- The Dead Eye targeting mechanic, allowing the player to slow down time for shot accuracy, as well as ridable horses and more than 40 kinds of animals that you can hunt or be hunted by.
- Expansive open-world gameplay set in the final years of the American Wild West.
- Massive play area filled with NPCs, made up 3 unique regions composed of towns and outposts filled with characters with varying looks, accents, etc.
- Morality system based on honor and fame generated by the players actions throughout the game.
- Western themed mini-games including showdowns, gambling, hunting bounties, cattle herding and five finger fillet; and an assortment of period specific weapons.
Product Description
Red Dead Redemption is a Western epic, set at the turn of the 20th century when the lawless and chaotic badlands began to give way to the expanding reach of government and the spread of the Industrial Age. The story of former outlaw, John Marston, Red Dead Redemption takes players on a great adventure across the American frontier.Amazon.com Product Description
Red Dead Redemption is an open-world, third-pe… More >>
June 4th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Please ignore the reviewer that stated (repeatedly) that “this game is just like GTA IV… If you hated that you will definitely hate this.” That could not be further from the truth!!
Red Dead Redemption is Rockstar’s newest sandbox game, and it is a very good change up on the already popular GTA series. Let me start off by saying I have always been a huge fan of GTA games… until GTA IV. Tried and tried to play it, just could not get into it. Everything about it was wrong for me, and I know a lot of others felt the same. Sure RDR is very similar to GTA IV, yet everything about it is so much better.
Graphics are amazing, game play is easy to pick up and hard to put down, shooting system is improved, horse riding is intuitive, and hunting is a blast, just to name a few. This is GTA on steroids. Don’t get me wrong, the huge cities and fancy sports cars were a ton of fun, but this is so much better. Set in the early 20th century, Red Dead Redemption takes place in the ever changing Wild West. Dusty old towns, bustling saloons, and family ranches are presented with such accuracy and clarity, you’d think you are back in the old west yourself!
Red Dead Redemption’s scale is beyond HUGE!! The Wild West has never looked so good. There’s a fullness to the sunsets that’s so breathtaking you almost forget about the task at hand. The characters play a role nearly as big as the landscape, if not more. The dialog is smooth and witty, and the hometown feel of McFarlanes ranch only adds to the beauty.
There are so many side missions and quests, it’s tough to get bored. From helping a stranded women on the side of the road, to tracking and shooting trophy bucks, there is truly something for everyone. Don’t feel like shooting or riding around on your horse? Play some cards! Drink a shot!
Your thinking what I’m thinking aren’t you? GTA on horses. Yes, but as you play on through the game you will quickly realize it is so much more than that. It’s a nice change up in the video game world, and quite a surprise in the western genre.
Now I know this was a very short, somewhat random review, but I hope it provided enough insight to help you decide on the purchase.
***********UPDATE**********
I have gotten a few comments about my review. Some feeling that I have not experienced all the game has to offer, and should wait until I’m further along and write a detailed review. My review was an attempt to give a quick firsthand look, and to knock dead a few misconceptions. I believe all first time buyers need an initial review to help them decide to buy it or not. The game experience should be left up to each individual.
Rating: 5 / 5
June 4th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
===================================================
QUICK REVIEW (LESS READING)
===================================================
Graphics- 9.5 Excellent details and textures, everything from the wool jackets, to the animal pelts you collect is highly detailed and gorgeous in HD. I did have a few hiccups and a freeze up during a cut scene, it happened one time, and could very well be my Xbox.
Sound- 10 The surround sound is top notch in Red Dead Revolver, from a steam engine barreling down the tracks, a cougar growling from the bushes, to the small things like birds chirping and wind blowing…the sound envelops you and keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Gameplay- 10 Excellent control setup (GTA vets will be right at home) the only thing that took a bit of getting used to was riding a horse, its not bad, just a bit different than a car in terms of handling. Plenty of story/mission hours to waste away, followed by double the hours you’ll spend just exploring and causing havoc (or helping the kind settlers).
Re-playability-9 Just going home and being able to run around the Wild West is enough for me, Rockstar included a solid story, but you can make your own as you go, helping damsels in distress, or massacring an entire settlement, its all up to you. This is gonna be a great game for a bit of relaxation…or some stress relief.
Multi-player- 9.5 I only played a bit of MP, since the rest of my “posse” hadn’t received the game yet (or were struggling to get one at the store) The premise seems really interesting though, and the game of death match I played was a real nice change from the normal FPS death matches I’ve been playing lately. The open world MP game has always been something I wanted to see more of, and I’m sure once this game gets into more peoples hands its gonna be a real treat for the gaming world.
