Now Playing: Red Dead Redemption
It’s fair to say that GTA has become a little stale of late. And since the engine developed for RDR was later used in GTA IV, you can see how the improvements to the open world genre suggested by games such as Red Faction: Guerrilla have bypassed Rock Star. But it has at least learned some of GTA IV’s lessons in not forcing man-dates on you.
So after about 6 hours, I’m not quite ready to render a verdict, nor am I ready to hang up my spurs. But after going to a mission start only to find it is literally a cowboy misson, the influence of Nico and Roman can be felt everytime you realise you’ve been gazumped into a side mission that involces no mayhem of any description. Side missions in this game include races (grrr), herding cattle, breaking horses, following a dog around, hunting animals, skinning animals, looking for herbs and bounties. The missions themselves features large periods of riding to a location, often having to have a conversation with someone along the way.
Thankfully, fast travel turns up later and makes a big difference. Of course, being Rockstar, you can’t just select fast-travel from a menu, you have to wait for some nice motion capture work to play out. It’s atmospheric to be sure, but the point of fast travel is I’M IMPATIENT!
Shooting controls, important in a western are mostly well done, even if the auto targeting makes it a mite easy (at least in the first third or so of the game). You have your dead eye mode (bullet time) which makes this game automatically better than the just plain broken duels which totally ruined Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
It’s an attractive game with great presentation. I’ve also decided the story is unimportant so I’ve taken to skipping most cutscenes. I don’t know why because Rockstar usually does these well. But they just seem to drag out to the point that skip button looks so attractive. So very, very attractive.
RDR doesn’t regain Rock Star’s crown for the best open world games. The world has moved on from San Andreas, even if Rock Star sometimes forget the fun bits. If you’re an OCD type, then you have many collectibles and challenges to keep you entertained.
May 29th, 2010 at 9:17 am
Something is missing from this game. It’s just not drawing me in yet. It has a lot of little niggling problems that get on my nerves.
The controls are disjointed. You have to hold X to run, both on foot and on horseback. If you draw your weapon, however, John will run without the X button. You use Triangle for some actions, Circle for others, and Square for still others.
The horseback riding is boring and takes too long. It’s almost as bad as the sailing in Wind Waker.
The starting points for the missions are too far away from the actual mission challenges themselves. The only reason I see for this is for the characters to provide that delightful Rockstar dialogue while you spend several minutes holding X and watching your horses run down a road. Whatever happened to gameplay?
I’m disappointed with this one. It reminds me of Fallout 3 in some ways, with its looting, slow-motion shooting, and honor system, but Fallout 3 is a more comprehensive, and it’s designed more sensibly.
And you don’t have to hold X to run, or gain new outfits by playing stupid mini-games. Gah!
May 29th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Side missions in this are awful. Main game is ok, but yes, this is easily the most overrrated “good” game so far of 2010
June 5th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Your post was recommended to me by my flatmate I have been looking for this topic for a while thank you!