Rockstar Games is back and they are living the city life of Grand Theft Auto behind them as they saddle up and head out to the wild wild west in Red Dead Redemption. Set in the early 20th. century Red Dead Redemption is an open world sandbox game telling the story of reformed outlaw John Marston. After three years of living the straight life and starting a family, Marston is ripped from his peaceful life by agents of the government who have captured his family and threaten to harm them unless he helps bring his former gang members to justice. With no choice but to grab his guns and head west, Marston must travel to the frontier to track down his former outlaw friends and bring them back dead or alive.
Gamers are thrusted into this epic tale from the moment John Marston steps off the train in Armadillo. From there it is up to you to guide him through his adventure. As normal with Rockstar Games, you will be the person controlling the way the story unfolds, be it good or bad. As you progress through the game you will be presented with many missions and tasks, some will lead you to your ultimate goal of finding your old gang and others will lead to fame, honor or riches. While I don’t want to ruin the story for you in this review, the missions are very well done and all unique, there will be fairly few times that you’ll feel like your doing the same mission over and over again. Missions range from the simple going to meet someone, the exciting finding your way into a burning barn, to the epic chasing down a gang of bandits, and those are just scratching the surface. Even the challenges like sharpshooter, hunting and survivalist stay fresh, while you are doing the same act such as kill X number of animals, as you rank up you’ll have to hunt nastier beasts with less powerful weapons. And to further the challenges the game ties into Rockstars Social CLub, which will be adding new challenges through out the weeks.
Similar to the GTA series Red Dead Redemption offers players many different in-game activities beyond the storyline missions, from games of horseshoes and poker, hunting and herb gathering, herding cattle and breaking mustangs, tracking down outlaws for bounty, sharpshooting and other challenges, the list goes on. While the main story offers roughly 20 hours of playtime if you add in all the extra activities you’ll be doing, the game time quickly increases.
Red Dead Redemption offers gamers a slew of weapons and horses, all very real life and special in their own ways. As you gain money, more weapons will become available to you, from rifles, pistols, shotguns and the all important lasso. All the guns in the game have various models with different pluses and minuses. The lasso comes in very important when chasing outlaws for bounty, as bringing them back alive will lead to more cash in your pocket. The lasso also comes in handy for roping and hogtying animals and even the unruly town drunk. You can also upgrade to better horses as you move along the story. Each horse has its own unquiet speed and stamina levels.
As you travel across the amazing frontier of New Austin, Nuevo Paraiso and West Elizabeth you’ll encounter hundreds of unique characters many looking for your help. There are so many unique events occurring in this constantly changing world that you’ll never get bored. One thing with GTA is it always felt like you were just doing missions in this big world with people, but you were never really apart of it. This isn’t the case with Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar has deployed a very interesting dynamic events system. You might be traveling the back roads and come across a person who needs your help to stop a hanging of their innocent friend, or come around a bend to witness a stagecoach heist, though watch out it could be a trap. These various side events all impact your Fame and Honor, help the person in trouble and you’ll be welcomed into towns all across the land, but turn on the victims and help the outlaws and your honor will decrease and could lead to big bounties being placed on your head, the choice is yours.
Red Dead Redemption is an amazing living and breathing world and it looks great. The game uses the RAGE and Euphoria engines that powered GTAIV and both have been greatly improved. The world comes alive with every step you take. The details that went into RDR are just mind blowing and with every mile you travel you will find more and more life in this game. From the birds that will fly out of bushes and trees as you stampede past, the numerous wild animals that live in the world like the deer hoping along the prairie to the bears in the mountains. You might be witness to the town drunk roughing up a local prostitute or the bank robbers hitting the local bank. And it’s not just the events you see occurring but the details in which they occur, by using the Natural Motion Euphoria engine the game has no canned movements and everything occurs on the fly. Shoot a persons leg and they will fall to the ground and might even return fire or try to crawl away, or use some of your sharpshooting skills and blow hats off your foes.
One area that the development team spent lots of focus on was creating life like horses , and they completed the task with flying colors. Each horse is incredibly unique and looks amazing from the muscle movements under the skin to the flapping hair in the wind.
Graphically RDR is hands down the best looking open world game to date. The colors are rich and vibrant and really capture that of the west. As you move around the vast game map the areas change from the dry cactus filled desserts to the snowy mountains. All the areas look unique, from the different trees and bushes to the area wildlife.
The dynamic weather will astound you every time you see dark clouds rolling in from the distance. Areas that get rain soaked will be filled with puddles, and the dry areas will be dusty with the occasional tumble weed blowing past. The lighting is equally impressive from the sunrise in the mornings to the sunsets at night the game shines. And it’s not just the big lights in the game like the sun, little things like a dropped match after lighting a cigarette even looks impressive.
Though with all the good there does come some bad. Being such a massive graphical game you will run into some hiccups, while surprising enough pop-up isn’t a major issue however at times shadows and lighting effects will seem to pop-on, , at night I came across many times where lights would magically pop on and off. But any hiccups I hit in the graphics department were minimal and aren’t cause for alarm.
