming horses, and all that cowboy mumbo jumbo. Although this is a good look into the days of the wild west, it gets tedious and seems that it could play out better even though it tries to blend the environment a bit before going out doing the later shoot outs that give the game its thrill.
Herding cattle during a ranch mission.
Then theres convoy and shoot out missions. Through convoys, you guide other persons or amounts of goods from point A to point B usually fending off waves of outlaws. Through shoot out missions you either defend a zone from outlaws, take to the offense against outlaws, rescue certain peoples from the grip of outlaws, retrieve certain goods from outlaws, or an old wild west showdown gun draw involving the "Dead Eye" feature presented in the middle of the game. With this variety of missions, the game certainly stands on its own, especially with the western showdowns involving the "Dead Eye" feature that make the game unique along with the ranching missions.
Gun fight sequence while carrying out through a mission.
The first of these flaws is the aiming reticle. The damn thing is so small that sometimes it doesn't appear to be on the screen due to how well it copes with the environment. A way to highlight the reticle by at least giving it some better indication to show that it is present throughout the game would be a lot helpful to the player. When players meddle with the difficulty settings, the aiming reticle becomes bothersome due to how barely noticeable it is and trust me, I myself had this problem and it was quite annoying. Luckily the auto-lock feature presented on the easier difficulty modes of targeting comes in handy for this issue but seems quite broken when enabled, especially on default only giving the player more of a reason to disable the auto-lock feature by bumping the target difficulty up to expert which in the end becomes annoying with the reticle since it will at times be hard to aim and shoot at the same time.
A good indication of the amount of enemies left is listed in the bottom left of the screen. If only the reticle was that good of an indicator instead of blending so well with the environment to be barely noticeable.
A gun duel which makes use of the "Dead Eye" mode feature. As you can see, the screen gets tinted and while it remains tinted, you will remain in the mode feeling as if time is slowing down and etcetera, giving you the upper hand to lay down your shots on your opponent and win the duel.
Another flaw is the repetitiveness of missions and lack of reward. Ranch missions are the first missions you start out with and you start out with quite a few before going out into gun fights where the game becomes more amusing. From herding cattle to taming horses, even though the environment tries to make the player feel as if they are an ordinary cowboy in the west, fact of the matter is it just seems to be more of a chore than anything that appears to be rewarding in the end. Speaking of horses, transportation throughout the game is primarily by horseback. The use of horses is well thought out, especially gun fights on horseback adding to the realism. Its quite awesome to shoot a guy and watch him collapse off his horse almost like a rag doll. However the burden of horseback, is its your quickest method of transportation other than the use of trains or stage coach. Heck, stage coach saves the most time since its rather rare to come across a train at the right given time. Still, it takes forever to travel on horseback and quite annoying. The player will be extremely relieved with the present alternatives. Not to mention the horse races especially by stage coach are pretty lame.
Burden of riding on horseback to get to another destination through a huge environment from time to time.
There really isn't much of any rewards at the end of each mission besides money just like in GTA, other than unlocking new tools like the use of a lasso as well as unlocking generic costumes, which I guess is a plus. After a while you will notice that missions do become more of a chore and less rewarding each time. Even when there are larger circumstances, everything just plays out the same. There are some intense battle scenes through the game such as going through the border to Mexico while shooting down an ambushing army of outlaws. This appears to be one of the only things in the game that seem to bring out the intensity while a lot wears thin and seems very delayed at times.
While crossing the border of Mexico, John Marston gets ambushed. This appears to be one of the more intense and challenging missions of the game.
The use of certain tools gives the player more of an edge, for multipurpose use. With the lasso you can round up people and do all sorts of stuff like place a person on a train track, carry a person around on your horse, or even other sorts of pleasurable torture methods that will keep you occupied for quite some time if your bored of doing the generic missions given to you. Its just great that after doing a set of missions, you get awarded such tools to add to the fun.
Using a lasso to round up a random person riding a stage coach.
I have to admit, the gun fights were pretty well done. Gun duels could of been a bit more challenging, especially with the broken "Dead Eye" implementation where kills are just way too easy to pull off, although the realism ends up satisfying. Some of the ranch missions were quite well thought out at first such as cattle herding or trying to round up a bunch of horses and tame them even when the weather turns out bad to make things more difficult. Use of unlockable tools come in handy that keep the player occupied abd add to the enjoyment, especially the lasso, making certain mission rewards quite well worth accomplishing. Unfortunately the game was only released on the 360 and PS3, making it a bit harder for PC gamers to get their hands on and give the game a go. With all the game has to show, it can be said that a lot of hard effort has went into it to make it the decent game that it is and nothing more. It is definitely a recommended playthrough for anyone who wants to have a good time shooting up an environment full of outlaws and feeling like a bad ass cowboy. I wouldn't say its the best western game ever since I would personally prefer Sunset Riders and Gun Smoke, but its up there for now.
Pros:
- Great voice acting and cinematic cut scenes that use advantage to make the game a unique experience to play through.
- Impressive graphics.
- Proper use of realism, especially through ranch missions and gun fights to represent the old wild west theme.
- Fairly good but generic plot.
- Fairly decent selection of tools and weapons.
- Good variety of enjoyment added with unlocked tools from certain missions at random points of the game.
- Introduced varieties of transportation become relieving in the sense you don't always have to ride on horse as the only resort.
- Good controls.
- Good length.
Cons:
- "Dead Eye" mode feels kind of broken.
- Aiming reticle barely noticeable that may result some players to use the broken auto aim feature in a lower difficulty of precision.
- Missions become repetitive and may also become a chore, especially ranch missions and racing.
- Mission rewards could be a little more convenient at times, feels kind of similar to other sandbox games.
- Riding on horseback from point A to point B becomes bothersome.
- Limited to PS3 and XBOX 360, no other ports.
- Genericness of missions cause a delay towards getting to the more challenging missions.
- Gun fights could be a bit more challenging as well as missions in general.
