Typical Rockstar Formula
Rockstar's newest sandbox game takes players to a place surprisingly untapped by developers: The Old West. Actually, more like early 1900's Old West where the ways of horse-riding, shooting your food and living off the land is being taken over by driving automobiles and living a more "civilized" life. You play as John Marston, a former member of a ruthless gang of outlaws who terrorized the countryside. Marston looks to get away from that life by hunting down his old compatriots at the behest of the government, who have John's wife and son "hostage". Basically John does everything anyone tells him to do as long as he gets his family back. This includes the Rockstar staple of highly unlikeable characters ranging from a snake oil salesman, to a grave robber and both sides of a Mexican revolution.
Trouble is, at least for me, the story isn't interesting at all. Marston is basically an errand boy for everyone he meets, doing them favors with no real explanation as to how this will get him to his goal other than "maybe he knows about the guys I'm hunting". You also have no control over the story; in GTA IV you could at least decide which characters live or die and at least feel like you play a role. Here, you go to the spot on the map with a letter and do it until the letter disappears and three more pop up elsewhere. The ending is actually pretty good, but --without giving anything away -- I'd rather have put the last two hours or so at the START of the game and go from there. It's a much more interesting story.
The gameplay is standard Rockstar: go here, listen to NPCs babble along the way, shoot everybody, watch cutscene, repeat. Instead of cars, you ride horses and while riding under the stars is fun for a while, on long trips you are better off making camp and fast travelling to where you need to go. Your horse "levels up" and gains stamina the more you ride it, but even the fastest horse is slow as hell compared to a car. Gunplay is similar to GTA IV in that it has a cover system that doesn't really work that well and a quick-aim that snaps to your target and allows you to aim for legs, arms or heads. An addition to this game is "Dead Eye", which slows down the game and allows you to mark multiple targets (think SC: Conviction's Mark system). It's ok, but nothing revolutionary and shooting while on a horse can be a pain in the ass.
The main hook for a lot of people seems to be that this is a giant world full of stuff to do when not doing the story, and there is. You can play poker, blackjack and "Liar's Dice", hunt a wide variety of wildlife (fuck cougars right up their asses, BTW), buy properties that serve as save points, collect pieces of new outfits and just generally cause mayhem wherever you go. The thing is, in this game, shooting up a town and fleeing on horseback isn't as fun as it really should be. They use the same "circle of vision" system that GTA IV has, but it is even easier to escape since you have such wide open spaces to deal with. Plus, you don't have wanted stars, you get a bounty put on you which you can go to any telegraph station and pay off yourself. Like GTA IV, once I finished the story I don't really have much interest in going back into the world.
Overall, this game is getting the typical Rockstar blowjob in the media, but it isn't nearly as good as the reviews are making it. It's GTA IV in the West with a little more to do but a story and characters that aren't half as interesting.
