Red Dead Redemption

With what appears to be my first post of the month, I give to you: Red Dead Redemption. Even if you’ve never played the prequel, just by seeing the front cover of the game - a mean looking cowboy eyeing you down accompanied with the Rockstar Games logo - you should be able to say to yourself, “Looks like GTA mixed with the western genre.” That is precisely what this game is.

In general, it was fun; however, RDR still doesn’t have what it takes to match his urban cousin in the future. The gun fights match up about the same as GTA’s except for the addition of the duels, which are - somewhat - cool. And although the magnificent scenes of the great plains are quite the spectacle at first, they slowly become one of the games most boring features. Ever new mission requires you high tail it across the country where you trot on horseback through this giant, stale environment in where there is nothing to do. Well, wait... on occasion you might choose to defend some poor old farmer being hassled by bandits, or you might get the chance to do some hunting, bag yourself a deer, but it pales in comparison to the city in any GTA. Where are the hidden jumps I can hurl my car off of, cops I can piss of and send chasing after me, hookers looking for a “good time” in the park? The missions and gun fights may be fun, but I found myself rolling my eyes every time I started a mission that required me to ride for 5-10 minutes before I arrived at any conflict. Lots of boredom.

Also, the game was a little to easy - even for me. Even if I do enjoy a nice walk in the park from time to time, I still want my games to provide some challenge along the way. The zoom feature allows you to instantly lock onto your enemies. So by constantly toggling my left trigger, I almost guarantee a hit with every shot I take. Add on top of this the fact you can earn more money than you know what to do with (Five Fingers Fillet - after only four wins you set yourself up to $100 for ever win after; a real easy event to abuse and make yourself rich as hell in no time), you could find yourself armed to the teeth with the games most lethal guns.

***SPOILER ALERT***

I did all this coming to the last stage, a point where you make a final stand at your hose holding off the US Army from killing your family. I slaughtered a hundred men without using my dead-eye (the game’s bullet-time feature) once. However, this only makes the ending more pathetic.

Your wife and son scurry away as about twenty men line up outside the barn you’ve locked yourself in just waiting to shoot you down when you come out. Now I’ve just killed dozens of these guys without so much as breaking a sweat, and now the game forces you out the front door into a duel with impossible odds. Needless to say, your shot down with only enough time to take a couple of other fellows with you. But why couldn’t I have run out the other side of the barn or climbed to the roof - I saw an opening up there, why the hell doesn’t the game?!

Regardless, I still had fun. In the end, though, I longed for something more.

Wait a tick! What’s this Undead-thing I’ve been hearing some much about as an added download feature to the game. Well, I reached the credit screen, so the game is beaten - and therefore blog-worthy - but maybe not finished.