Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead was a strange situation for me, when I first heard of it I thought to myself, “really? More western games… I thought we just got over that.” But then I heard that Rockstar San Diego was giving it another go developing it, with the engine of Grand Theft Auto IV and then thought to myself, “Oh let me guess, Grand Theft Auto with horses now right?” How wrong I was.

The game got me more interested as I saw the teaser videos and had more information bestowed upon me, taking the idea of the old rugged west and adding in references from the old spaghetti westerns, the game was shaping up to be a grand cinematic adventure where nowhere was entirely safe, danger lurks at every corner, and you could totally lasso a man and drag him along your horse.  The old west however is disappearing, giving way to the telephone, horseless carriage, semi-automatic pistols, and telegrams; you’re placed into the last days of the west during this adventure.

Enter John Marston, a man who has a past being an outlaw trying to start anew, however the plot of the story revolves around his family taken into custody by the US government, and the only way to free them is to corral and kill his former cohorts in crime so that the land may be safer to populate, and that a few pockets of the higher-ups could be lined in the process. John is just a victim of circumstance in this story, however he does not allow people to walk on him which makes him a likeable character, unlike previous Rockstar games, John doesn’t take kindly to being someone’s errand boy, and in various scenes he threatens and sometimes just outright kills people, John isn’t a man to mess with and it makes the player feel that way during the game.

What makes John so much more is the superb voice acting that him and all the characters have in the game, from the rambling NPC’s to minor story characters, each person has their own personality and even the strangers (who are people that give you small side missions) give a great performance in the situations that they are in. Their personalities make this game full, and that much more believable than if their voice actor didn’t push emotion into their lines.

Speaking of the side missions, aside from your normal “speak to this guy and continue the story” progression that we’ve seen in other Rockstar titles, there are the strangers, who are people that have a particular task or issue that you need to solve for them. Some stranger tasks will have choice, but others are more straightforward and if you get a little too lost, the map will always point you in the right direction with a purple circle for the general area that you need to go in. Also bounty hunting has been included, and there is a risk/reward style to it. Players are tasked with taking a bounty alive or dead, and usually alive will be much trickier than say killing everyone and looting the body, but the reward is increased pay and some honor. Players might have trouble differentiating the bounty from his goons if they’re all clustered on the mini-map, which will make taking in your bounty alive will have you do this more slowly and accurately. Regardless if you have killed the bounty or not, more goons from that particular gang will follow you all the way to your reward area, which is always a nearby jailhouse. My only issue with this is not the constant respawning of gang members, but in true GTA fashion they will catch up to you somehow or appear just behind you, and this really sucks if you’ve been hurt and are out of medicine. Another style of side missions are the random encounters, these can be anything from a person being attacked by the wild animals, someone having their horse or carriage stolen, a random hold up, a trap, a rescue mission, and someone straight just taking your horse. These missions don’t lend itself to the story much but they do benefit the player in the long run, however sometimes while you’re doing a bounty these will pop up, but thankfully you can ignore these random encounters, however your map will still have their marker until it’ll tell you that you failed that particular encounter. New to the table are some ambient challenges, which task you with picking various plants, hunting, sharpshooting, and treasure hunting, these challenges are quite addicting once you start them, and might deviate you a little away from the story, but they come with their own rewards to help you in-game. Also included are your standard blackjack, poker, five finger fillet, liar’s dice, and arm wrestling. These minigames are hard to master but fun once you get the hang of them, and by the time I got good at poker I was making more money then I knew what to do with it.

Surrounding all of this is the beautiful scenery that the game produces. Being a native Californian in the high desert, I could have imagined that they went on-location to certain desert areas and noted the growth pattern of the cacti, trees, and general shrubbery. Just gazing down a cliff looking at the town Armadillo as the sun rises  was one of the best moments of the game for me, you could literally take a few minutes from killing and doing missions just to see some of the scenery and wildlife that populates the area. And speaking of the wildlife, the developers did a good job on making sure that these animals where a part of the land, they don’t look out of place, and there is enough happening to keep you interested. Certain animals also have their own times on when they appear, same goes for their locations and general attitudes towards the player. Say for instance there are deer and rabbits, the most they would do is try to flee from the player, however other animals like the boar and cougar, will outright kill you if you aren’t too careful, which I had a problem with the later animal, just showing up as you try to finish a challenge only to kill you quickly, seemed unfair and really bummed me out.

And I might as well get it out of the way here while I’m at it, this game is pretty weird on the balance side of things, like I mentioned before, you have rubber band gang members seemingly speeding towards you while doing a bounty mission, and I still think cougars should be the new chopper on annoyances in games. Another issue I had was the tutorial system, in the top left corner the game will tell you what you need to do, unfortunately the action still goes on and you are left at the mercy on how long that box will stay, luckily you are able to pause the game and check your journal out if you missed anything, but the action should have at least paused or shown you an example. Some glitches also strain my nerves, where as your horse will keep running away from you even after you whistle for it, only to fall off a cliff and die, or somehow riding over a small rock will somehow launch both of you like a ramp, with the resulting fall killing you. There are plenty other bugs too, but none are too annoying, sometimes it’ll make the game just weird or absolutely hilarious. 

Lastly multiplayer makes its way into the game, and there are a few ways to play. You have your standard multiplayer options like deathmatch and team deathmatch, capture the bag (flag) however has a few modes, such as standard two sides, two bags, one mode where there is only one bag and two teams, and a free for all collect as many bags as you can mode. In the free roam portion of multiplayer, the ambient challenges are back, this time rewarding you with XP, making this feel loosely related to a MMO, and I forgot to mention, you earn XP for each kill you make, and bonus XP if the player wanted. Also there are Gang hideouts to do in free roam, much like they are in the singleplayer portion, multiplayer however has XP bonuses for things like killing the gang leader, most kills, least deaths, etc. running up in a posse with your friends and accomplishing these missions are one of the most fun things I’ve done so far this year, which is nice considering if you want to earn plenty XP for leveling all the way, you’ll need some help because it’s a long way. Also soon to come is some co-op missions, which should make XP much easier to obtain. So why the fuss with XP? XP will grant you more levels, which will give you more weapons in your arsenal like dynamite, sniper rifles, better revolvers, name titles, more characters, and mounts. Mounts are really important also in free roam, since getting around in a slow donkey isn’t as cool as riding a awesome buffalo or bull.

Rockstar has outdone themselves in this game, even though the bugs and some of the gameplay issues with death might keep this from being completely perfect, it’s what you’d expect from a sandbox game and more. The inclusion of ambient challenges and rewards for singleplayer and multiplayer will make the game take residency in your system for a while, and after you have completed the lengthy singleplayer, there is a ton of fun to be had in multiplayer for a while, but for some the progression might be a little too slow until more mission packs will become available.