Red Dead Redemption Review

Red Dead Redemption

Developer: Rockstar San Diego

Publisher: Rockstar Games

Release: May 18, 2010

Genre: Third Person, Open World

Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3

Modes: Single-player, Multi-player (online)

Availability: Xbox Market place, PlayStation Network, online stores.

Disclaimer:

- This is the Game of the Year edition

- Got it for $20 on amazon

- I have played other Rockstar games such as

Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

- Review is based on the PS3 version

- This review doesn't cover the Undead Nightmare expansion.

- Screenshots taken from http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption/

-Played on hardcore mode and beat the game with 96 % completion

Info:

          Red Dead Redemption was made by Rockstar San Diego, formerly known as Angel Studios. They were known for games such as Midnight Club series, the Smuggler's Run games, and Red Dead Revolver. Rockstar North, known for the Grand Theft Auto series, helped out with the game development. The Game of the Year edition was released October 11, 2011 with all the DLC and the Undead Nightmare expansion. Included is a new hardcore mode for the original game, and one scene of nudity being censored.

Story:

          The year is 1911 and the Wild west is coming to an end. Red Dead Redemption is about a former outlaw by the name of John Marston who's family is being held hostage by the U.S. Government. They want him to hunt his old gang members that are terrorizing the last of the Wild West. With no choice, he sets out find them and bring them to justice. One way or another.

           The story is simple tale of a man forced to confront his past life and the journey to get there. Throughout the game, Marston wants to forget the past, but it constantly confronts him through people bringing it up or parallels to what he used to do. Through the story, we learn about Marston's past and what led to him leaving his old gang. Themes such as redemption, being able to change, how similar opposing sides can be, and more.

           Negative:

           Missions in story mode tend to feel clumsy in the order they are laid out. Some of the missions introduce game mechanics that you have been using for quiet awhile. It makes it feel like that these mission were meant to be early in the game. Other missions have a tone that they are supposed to take place at a latter point despite that you can do it right have the previous mission for that character. The missions feel like that they were made for a linear order rather then being able to chose which order you do them.

           Character have the issue that they show up to give about 4 missions then leave. Your constantly shifting between characters and never get a chance to really know them. It's less obvious when you do side quests, but if you go from one mission to another you will see it. Another issue with characters is then tend to play a role and nothing more. The comic relief characters are silly and stupid, and the villains act like they wave a sign saying they are evil. Not many of them have much depth except for a few. Marston's character doesn't really grow throughout the game. Most of his character development is based on his past and learning about what he used to be. The good and evils system hurts this as the story is trying to show how Marston is a changed person. It hurts this as the story has to treat the character in a more neutral state so it can take in account of the system. Thus the story doesn't reflect all the good things Marston can and does do.

Graphics:

           The visual theme is a photo-realistic style. Plenty of detailed textures, faces, and facial

animations that give the game a realistic look. Many of the textures are stand out from a distance and generally look good up close. The textures get slightly blurry up close, but the details still stand out. Only small objects, animal textures, and the vegetation have low resolution textures. Facial animation tend to look good on most character's with only some like Bonnie's that looks rather off. The hair is of low quality with the strands looking like low resolution weed's textured a hair color and the rest as a flat blurry color. Object pop-in is quiet noticeable when riding fast on a horse.

           Negative:

           The UI (Universal Interface) does not stand out against the game visuals. With no outlines and being slightly transparent, it can be hard to read what on screen. To be more specific, the watch, the radar, and the ammo counter. If the game environment is too bright or too dark it can be hard to read. The other issue with the UI is that it's too small. Unless you sit 4 or less feet, it's hard to read.

           The view distance is another issue. If you sit farther then 4 feet, it can be very hard to distinguish characters and objects from a distance. Characters can easily blend in with the background and objects around them due to aliasing, colors being similar, dead eye color scheme, lighting, and lots of objects like grass and bushes. It's a case of too much visual information that is not at a high enough quality. This can be a problem with duels as trying to shoot a character's arm is very difficult with all these issues going on. If you turn down the saturation, this can help with the issues with dead eye, but it washes out the colors in the process. It feels like this game was made to be played on a pc rather then a console.