Another issue is how the walking/riding motion sometimes looks and acts. At times you’ll go up or down objects, like steps or short drop offs and you kinda just pop to the new level. But other times it looks real good like going down hillsides, Marston will lean back and do kinda do a shuffle down an incline to stay on his feet. The other control issue was going from a wide path to narrow bridge on horse, at such great speed it’s difficult to turn on a dime (which isn’t an issue, since it gives you the feel of the horses momentum) but that will lead to you hitting the bridges side rails and coming to a complete stop and not getting on the bridge. I ran into a similar issue at times trying to get in doorways with steps, you just keep hitting the walls on either side but can’t get in the door. It would have worked if there was a built in invisible like funnel into these objects, at least when your character or steed is in a run state, this way you would enter smaller areas gradually without the need to steer.
The controls of the game are very similar to that of the GTA series and veterans of GTA will feel right at home. While you don’t have a gas pedal on a horse the system that is used works very well. To get your horse up to speed you need to tap A, every tap will give you more speed, but put to much strain on your steed and they will buck and throw you off. You also have the ability to match speed of nearby horses by simply holding A, this comes in use during gun fights mostly. Horse controls are pretty simple but can be wonky at times, sometimes the horse will jump or not stop for obvious cliffs, and for some reason you can’t get them to go backwards.
The game also uses an auto-target system and cover system similar to GTA IV, and the target system can be adjusted in three levels, full auto, semi-auto or off. The system works very well in some cases to well as many times it seemed very easy to take out a gang or pack of wolves. The targeting system also includes a subsystem called Dead Eye. Dead Eye allows gamers to slow down the action and make crack shots. Each weapon type prompts a different type of Dead Eye Mode. Pistols will allow you to paint multiple parts of one enemy or multiple enemies to unleash a furry of rounds. While rifles will require you to manual make each shot while the action is slowed down. Dead Eye really helps you get out of intense battles with large groups of enemies. While the targeting system does work well it makes the game rather easy, I actually found myself using the semi-auto lock and then trying for headshots or taking out limbs instead of the quick kill.
The cover system is simple but works very well, it seems the animations of going into cover feel more realistic in RDR with Marston sliding from a run into low cover or as he switches for cover to cover.
Sound has always been a big part of Rockstar’s games, the radio stations of Grand Theft Auto have always been amazing and produced with great detail. And while your trusty steed doesn’t have a radio installed for obvious reasons, the soundtrack is nothing short of what you would hear in a Hollywood western. As you gallop across the moon soaked countryside at night the music is mellow and peaceful. As gun battles unfold the tempo will be high paced and epic. And it’s not just the soundtrack thats great, the sounds of the west are great as well. From the chirping of birds and buzzing of insects, to the banter you’ll hear around towns and in the local bars. The voice acting is nothing short of best ever in a game. Listening to the story unfold is mind-blowing and really pulls you into the game. The audio team definitely hit a grand slam with Read Dead Redemption.
While the majority of your time will be spent exploring the wild west, Rockstar has gone to the drawing boards and created an amazing online experience as well. From the slew of preset game modes and match types, to the revolutionary Free Roam mode. In Free Roam you enter into a lobby which can hold up to 16 players, but unlike a lobby thats boring and has no gaming action, this one is a game all in itself. You have access to the entire RDR world where you can team up with up to 8 friends and form a posse. As a posse or solo cowboy you can take part in various activities from the simple run around and kill other players, to hunting, raiding hideouts, or just interacting with the AI all over the world, pretty much everything that happens in the solo game occurs in Free Roam online mode. Think of World of Warcraft meets Grand Theft Auto. There are 50 levels you can work through, everything you do in the world earns you XP and as you progress you unlock more modes, weapons, horse and characters.
If you are the type who likes a more straight forward online game you have the option to jump into a handful of competitive match types to earn your XP. These matches include various deathmatch shootouts, Goldrush where you need to capture as many bags of gold, Grab the Bag which is similar to capture the flag with a bag of gold, Hold Your Bag which is a teamed based version of Grab the Bag. And all these competitive matches begin with a staple of every western, a good ole shootout. All in all the online play is really fun and unique and might take up as much of your time as the offline play.
Red Dead Redemption is the western game we have been all been waiting for since video gaming was invented. Rockstar Games has once again brought us a highly detailed game with infinite hours of gameplay and infinite ways to play. From the moment you step into the boots of John Marston you will be finding a new adventure around every corner. The amount of time and energy that went into the nuts and bolts of this game shows, and gamers will experience one of gaming’s visual and audio masterpieces. The small details that bring this game to life are unbelievable and will continue to amaze gamers each time they play. While the game is a masterpiece it does have a few hiccups, the horse controls can be a bit wonky at times, the game suffers from some pop-up especially when your moving across the land quick but these issues are no where near a game wrecker. The online play is very unique and the Free Roam mode feels like an MMO and will suck up lots of your time. While the single player game can offer unlimited playtime, the online mode offers many options to play with friends form around the world. Red Dead Redemption is a game that should be in everyone’s collection.
*This game was reviewed on the Xbox 360 but the PS3 version is essentially the same.
A copy of Red Dead Redemption was provided to us for this review from Rockstar Games.
