Red Dead Redemption - Review

The sun is my guide but also my enemy. The blazing heat stabs at my blistered skin but I have to keep moving, I have to get back to America to hand a stranger a bunch of flowers …

I can sense their eyes, they stare at me through the shallow vine, waiting to see if I hinder, take it slow and wonder into their path. A cub grows impatient and begins barking wildly, spinning in circles around my stout steed.
Fashioning a heroic ‘stationary-jump’ before hammering the ‘get the hell out of here’ button to spark my trusty horse through the pack I dash out in a random direction forgetting my route and straying from the road.
Either I was working it too hard or this horse isn’t as trustworthy as I thought. It buckles, screams and throws me off my saddle like a stroke of bad luck in Buckaroo.

My face slams into the rough desert sharply, a snake nearby mocks me as it slithers away; whilst I slowly come to and get to my dusted, aching feet.

As the orange-ashed world around me comes back into focus I witness my horse being torn apart by the starved wolves.

It’s too late for him – or her, I don’t know, but I draw my pistol in act of redemption. I shoot wildly, imprecise and loose – most bullets hit my downed horse finishing it off for sure.
My eye, it’s dead and there’s no way I’m going to shoot any of these beasts without some snake oil. Damn that mocking snake…

I turn and run astray into the open wilderness – there’s nowhere to hide and the pack will soon be after fresh meat.

I hear the pack gaining on me, I resist turning and looking at the horror approaching, plus it’s also difficult to run and look behind you at the same time…
But what’s this, wild feverfew? I need this, not even the man who needs flowers needs this; why do I want it? I want it, I need this flower.
I kneel down and slowly and merrily pick the flowers before slipping them into my front pocket.

This is foolish – the pack is now circling me at speed, just waiting for me to pick those flowers and the animation to stop.

My eye sparkles in the sun, it’s back, but just for a second. I take aim and cap one, two – no three! In their blood stained snouts. With this hole blasted in their rank I make a break for it and begin sprinting towards a nearby road.

I’m in luck; two strangers ripple into focus through the slur of heat. Standing in the centre of the crimson road, feet firm; I draw my gun and shoot at their black silhouettes painted across the sun-streaked horizon.

I see a horse go down – that’s bad, that’s what I’m after, but I get lucky and hit his friend straight in the neck; depicted by his sombrero fly off his round head.    
I run towards them slow and brittle. Struggling to mount the horse I hear the man curse and begin to draw but my luck ricochets again and the pack of wolves drag him down to the ground and begin to chew on his beard. He gets one shot in that strikes me in the left shoulder nearly throwing me off the horse but I stay strong, gripping the horses’ neck and hair I manage to stay on despite it crying out in disparity.

Bleeding; bruised and my health bar at a frightening low, I turn my new steadfast friend towards the sun – that being the red X on my mini map, and continue my journey to the stranger.
This man had better need these flowers for a ****ing good reason…

It’s not often that I can narrate such a tale of an experience I’ve had whilst gaming -
This is the beauty of Rockstar’s new Wild West sandbox adventure, the sky scrapers have been knocked down and instead a rich and varied landscape is painted upon our screens and we can go anywhere, ride off into the sunset, get lost in the wilderness picking flowers that you may not even need or hunt and skin animals, but why? Some people may just like the solidarity, one could be drawn by the rich environment or some adventurers may just be taking a more ‘wild road’ to their destination.
It’s all there, you may not need it, but this vast world is around you and it’s not just the challenges that may draw you into exploring it, this world naturally grabs you and fascinates you with its unsung mysteries.

One down side to this is that these experiences aren’t always a one off – on numerous occasions I’ve had a chap come running to me pleading me to ride him to town then before I can even spit my tobacco the son of an outlaw has dragged me off my horse and begun riding away laughing wickedly through his buck teeth.
Sure there could be a number of ways to tackle this situation such as whistle your horse back and watch his body cascade to the ground as your steed heinously bucks him off, or one could simply shoot him as he approaches knowing exactly what is going to happen.

Another small problem are the amount of bugs in this game. Though these can be beguiling and add to the number of amusing experiences one may have whilst playing, they can on occasion be a hindrance. For example I had a challenge to shoot a number of birds; and when approaching a town I saw a much larger black blob in the sky than usual, though this wasn’t moving. I dead eyed, and painted it with a full clip then as this blob fell to the ground I noticed my ‘wanted’ level go up and a lot of commotion spark in the town as this had turned out to be a man, maybe a gentleman, some kind of family man – I have no idea, but he shouldn’t have been up in the sky just asking to be shot like that in the first place.

The controls in RDR are nothing unfamiliar. It’s much like any other duck and cover system but what’s quite new and unique is the ability to ride horses. GTA, the previous sandbox by Rockstar, was all about cars – steal them, keep them, drive them, crash them and transport people in them as well as other things was key to the game. RDR has taken this same vital and central approach in RDR with horses. Unlike in GTAIV, unless you had some kind of Bat Mobile mod you couldn’t call your car to you – in RDR pressing up on the d-pad will whistle to your horse which will then come valiantly speeding towards you, and sometimes; annoyingly right past you. You can break your own horses that you find in the wild and maybe grow to love your horse – though don’t expect them to last all that long bur don’t get too emotional because after a minute or two of yours dying just whistling for it again will call another.

It’s difficult to give a comprehensive construal of this game’s ‘tale’ without giving too much away. You play as John Marston, an outlaw turned good, and now against his own gang as a changed man and with his family in mind he seeks to hunt down his old gang boss. Though it begins with this simple idea the game unravels into a much wider plot with John meeting intriguing characters and sometimes frustratingly helping others just to continue more with his goal.
The missions are reasonably good but I feel not deep enough. You can quite easily complete a mission within 10-20 minutes and only on occasion they use something a lot more interesting like the train or mine carts. I would have loved to have had a mission in which I was being tracked and hunted ‘Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid’ style across the entire West, but what we’ve been ‘drawn,’ one can’t complain.  

In all, RDR is a fresh breath to the sandbox genre, gone is the crowded and polluted urban jungle and in is the dusted; sun scorched Great Plains of the Wild West. Though this may be a difficult train to jump onto for some, this ‘new world’ is beautiful and has all the detail as well as an ardent plot fantastically acted.

I tip my hat to you Rockstar

9/10