Thursday, June 3, 2010

Red Dead Redemption

I know this review is a bit late but after thuroughly playing RDR here are some impressions. Firstly, this is an excellent game, it has an engaging storyline, fun gameplay, a great open world and hours of playability.

You start off as a classic western hero, part good guy, part bad guy, and you are forced to hunt down your former outlaw gang members and bring them to justice or else 'bad stuff' will happen to your family. The game starts simple enough doing menial tasks like helping herd cattle and then quickly picks up the pace and has to chasing down banditos, shooting the fuck out of outlaws and kicking a bunch of ass Clint Eastwood style. Not Paint Your Wagon Eastwood either.

The side challenges and side missions will distract you for a few hours and are very engaging, however towards the end of the game money is nearly meaningless and once the hunting challenges are complete there is no point to continue mercilessly slaughtering animals for their hides. The lack of anything worth spending money is a bit disappointing, especially considering the well executed upgradeable villa in Assassin's Creed 2, another excellent sandbox game. I imagined buying a ranch, buying livestock, hiring hands. Fanboys might argue something like "that may end up as DLC!" Yes it may, but it seems like a feature that should have been there to start with.

The missions are fun and get you into the action extremely well, it has been a long time since I chose to play through a game as the 'good guy' but I did for this game because Mr. Marston is very likable. However, some missions can be very frustrating, especially if you die and get transported all the way back to your last purchased living space, which could be very far away. Additionally some dialogue was not fully fleshed out, one instance that comes to mind is herding cattle where another character guiding me through the missions repeats the same few sentences in rapid succession over and over again. Very immersion breaking.

The game also has a host of glitches such as suddenly bursting out of cover, getting stuck walking through doors and occasional freezes. Also very agitating but a patch is on the way.

The world is very detailed and nice, not overcrowded like GTAIV, which is a breath of fresh air, it truly feels like a living, breathing western world. Animals kill each other, crimes happen without your involvement and life rolls on in the digital west. Despite this awesome realism comes the most irritating aspect of Red Dead Redemption, GTAIV took a large step forward for Rockstar's open world games by allowing us to SWIM, to move from that game to RDR where going in water above knee high is INSTANT DEATH is extremely immersion breaking and for lack of a better word, dumb as fuck. It is 2010 sir, instant death water is so 1995.

Overall despite the flaws, which every game has, the singleplayer is an excellent addition to the shelf of anyone who likes good story.

Singleplayer Verdict: 9/10

The multiplayer component sounds like it would be decidedly fun, which it is. Free roam is a triumph of game lobbies, allowing players to work cooperatively, solo, or competitively. Levelling up and unlocking new characters, guns, mounts and titles is fun, exciting and well executed. Forming a posse and whacking gang hideouts is also a blast, especially in private free roam with just some friends when you can terrorize each other by executing your friends' horses with a well placed shot to the head. It is even fun to become the victim of heinous acts, such as riding shotgun on a stagecoach that some dickhead you know decides to run full speed off a cliff or into the dangerous and instantly fatal thing known as 'water' for a few good laughs.

The downside to RDR's multiplayer comes in public free roam when trying to play cooperatively and do gang hideouts. The internet is full of assholes, and they WILL come to the gang hideout you are doing and they WILL kill the shit out of you while you're trying to do something. Sometimes this can be fun or amusing, but when you are sincerely trying to have fun and do something it can also piss you off enough to turn your Xbox off.

Additionally some of the multiplayer game modes are extremely laggy with poor hit detection, at times you may lean out to take a shot and be immediately blown away by someone who is hiding in a cheap spot, has a lower ping than you, or some other intangible reason you can't quite pin down. Sometimes it can be a blast where you wreck the other team's joint-anus open and dominate the scoreboards.

It is very hit or miss what type of game you'll end up with, leaving you with a love/hate relationship for RDR's multiplayer.

Multiplayer Verdict: 7/10

All we can do now is wait for the DLC to see how it adds to the game, this is a very solid game worth a purchase if you have the money to spare, if things are tight I wouldn't start getting too anxious about NOT having it despite all your friends playing it. It won't kill you to wait a while.

Game of the Year? No. Top five probably.

Overall Verdict: 8/10.