Red Dead Redemption
I am a big fan of the western genre. Consequently I have been continually disappointed by the lack of quality western themed games on the market. My hopes were raised when I heard about Red Dead Redemption since an open world, third-person, mission based game from the makers of Grand Theft Auto sounded very promising.
Red Dead Redemption is a fantastic game. It perfectly nails the look and feel of the western genre and populates this world with interesting characters acting out a compelling story. The enjoyment of riding your horse from the mountains, through the plains, and into the dry scrub-lands is an amazing gaming experience. The expanse and variety of environments and towns really sells the scale of the game and are by far the strongest elements in Red Dead. The cover system & gunplay is also fairly strong, although it is still nowhere close to as polished as other third-person shooters such as Uncharted 2. I liked the large variety of weapons at your disposal, however, there isn't a lot of differentiation between them. By the end of the game you have a large collection of weapons that are more or less the same.
Most of my problems with Red Dead Redemption are minor complaints, but they hold the game back from being the best it could have been. The middle of the game's story and missions feel very padded with a lot of fairly repetitive tasks that don't progress the story much, but simply serve to lengthen the game. I would have preferred a lot more side-missions and more naturally paced story missions. That said, I think the story is generally strong, especially toward the end which is handled very differently than most games. The side missions that are present are pretty good, however, most are fairly simplistic and shallow. My other main complaint with Red Dead is its inconsistent writing. While the story arc and characters are excellent, the way in which the story is presented is mediocre. Most of the dialogue is poorly written and there is entirely too much of it. Certain characters, usually the worst voice acted, talk endlessly about nothing and their presence serves nothing other than to irritate the player.
Overall I really enjoyed Red Dead Redemption, mainly because it is the first well made western game. Unfortunately it wasn't quite the transcendent experience I was looking for, but that's what sequels are for. It took me about 23 hours to finish the main missions with 78% of the game complete and I plan on putting in several more hours to work on some of the remaining side missions and challenges. Definitely worth your time.
Comments
Posted by: Mark
Posted on: August 12, 2010 12:36 AM
You should definitely try the multiplayer mode in RDR. It really adds many hours of playing to it. But the single player campaign is also good. BTW many call this game as a GTA in the wild west :)