———————————————————————————-
I’ve been a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series since it had a top down view, so when this was announced by Rockstar I was pretty interested.
The first thing I must say is Rockstar has really outdone themselves, this game takes GTA to the next level, while taking it back a hundred years on the time line. The first thing you notice is the vast area you get to call “home”. The colors and sand blowing and swirling is truly beautiful eye candy. I hate to compare this game to GTA, but the undertones are all there.
I don’t wanna share any of the story, and honestly that’s icing on the cake for this game. The graphics are simply gorgeous, from the leather straps, and jackets, to the grizzly beards on the characters…all very well done. One thing I must say is not being in the big city setting is a breath of fresh air, no car horns blaring, police sirens at every corner, just the wide open Western range…at times I thought I could taste the fresh air.
As far as game play goes, its hard to beat. You can do anything, and I mean anything (*Ill give a example at the end of this) The stores and shops are fantastic, and walking into a new town just makes you feel like a real gunslinger! Again I don’t wanna get into the story to much, but the voice acting and cut scenes are almost Hollywood movie grade, its always nice when you feel for the characters, and this game does an outstanding job of delving into their history and stories!
As another reviewer said the game takes about 20 hours to play through the main story, however getting 100% completion will take you some extra time. The problem is playing through the game, no matter how hard I tried to go to the next mission, I ended up going way off track, killing a bear, saving a stage coach, or just getting a bunch of horses together to test a dynamite stick on. No matter what path you choose, your in for a surprise…Red Dead Redemption really delivers.
If you haven’t picked this gem up yet I would highly suggest it, I said I’d give an example of doing whatever you want and here it is: Find some poor townsfolk, give em a round from your six shooter in the kneecap, hogtie them, drag them behind your horse to the nearest railroad…and leave em on the track, sit back and wait for the train to come through, nothing better to relieve the stress of those long days at work/school.
Red Dead Redemption far exceeds anything you’ve played before, pick up this game, and I’ll see you behind the saloon at high noon!
Rating: 5 / 5
June 4th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
I’ll admit, I had some reservations about Red Dead Redemption. The studio that released it (Rockstar) hadn’t done too much to distinguish it from GTA with horses. Within the first 2 hours, however, I was blown away. The story starts with our hero John Marston attempting to track down his former gang leader Bill Williamson and bring him to justice. After a short cut scene, he’s shot and left for dead. The game opens up after some dialogue and tutorials, leaving you to your devices in 1912’s Texas and Mexico. The first thing you’ll notice is the beautiful visuals. Everything has an incredible amount of detail and draw distance, and the character models animate wonderfully. Watching the sunset on horseback is a truly visceral video game experience, and won’t soon be forgotten. Combat works in a very fun, gritty way. You have a large variety of period weapons to deal the bad guys (or good guys). Quests can appear by talking to certain NPCs essential to the story. They can also appear at random, forcing you to act quickly or watch an innocent die. What really surprised me was how well the minigames were made. Poker could be sold as a separate game in of itself, with AI “tells” and bluffing. Five-finger-fillet is pretty funny to watch if you make a blunder. Horseshoes and bar fights provide some enjoyable distractions. You can waltz over to a local movie theater and watch some very funny silent films that convey the mindset of the times. Red Dead Redemption has the most believable open world I’ve ever played, with every feature one would expect. The atmosphere is simply unmatched in terms of immersion and realism. I haven’t even mentioned multiplayer yet. RDR supports up to 16 players over Xbox Live or PSN for full-on gunfights and skirmishes. Game types can range from free-for-alls to CTF-structured team based modes. There is also a separate mode called “Free Roam” that lets you and your friends form a posse and explore the entire single player map. You can slaughter gangs, hunt down wild game, and duke it out with other posses over an enormous map. There’s a fully featured ranking system that tracks your progress throughout your online exploits. Multiplayer should keep you hooked for weeks on end as you shoot up the West. Overall, Read Dead Redemption is an incredibly good game that can’t be missed. Pretty much everything is perfectly polished and consistent, and you’ll find yourself loving the Wild West’s final days. Go buy it now.
PROS
+ Awesome, deep combat
+ Breathtaking visuals
+ Addictive multiplayer
+ Strong voice acting and writing
+ Best open world in a video game to date
Cons
- Occasional animation glitches
- Some network problems, especially in Free Roam
- Could be a little more difficult
Rating: 5 / 5
June 4th, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Red Dead Redemption – Circa 2010
GOOD:
- A good story that mixes elements of historical fiction and a frontier drama epic.
