Having acquired Red Dead Revolver from the now absorbed Angel Studios, Rockstar released it as an arcade Wild West shooter for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 in 2004. Aside from the name, setting and a handful of mechanics, Red Dead Redemption shares very little in common with its spiritual predecessor. It’s now an open world Wild West action game and almost feels like Grand Theft Auto: Wild West. Primarily this works for the game, but it’s a shame that it adheres so closely to Rockstar’s established formula, particularly when it does a lot very well on its own.
The baddest of them all.
Red Dead Redemption is a classic 'Post Western' tale about former crook and gang runner, John Marston, and the quest to save his family from a scrupulous government. Tasked with hunting down his former gang members in exchange for his family’s freedom, Marston’s journey takes him through just about all of the locations and scenarios you’d expect from a Western-themed game. The individuals you meet along the way, for better or worse, have all been given the Rockstar treatment. Many are memorable, well-characterised and represented, but most beyond the first few hours are so reprehensible, deranged, deluded and morally corrupt, that you feel like you’ve run into them either in Liberty City, Vice City or San Andreas. That being said, maybe it’s an indicative insight into the nature of humanity and how nothing ever really changes?
In keeping with a Western theme, the story isn’t overly complicated and is even predictable in some places, but it definitely makes good at the right times. Mind you, it doesn’t feel like a traditional ‘game’ in its pacing. It feels more like an elongated Western movie. Thankfully, the colourful cast and slow burning reasons for why certain events came to be make for compelling viewing. However, the real advantage that Red Dead Redemption has over its predecessor, is that it properly embraces the concept of true open-ended gaming.
Taking Red Dead Redemption out of an urban metropolis and into the untamed wild has had some wonderful aesthetic advantages. Getting rid of pesky obstructions such as towering skyscrapers and traffic systems allows for a much vaster setting and more open setting. However, while the game looks and feels every bit like the Wild Western frontier, the most striking aspect is the contrasting landscape between the regions: the mountains, the plains, the deserts and the Mexican border. The changes are subtle as they happen, but become pronounced when you realise them. This is complemented by a wonderful ecosystem, where you’re accompanied by as many wild animals as you are people.
This town ain't big enough for the both of us.
You still have ‘towns’ to go through and each of them is remarkably different from one another. From the typical Western outpost at Armadillo, to the seedy swampland at Thieves’ Landing, to the laid-back Chuparosa, to the modernising Blackwater, you’ve got virtually all of your Western locations covered. Glitches, pop-in and some struggles at the backend, getting rid of the urban sprawl and adopting the Western style makes RDR often a smoother, more distinguishable and superior looking game to GTAIV. The sound and voicing are typical A-grade Rockstar as well. Excellent dialogue and voicing further enhance the story, but it’s the subtle Western-themed music in the background and the serene moments of silence that make for some remarkably delicious icing on the cake.
Red Dead Redemption looks and sounds like a Western, but does it play like one? The short answer is yes. While it plays very similarly to GTA IV, you will get to do just about everything that you’d expect in a Western. It will be much more fun to discover it for yourself, but both the story and the ‘side quests’ will cover it all. We’ve covered a lot of them in our previews, but there are trains, stage coaches, heists, robberies, revolutions, stand offs, gun battles in empty towns, treasure and horses. If it’s ever happened in a Western, it’s here. The similarity to GTA IV comes in the structure: get a mission, ride to it and complete it. It’s a formula that has worked for Rockstar and they’ve stuck with it.
There have been some very noticeable (and some beneficial) additions to the formula though. Instead of cars, you now have a variety of horses, which you can catch in the wild, buy or acquire ‘traditionally’. Aside from getting loyalty bonuses from horses you own, horse riding is a superior and more flexible travel option. While it would be a stretch to classify RDR as an RPG, there are minor character building features that genuinely affect how the world reacts to your presence. These are mainly in the form of ‘Honour’ and ‘Fame’ meters. The former is a scale of your good vs. bad deeds and the latter is almost an experience meter for how well known your character is and dictates what you’re allowed to get away with. However, it’s disappointing that Honour works on virtual number line, rather than the Paragon/Renegade style in Mass Effect 2, as it’s skewed towards performing good deeds.
Note to self: Cheat more discretely!
One of the best features to come into the game is that of rechargeable health. While this and generous checkpoints make the game significantly easier, it takes out a lot of the frustration associated with past GTA titles and makes the game so much more enjoyable to explore. The two primary surviving features from Red Dead Revolver are the Dead Eye and Duels. Dead Eye slows down time and allows you to ‘paint’ your targets for precision takedowns, while Duels are a self-explanatory mini-game. Now before you roll your eyes at the prospect of another game with bullet-time mechanics, know that with it, you feel like a real bad-arse Western Gunslinger.
While the story will take you around 20 or so hours to finish, chances are you’ll spend a lot longer on the game. Namely because Red Dead Redemption does a fantastic job of implementing random events and side quests. Aside from set events such as gambling (Poker, Blackjack, Liar’s Dice, Horse Shoe), helping out strangers with some really weird and confronting tasks and raiding bandit hideouts, a whole lot of random events such as ‘Legendary Gunslinger’ challenges, armed holdups, traps, discovering new weapons, treasure and (gameplay altering) outfits make the distractions as compelling and satisfying as the story.
Aside from the fact that the game adheres probably too closely to the GTA formula when there is so much else that is good about it, there are two major flaws. While the structure and design choices take a lot of frustration out of the game and mask this issue, the controls are still too stiff, clunky and dated. The horse controls are actually quite good, despite it being a little tough to juggle shooting and riding at the same time, but it’s the on foot and cover controls that will let you down. You often have the finesse of a tanker, or getting to the cover you want isn’t what the controls give you. And while the game provides a truly open frontier, sometimes it’s too big. Particularly at the back-end of the game, you have missions that require a lot of ground to be covered, and it can sometimes be too much. There are a few fast travel options, but they’re hard to earn and not always on the mark for where you want to go. And while the game is supposed to marry a sense of discovery and emptiness, it can all be a little too much and too repetitive if you just want to follow the story.
Damn, that was close!
Red Dead Redemption has some interesting multiplayer modes as well. In ‘Free Roam’, you occupy a visually simplified map of the single player world, where other human players (up to sixteen) occupy it instead of landscape. From there, you can either roam around and form posses to tackle side missions, MMO style, or enter into more traditional map-based multiplayer modes such as Shootouts (deathmatch) and RDR specific ones such as Gold Rush. Co-operative missions will soon be made available as DLC.
Red Dead Redemption easily represents the ultimate Wild Western styled gaming experience. Taking a lot of what made Grand Theft Auto good, and improving on a number of aspects has paid off. You have a straight-forward yet remarkably compelling story to follow, an ambitious and vast landscape full of discovery and extra tasks that complement the main game without taking away from it. While it may take too much of GTA, such as the weak controls, than it needs too and can at times be overwhelming, Red Dead Redemption lets you fulfil just about all of your Wild Western dreams.
However, please pass this onto Rockstar PR, as this is how they've been selling the game to me at the three previews as a Spaghetti Western.
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