Here is a review of latest masterpiece from Rockstar. Yes masterpiece. Rockstar is of course most known for their open world Grand Theft Auto game's. Which interestingly enough started as more of a racing game and which each iteration, and especially with the jump to 3d on the brilliant Grand Theft Auto 3 that series has been more a sandbox game build on the car stealing factor. Red Dead Redemption is a similar sandbox mode game with a western theme gearing slightly towards a MMO game, especially on the multiplayer part.
Red Dead Redemption is a "spiritual" successor for Rockstar's Red Dead Revolver game which was more like normal third person shooter, just based on Wild West. Red Dead Redemption (RDR) has nothing to do with the original game other than the time. RDR takes place in final days when West was still wild. Most of the game is done from back of a horse by shooting bandits and animals while following a well constructed story. Between missions there is number of mini-games and challenges. Game world is based on fictional New Austin which is divided into two larger ares. Mexico and "Texas" with typical prairie land, with some forest and mountain areas. Each of these ares are filled with wildlife, anything from ordinary seagulls to big buffalo's. The higher food chain creatures are covered as well. Such as coyotes, wolfs, cougars and bears which all will give you and your horsie trouble. Hunting and skinning of these animals is used for collectibles. Other collectibles are gathering unique plants from each area, sharpshooter challenges and different outfits that require completion of some of the many mini-games, stranger quest or story line progress.
The story itself is very well build and especially on the last part you will feel rewards in a way. Overall the individual missions follow the same open-world structure that many such games. Travel to one place - kill something - travel back. If you blast your way through the missions it might feel like a bore but if breaking the flow with couple of mini-games or stranger missions. Stranger missions are extra quest that pop up in the map during your travels. These usually involve you doing a moral decision. Keeping the dought or whacking the dude. The final aspect of game-play being the controls is in my opinion on of the flaws RDR has. This being the controls. The weapon changing and lassoing are done by holding a trigger down and doing a various combo selection. Might be that this because of PS3 controllers iffy trigger buttons as well. Other aspect of the controls is how the character handles. If you ever played any of the 3D GTA games or it's clones you that the moving is not so accurate always. Such as entering a room/stairs can become a challenge. Then again if you played any of the above mentioned games you are used to this already. One other worth while mentioning aspect of the game-play is the glitches. Youtube host's a huge range of such, most being silly graphical glitches that don't really affect the game itself.
On the graphics part this game really pushes the hardware. My chosen platform was PS3 and even though the Xbox 360 version should run on higher resolution I could not tell the difference. This game looks absolutely amazing. There is a dynamic weather and a day cycle. And on several occasions I noticed staring the Sun creeping over the horizon. Biggest difference to the normal "modern" GTA games is as the factor that New Austin is quite desolated. This means that the villages and buildings you encounter can most of them be entered. The level of detail on the buildings, nature and the character really show how well Rockstar has localized this. There is not factor in game that would not suit a Wild West.
Sound and music is always something Rockstar has pushed on and this game is no difference. There is a fitting soundtrack that conveys the western feel perfectly from old spaghetti western type to the usual Mexican brass/wind instrument music. There is even some perfectly fitted modern instruments in the soundtrack which you probably wont recognize without listening the soundtrack separately. The voice acting is another highlight of the game. This game has probably the biggest voice actor cast in Rockstar's history. Each character from the main protagonist to the NPC characters have a perfectly written dialog which even further relays the early 1900 feel. Main character John Marston is the most charismatic Rockstar character no doubt and he does fall into same violence fearing psychopath as Niko Bellic. Other fact to point about the voice acting is that half of the game being in Mexico you will hear only Spanish in Mexico.
Multiplayer, now that is something I don't usually get to play too much of. Not to mention review. RDR has the opened the actual whole game world map to be a multiplayer lobby, called free roam. Meaning you can team up with your mates and go look for trouble on either other player or NPC villages/bases or just go for a hunting mission. Currently there isn't unfortunately too much to do on the free-roam but Rockstar will release more co-op missions later this summer. The multiplayer fun doesn't quite stop here though. There are the usual death-match and capture the flag kind of game modes. Unfortunately these more traditional game types don't use the perks gained in the free-roam game. These perks being acquired from similar collectibles challenges from single game where each new level unlocks a new character appearance, title, weapon or even a new and faster mount. The multiplayer has a lot of potential creating the free-roam experience to be more of a social happening with the posses and freedom. Unfortunately the multiplayer lacks of content still.
Giving a such complex game a grade is hard for me. The single-player despite the janky controls and glitches is no doubt a best sandbox experience you can get now. The sheer content is almost overwhelming. And best of all there aren't enough western games, this being a shining star in that genre for sure. Collectibles and the wildlife not to mention the multiplayer will give one enough to do for a long time. Interesting to see if Rockstar manages to still a create a multiplayer game out of this that we all want.