I get too excited and worked up about games before they’re released. I can’t help it. I always build myself up and most of the time the game doesn’t meet my expectations. This happened most recently with Red Dead Redemption and in my defence it was hard not to get excited about it. I like the western setting, I like Rockstar and in the 3 day period between the US and EU release date I got even more excited by reading the ravishing reviews it received. So when the time came to actually play the game I was all ready to make sweet tender love to Red Dead Redemption.

The world of Red Dead Redemption is beautiful and highly detailed no one can argue against that but what good is that world if there is nothing fun to do in it. When you take the main story missions out the equation all you’re left with is a bunch of mundane tasks. Do I really want to break in horses repeatedly? Skin animals all day? Pick some flowers? No I want to be a damn cowboy! Now to be fair there are some more action orientated tasks but they become just as tedious very quickly. The only thing that seems to be worth doing is the story missions. The character acting in the cut scenes are great and at this point it’s the only thing keeping me going. The problem comes in the actual game play of the missions. The mission formula Rockstar uses seems to not have changed from GTA 3, just replace the cars with horses. Though the gun play has definitely improved it’s still not strong enough to support missions that offer nothing new or exciting.

After saying all that Red Dead Redemption is definitely not a bad game but after being so full of excitement and seeing its 95 average on metacritic it’s hard not to be a little disappointed. Would I feel the same if I didn’t pay attention to the reviews or the pre-release videos? Maybe but I think it’s a situation I will never be in. I’m constantly reading previews, watching every trailer I can find and getting too excited for upcoming games but like I said... I can’t help it.