It’s no secret to anyone around me that I was stoked about Red Dead Redemption for months. My friends and I had a posse formed a solid month before it came out. I’m happy to say that the game lived up to my expectations.
You play as John Marsden, a reformed outlaw who is now trying to live a quiet life as a rancher with his wife Abigail and his son Jack. However, he hasn’t quite been able to escape his criminal past, and now is on a mission to hunt down his former partners-in-crime. Basically, it’s a typical Western genre storyline. It could have gotten boring, but because it’s Rockstar Games making a sandbox game set at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, it’s pretty impossible that this game wouldn’t be at least somewhat enjoyable.
There is plenty to do around the large map. You can hunt wild animals, search for treasure, capture outlaws, kill innocents, help out random strangers, play poker, blackjack, or horseshoes; patrol towns and ranches for crimes, duel at high noon, and clear out gang hideouts. Oh yeah, and you can do the storyline missions as well. Seriously, there is so much you can do in this game that it’s almost overwhelming, but it’s good for someone like me who gets ADD after about 20 minutes of gaming. Any game that can hold my attention for 6 hours in a row like RDR has is a good game in my book.
The game itself is also very, very well designed. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous, even on the XBox 360. I once rode my horse Dusty Butt off a cliff because I was staring at how fantastically rendered a mountain was in the background. There were only a few moments where the frame rate dropped, which is astounding due to the sheer amount of shit happening in the open world. I never experienced some of the weird glitches that some people did, such as humans accidentally being coded as animals (flying people and cougar dudes). The two glitches I experienced were close to the end and at the very, very end of the game, and I’m not even entirely sure whether one of those was a legit glitch or it was supposed to be like that. I’d explain it more, but I’d spoil the end of the game if I tried to. Graphics aside, voice acting was also pretty good. There wasn’t any dialogue where I was like “LOLWUT,” but then again I often space out during cutscenes so it’s entirely possible, even probable, that I missed something.
I kind of have to pull at straws to find any negatives in RDR. A few of the missions were a bit confusing as to what I was supposed to be doing. In the game’s defense however, as I previously stated I often don’t watch cutscenes and I’m also a bit of a dumbass. It was never anything that took me more than a couple of tries to figure out, however, so it’s not a major issue. There were also a lot of scenes of nothing but riding a horse or driving a wagon and chatting with an NPC. They are basically there simply for the sake of the plot, but at times they were a bit tedious and too fucking long. Some of these you could skip, but that’s only if you were the passenger on a wagon. Again, I’m really grasping at straws here to find negatives.
RDR is probably my second favorite game of the year so far, after Mass Effect 2. The only reason it’s not my absolute favorite is because I’m a Mass Effect fangirl. It definitely has the feel of GTA, from the save system to the map. If you like GTA, westerns, sandbox games, or shooters, I can’t imagine you not getting at least some enjoyment out of RDR.
9.7/10
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