I'm in Mehico, first couple of missions done, got Dead Eye Level 3...great. 
So I'm vaguely enjoying myself just riding around till I go meet the mexican version of Tony Montoya who seems to be the LT for the big Jefe. 
He's got a mission for me...gotta go ride with him to capture some rebel scum (cue imperial march) 
So I say, 'okay' lets go shoot us some banditos. 
Next thing i know we're protecting the train from assault on all sides while on horseback..... 
..... 
aaand then i turned it off. 
Why? 
Well...apart from dying twice (which happens..) I'm kinda bored of shooting random people on horses while defending things. There's only so much scrubland and arid wasteland a guy can take in one go.
It's just not what i call fun. 
So yeah, nothing against the game, but I'm gonna leave it a while and come back later. 
 
While we're on the subject, RDR appears to have circumvented one of the major flaws that R* has in its narratives. I'm talking about the disconnection between the narrative drive of the character and the player's penchant for destruction. GTA has always been as much about blowing shit up and going 'say hello to my little friend' as it is about the storyline. Moreso perhaps. RDR and John Marston don't appear to have that problem...at least not how I play. If you go all Dick Turpin on people it may be different...but by restricting the player's destructive capabilities and toning down the comic violence it would appear that in many ways R* has grown up as a storyteller. 
Of course I'm only a 3rd into the game, if that..so I could be completely off the mark, but I hope not. 
 
So..what did I play to act as the polar opposite (see what i did there?) of RDR? 
Well...its in the title. 
The original lost planet (lets...overlook the second for now shall we?) 
I played Lost Planet on the 360 when it originally came out...and i was not best impressed to be honest. The controls were clunky, the game looked crap on my tv (tiny screen and a CRT so..that may explain that) and it wasn't what i'd call fun. 
Fast Foward 4? years. 
I really enjoyed it. Especially after RDR's scrubland seriousness. Some silly fun with mechs and snow was what I needed. 
Game still feels clunky, but a good kinda clunky. I don't know if this is due to the fact that I've played so many abysmally controlled games of late, I'm beginning to enjoy bad control schemes. Annoyingly it has the same shooting buttons as RDR, and they can't be changed either. It also, shockingly, looks much better on my 30' HDTV
One of my favourite games on my 360 was Earth Defence Force. Pure Arcade giant ANT action. 
This kinda reminded me of that...in a good way. After being savaged by wolves and cougars, its nice to blow away Aliens with conveniently placed glowing weak spots. 
 
I also gave Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm another go. Odd fact: Neither of these games have trophies. Not really a problem, but I thought they were necessary by late 2008 when these games came out. I know MGS4 doesn't have them..but.. 
Anyway. Not that great a game. I understand why they chose this mission structure (need to get X mission points to be able to do Y storyline mission). Its kinda like Saints Row 2 in that respect. It just feels rather forced and the 'minigames' really aren't that great on the whole. They're short..but you can only search for Konamamaru so many times. Also Naruto kinda annoys me. It would be much worse in English but still... Why couldn't we select a character (Shikimaru) and play though the campaign as said character...leveling up and gaining new abilities. NUNS just seems to forced into the anime format..sure it looks great, but the single player just feels tacked on, like many fighting games. 
 
In other news: Pre-ordered P3P from videogameplus.ca Atlus are really bad at supporting the handheld markets in the EU in regards to SMT. Still don't have Devil Survivor in the EU let alone Strange Journey. They need to pull it together. Geeze Demon's Souls was hard enough to get over here. 
 
So.... 
*cringes slightly* 
If I'm enjoying the first LP (purely for single player...my connection can barely handle video let alone online multiplayer) is there a good chance I'll enjoy LP2 (whose price is plummeting like a stone) 
Let me know after the *beep*