- Really impressive graphics and first-rate animations, that looks just as good as games like Uncharted 2 on PS3 and Gears of War 2 on 360 and Assassins Creed 2 (on both systems).
- Great vistas and sights really drive home the idea and theme of the epic nature of the landscape and the era, the graphics really help bring this game world to life.
- The game world is about twice the size of Grand Theft Auto 4 (and it even comes close to rivaling games like Fallout 3)
- A good variety of missions and missions/side missions/challenges, where you can solve them the way you want in the classic sandbox (aka GTA) fashion.
- A great amount of guns of different types – twice as many as what is found in Grand Theft Auto 4.
- like the first title this one has great sound track too that mixes music of the era during the clam points of the game and more modern cinematic “chase” type of music during the action and shoot outs points of the game.
BAD:
- While you can be a total evil jerk outside in the game world this is at odds with the story missions which paint your character as honorable loving family man. If you choose to play as an outlaw then it’s really odd to see in story missions that you’re helping others right wrongs and care about justice, but outside these missions you can still kill innocence people and cause all types of mayhem. This could have been fixed with more choices and branching paths in story mode its self like in games such as Mass Effect.
- The second half of the game seems to drag (this is the part which takes place in Mexico, during the revolution), when compared to the first half.
- While the traditional online player modes (like Death Match & Capture the Flag) are all here and lots of fun, they are not adjusted or balance enough for hardcore completive online gaming titles such as Call of Duty and Halo franchises (this was the case with GTA4 as well).
- Watch out for bugs, glitches, and game freezes (hopefully a patch should be out soon enough).
IF IT FITS YOUR TASTE:
- A third person (camera behind the player character) action adventure game. With a focus on shooting, riding horses, and letting beat missions how ever they see fit – it’s a very open ended game, gameplay wise.
- A historical third person action game much like Assassins Creed or that takes place during the early 20th century American west.
- If you can stand the structure and nature of Grand Theft Auto games you really may not like this game very much.
- The story is linear, much like GTA4 (and most action/adventure games) you get a chance to make some limited choice story wise, but for the most part the story is like a movie script that you can’t change. It’s in the actions outside the story where you make the most impact and have the most freedom.
- The game is broken up between two different styles of play, first there is the main story adventure missions which will take the average play 20 something hours to finish. Second there is doing all the side missions (which there are tons) and challenges (also tons) which will unlock more story and items for your use – you can do these at your own time. And let’s not forget about the Online Free Roam with other players, which is like a mix between traditional online modes mixed with the freedom found in the single player mode.
- The gunplay is similar to that in GTA4 (in this game you can not turn on/off the target lock system, when its off you can free aim), but reworked to make it work smoother.
- Like in the previous game Red Dead Revolver you can do something called Dead Eye Mode (bullet time), which makes everything turn red and in slow-motion and you can then mark a person with icons, which then at the end of Dead Eye Mode your character will automatically hit those icons really quickly. You build Dead Eye Mode by making regular kills without it.
- The wilderness is filled with all types of wildlife. There are over twenty different kinds of wild and domestic animals. Some will ignore you other might try to eat/kill you if you get to close.
- You can kill and then skin just about every animal in the game (yes even your own horse) and then sell the skins to a fur trader in towns for money.
- There are several different breeds of horse (and one type donkey) you can ride. When you first get a horse, you first have to break in that horse in order to ride it. Also the more you keep to one horse then more it will trust you and the easier it will be to ride and it will follow your commands quicker (this will become more apparent with better more powerful breeds of horse).
- If taking your horse across the land still takes too long (note trails and paths make your travel quicker in the wilderness), you can always use warp points found at camps (that you set up while out in the wilds), as well as use stagecoaches as taxis.
- There are about 15 different outfits you can wear. Some of these outfits give you bourses in areas like combat (increased damage and ammo count), better prices at shops, ect.
- You can not swim in what is considered deep water (any water that can go above your head).
- A sample of activities you can do in this sandbox style game is, save people form gangs, follow up on bounties, hunt animals, watch a silent movies, search for gold, herd cattle, picking herbs and desert flowers, playing poker the old west way and more.
- You can play as a saint or sinner, kill just about anyone and decide the outcome of the fate of innocents; you can also rob peoples, homes, and trains. A type of karma meter (next to your fame meter) tracks your actions and those you help/hurt after a while new people you come across will begin to react to your based on this.
- Building “fame” will open up new missions, and new areas to explore. You build fame by doing story missions and by completing side missions or challenges.