Game-play:

          Controls:

          Red Dead Redemption is a third person, open world, shooter. When not aiming, you controls Marston in a centered third person view while aiming when change the perspective to be slightly leaning on one shoulder or the other depending on what you chose. X/A button is for running when held, sprinting when tap, moving the horse when held and for maintaining pace with other characters that are riding horses, sprinting on the horse. Circle/B button is for reloading a gun, and interacting with characters. Triangle/Y button is context sensitive button that depends on what is going on. Square/ X button is for jumping, and can also act as a context sensitive button. L1 allows you to switch weapons in the weapon wheel, L2 is for aiming, R1 is used for marking targets in dead eye mode or sticking to objects, and R2 is used for shooting. Right Stick click is activating dead eye, Left stick press is for crouching, Direction-Pad (D-pad) up is for calling the horse, d-pad down is for zooming out the radar, and d-pad left and right is for change shoulder perspectives.

           The on foot controls are somewhat easy to get use to, but the horse controls are tougher. Horse controls rely on using both the face buttons and the right stick at the same time which is difficult to do when trying to maintain speed and aim at the same time. With enemies moving just as fast or even faster then you. It makes you reliant on using your dead eye powers to be able to accurately shoot enemies. This isn't much of a problem for on foot as you generally can use cover and are not moving so fast that you need to use the camera a lot.

           World:

           The world is very open with the ability to go anywhere once you complete the first few missions. You go to the area labeled on the map as a white letter and go up to the yellow x to start the mission. Stranger missions act similar with the icons being a purple icon on the map. Instead of going up to a yellow X, these missions are triggered once approached. They can be completed at anytime. Outside of missions, these environments are rather empty of NPC's and animals. There are various things to do and random events to encounter, but these are spread very thin through the world. This results in not too much of a reason to explore the hidden niches are corners of the game world. If a player focuses only on missions they could complete the game quiet fast.

           Red Dead Redemption has an honor system were doing good deeds, like sparing people and capturing them instead of killing, raises the meter or, killing innocents, stealing, etc lower it. The vast majority of the things you can do in the game will raise the honor. You have to go out of your way to lower it as normal game-play avoids it entirely. It's very easy to raise your honor to the maximum, early in the game. The fame system is another story. Raising fame is very similar to raising honor, except it never gets lowered and it takes a lot longer. Even by the end of the game and nearly getting 100% completion will you still leave the meter around 50-60% full. So unless you use the golden guns to raise your fame, you will have to do a lot of grinding that doesn't contribute to 100% game completion.

           When you are wanted, you will be attacked by law enforcement that spawn around you. If you try to fight them, they will spawn many waves before they will finally give up for a time being. Depending on how much money you are wanted for, the time period between when they spawn new waves will shorten. Surrendering to law enforcement, bribing them, paying off how much your are wanted for, or dieing will reset the wanted level to zero. You can avoid getting a wanted level by silencing any witness or doing a crime out of sight. Certain costumes or using the bandana will prevent you from losing any honor.

            Activities:

            Stranger quest are purple question markers that are placed on the map, the stranger there will be in a situation and need your help. Sometimes it's simple things like killing enemies or getting an item, while others can be long quests with lots of parts to it. These quests add up to 100% the game.

            Bounty Hunting involves going to a location and ether capturing or killing the target. Ether way, once you do that, you need to escape from endless waves of enemies as you ride back to town. Having a fast horse and lots of dead eye refilling items is necessary as they can quickly kill you or the bounty. The best way to do this is to kill all the other enemies then, once the target comes out, use the cattleman revolver and shoot the target in the legs. Once he's down, quickly switch to the lasso and grab him before he gets away.

