My John Marston’s awesome. He wears the Legend of the West outfit, uses dead eye to shoot dudes off horses, and once killed a grizzly with nothing but his bowie knife. His long arm of the law is the double action revolver.
Red Dead Redemption’s redeeming features are sweeping vistas, a good cowboy storyline, dialog that’s never a bore (at least when Marston’s doing the talking), and assorted moments of pure cowboy bliss, such as storming the mansion in Tumbleweed. Also, I just can’t tell you how much fun riding a virtual horse is, that is, until you accidentally shoot it in the back of the head while riding during multiplayer. Honorable mention goes to the audio, I once was playing during a thunderstorm with my surround sound on and couldn’t tell the difference between the thunderclaps in my living room and those outside.
Still, let it be known, in my opinion the games not worth paying full retail. But I suppose if you haven’t much going on this summer it’s not a bad one to pick up.
The things I didn’t like about the game are as follows.
There was a stiffness, a general clunkiness of 3rd person movement that annoyed. All I want to do is walk up the stairs, in between the railings, to the front door, before the rancher’s daughter gets shot darn it. Then there was the default snails pace walk speed which guarantees you’ll never want to walk. And the multiplayer, I just don’t think it’s great. The open roam will see you recycling the same six gang hideouts again and again. I mean, I can only do Pike’s Basin or Fort Mercer so many times. I suppose there is a lot to do if you get a posse going on, like taking on other posse units that are sharing your free roam session, maybe I lack the creativity to exploit that which is actually awesome. The team based games are great, okay, and terrible all at the same time. Some guys rock your socks off and usually have their friends with them, which makes for backing out of games to find a different server an often occurrence because the skill level match maker is on vacation (yes, I had some very rough rounds last night, hence my vitriol).
In conclusion I foresee myself playing Red Dead Redemption for another week or so, enjoying it, and reselling it on Ebay for something respectable before the price starts nosediving towards the thirty dollar mark, which, by the time of this article, hasn’t happened yet. Which goes to show there might still be room in this semi auto world for a six gun man, at least, for a little while longer…
