Red Dead Redemption isn’t Rockstar’s first Western game. It’s a sequel of sorts to the 2004 Red Dead Revolver, but from the moment you step off the train in a dusty frontier town, it’s clear that this vast title owes much more to the Grand Theft Auto series that made Rockstar a household name. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s achingly beautiful, but is it actually fun to play? Read our Red Dead Redemption review and we’ll break it down for you.
Read the rest of our Red Dead Redemption review:
Red Dead Redemption review: Multiplayer
Red Dead Redemption review: Characters
Red Dead Redemption review: Atmosphere and setting
We’ve had the chance to go hands on with Red Dead Redemption preview builds several times, so we knew the game was ambitious, but firing up a finished copy, we were still blown away: the sheer scale and beauty of the world, love for the setting and vast scope of the story makes it a must play, even if old movie reruns on Channel 4 in the afternoons have left you with an intense dislike of Westerns.
We tested Red Dead Redemption out on the PS3, and after a short install of a few minutes, we were diving into main game. A long and low key introduction introduces you to John Marston, a reformed outlaw returning to track down his old gang – though for what reasons is left unclear at the outset – in the early 1900s, as cinemas and even cars invade the old West.
The story is gripping, with a strong cast of inventive characters that seem to have been drawn from just about every Sergio Leone and John Ford classic, and even the TV show Deadwood. The challenges are plentiful and often inventive, and side missions are much easier to stumble into as you stumble across helpless victims and robbers by the side of the road.
All this would make for a top rating game on its own, but Red Dead Redemption’s world tips it into the canon of modern classics. The three huge territories (New Austin, West Elizabeth and Nuevo Paraiso) are jawdroppingly beautiful, with tumbleweed rolling along, trees and weeds waving in the wind, and sunlight glinting over the edges of hills.
The graphics are a huge step up from Grand Theft Auto 4, but it’s the endless activity in Red Dead Redemption that impresses most. There aren’t cars and plain old pedestrians, but lynch mobs, bandits and wildlife (From armadillos to bears) to fall prey to, or even kill and skin, and how you behave genuinely affects characters’ reaction to you, be it turning a blind eye to stealing horses or riding out to hunt you down and claim the bounty on your head.
If there’s a problem, it’s that Red Dead Redemption fails to move beyond the paradigms established by Grand Theft Auto 4 – which in turn did little to innovate beyond the game structures established in Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City and San Andreas. The controls are almost identical: X to run, R1 to take cover, and so forth. In fact, they’re possibly worse, since weapon switching using the bumpers and the right analog thumbpad is incredibly time consuming (Deadeye, the slow mo sepia mode that lets you target in advance, a bit like Bullet Time in Max Payne, adds a new element to gameplay though).
You meet new and entertaining characters and perform some missions for them before being introduced to another oddball. Often these will involve riding out to somewhere, ducking behind a low wall and killing enemies, the same way you’ve been doing in Grand Theft Auto games for a decade. Once you’re done, ride back (You can fast travel if you like, though you’ll miss some of the best parts of the game if you do), rinse and repeat. The difficulty level also stays fairly low – in fact, we didn’t die once in the first eight hours of play. If you’re a hardcore gamer put off by the same things in Grand Theft Auto 4, you may not be won over here.
But for us, any grumbles melted away the first time we camera around the corner of a canyon: just seeing that huge vista below stretching off into the sun, with stage coaches and wild animals roaming around made us forgive all. That there’s a sprawling game with excellent multiplayer on top of it? Well, that’s just a bonus.
One final note: Red Dead Redemption is priced up at a eye watering £49.99, but be sure to shop around, as it can be had online for much less. Regardless of what you pay though, and on what console, Red Dead Redemption is unquestionably one of the strongest contenders for game of the year.
Read the rest of our Red Dead Redemption review:
Red Dead Redemption review: Multiplayer
Red Dead Redemption review: Characters
Red Dead Redemption review: Atmosphere and setting