- Break the law and a lawman (sheriff) will come to get you, keep breaking the law and he will form up a posse with other lawmen to hunt you down. If you get away then a bounty is put on your head, then you gotta watch out for bounty hunters.
- You can play a few mini games of the ear such as Poker, Blackjack, Horseshoes, Liar’s Dice, and a game called Five Finger Fillet (where you take a knife and stab between the fingers as fast as you can – like that scene in the famed 80’s action movie aliens). You can also cheat at these games, but if you get caught by other players they will want to fight you.
- In the game you meet plenty of “Women of ill repute”, but unlike GTA4 (and all other GTA games) you can not sleep with them.
- There is also a multiplayer aspect to this game called Free Roam (think of a really graded lobby from the GTA4 multiplayer). Free Roam works by putting you and your party (up to 16 different players per room) in a version of the world of Red Dead Redemption, where you can go anywhere and do almost anything together (see from the sample activities and mini games above). You and your party can also do more traditional activities like death match, team death match, capture the flag (but now it’s a bag of gold), cops-n-robbers (from GTA4) and more.
GAME ITS MOST ASSOCATED TOO:
- Gun (360/PS2)
- Grand Theft Auto 4 (360/PS3/PC)
- Assassins Creed 2 (360/PS3/PC)
- Red Dead Revolver (PS2)
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- This game takes place in 1908, well after most other western titles, “wild west” was already “tamed” by this point. Example the Wright brothers already built and flew the historic first airplane (The Wright Flyer) and this was the same year that Ford Motor Company put out the Model-T to the mass public and World War 1 was about ten years away. Despite this most people in the American mid-west still didn’t have electricity and still had never even seen a car – life in most of these then considered rural areas looked as if it was still 1860 until about the 1920’s.
- This game is the sequel to Red Dead Revolver on PS2, but has very little to do with that game story wise.
- There is a co-op downloadable content pack for this game coming out sometime in June and it’s free.
- As far as preorder downloadable content goes those who got it on Amazon (here) get Golden Guns which builds fame quicker and look cool to boot. Those who got this game from Gamestop get a new 16 outfit called the Deadly Assassins Outfit which makes your Dead Eye meter fill more quickly thus making you more Deadly. And those who got this game from BestBuy got the War Horse which is the strongest and fastest horse in the game. You cannot get theses preorder downloadable content items with the game normally and this is the only way to get your hands on some.
- If you’re a member at the Rockstar web site known Social Club ([...]) you can complete extra challenges not normally found in the game for more unlockable goodies you can’t get any other way, like in-game power ups (example: getting an ability for your shots to do fire damage) and even Xbox360 Avatar items.
Rating: 4 / 5
June 5th, 2010 at 12:50 am
Red Dead Redemption surprised the heck out of me. I am not a big fan of the old West. I’m not even a big fan of sandbox games, though there are a few worth their salt (inFamous especially). When I heard about Rockstar’s new open world game being set in the old West, I was skeptical. All the previous old West games seemed to get lackluster responses (Call of Juarez, Red Dead Revolver come to mind), so I didn’t think much of this offering. After numerous publications praised this title, I decided to give it a try. From the opening cinematic, I could tell this game was going to be something special.
Pretty much everything about this game is stellar. From the graphics to the game mechanics, Red Dead Redemption excells. It is a gorgeous game to behold. Huge vistas abound. Incredible detail everywhere. Dynamic lighting, particle effects, and object interaction are done so well. The images are crisp and clear (with occasional pop-in, but not a deal breaker). I just love standing around and marveling at this incredible world that is practically painted on the screen. Movement on foot or horseback seems natural and intuitive. Driving a stagecoach is a thrill. Aiming your weapon (with aim assist on or off) works well. Nothing seems overly wonky.
The characters are definitely what drive this game. Unlike some other open world, sandbox games (cough..GTA IV…cough), you actually care about these characters. I found myself constantly drawn into the conversations, eagerly awaiting the next tidbit of info. The array of characters is vast, more than any other game I’ve played. You’re simply never going to get bored. Plus, you’ve got a lead character who is fighting the eternal fight (good vs evil) within himself. That is always intriguing.
Other reviewers have argued that the 360 version has a slight graphical advantage over the PS3 version. I haven’t compared the two, but I’m very satisfied with the 360 version. Other reviewers have also complained about the glitchy multiplayer component, but I haven’t encountered any issues with that either. My total gameplaying experience has been flawless.
Every once in a while, a game comes along that transcends the genre. I think this might be one of those games (and I don’t say that lightly). Even if you’re not a big fan of the wild West, there is enough to do in this game that you might forget the setting.
Rating: 5 / 5