           Gang hideout clearing is another activity you can do. These few areas can be found and require you kill all enemies while completing an objective. Clearing them rewards you with a new weapon and add to the overall game completion percentage. The 5 out of the 8 hideouts have to be found and can be done anytime, while the last three require you to complete a mission before the hideout clearing quest becomes available. Once completed, these hideouts can be done again anytime. If you log on to the Rockstar Social Club, you could do challenges, that originally would have rewarded players with golden guns. This was changed when GameSpy servers shut down, and all the bonuses were unlocked by default so there is not much of a point to doing them now other then for fun.

           There are many random events that can happen on the world map. These can range from

rescuing someone from a hanging, stopping a robbery or kidnapping, stopping bandit attacks, Gathering/hunting challenges, or delivering. You can ignore these events as they don't count towards 100%, but they can be good for getting money, honor, and fame.

           Mini-games:

           There are six mini-games you can play in various settlements. They are Texas Hold'em Poker, Liar's Dice, Blackjack, Horseshoes, Five Finger fillet, and Arm wrestling. The first three are easy to understand and explained decently. Poker mini-game doesn't explain well on the card combinations you can get. All of the first two don't explain the other aspect to those games, which to manipulate and bluff your opponents. You will need to do that in order to when on higher bets or in Black Water. Horseshoes is simple once you understand you need to position the Horseshoe so the it lines up with the pole. Then you need to time the swing meter so you release it around the middle to win.

          Five finger fillet is a rhythm mini-game where you need to hit the correct buttons faster then your opponent. Depending on how much you bet, the difficulty of the game will increase. Despite betting on the minimum, the game is hard to beat due to the button timings involved. In the first round you will need to complete a pattern of 6 buttons within 2 seconds of each button press. The second round has you do the 18 button presses, but they are a repeat of the first round. You will have to press the buttons within 1.5 seconds in order to be fast enough. Luckily, there is a limited set of patterns so it's easier to print out a copy from the internet and press the buttons as fast as you can rather then watch it on screen.

          Arm wrestling is a button mashing mini-game. You need to hit X as fast as you can while not letting your strength meter drop. If it drops, you won't be able to push the arm. You will also need the meter to be somewhat full if you want to defend against your opponent. At certain moments, your opponent will make a serious face, and become very strong. You have to block against him by holding down the X button. This timing is difficult as if can start before they make their serious face. Even on the lowest bet amounts, it is very hard to beat. Your fingers will hurt afterward.

           Multi-player:

           When you first select multi-player, you get a choice of normal, hardcore, and friendly modes to chose from. Normal and hardcore have the same differences as in single player mode, except you you can be attacked by any player while in free-roam mode. Friendly, prohibits being attacked while in free-roam mode. This goes away once you chose a combat game mode.

           You first start out in free-roam mode where you are dropped at a location with a random character in your first time you play. To change your character, you have to press select and hit square/X-button to change characters. When you first play free roam, you start with a pistol, tomahawk, and the worst horse. To gain better equipment, you need to complete challenges just like you did in single-player. Completing challenges gives you experience to level up and unlock new equipment and game modes. Free roam mode allows you to travel to the game mode locations or you can use the select menu to automatic go there.

          In free-roam, you have a variety of game modes to chose from in the select mode. Game modes include; Free for all shootout, team shootout, hold out, grab the bag, stronghold, undead overrun, gambling and land grab. Free for all and team shootout start with a Mexican standoff before you can run around the battlefield. Hold out and grab bag are variations of capture the flag. Hold out is where each team protects their bag from being stolen by the other. Grab bag is where both teams try to grab the bag and return it to their side. Stronghold involves one team defending a base while the other team attacks then teams switch roles.

          You can also clear out gang hideouts in free-roam mode, alone or with a posse of your friends. Gang hideouts involve killing all enemies, the reinforcements, and sometimes have to complete an objective. Enemies are a lot stronger then their single player counter parts and there are even bosses that take a lot of hits. Killing enemies, racking up combo's of kills, disarming enemies, etc helps you earn money which is your score. The score is only for competitive purposes and you don't earn anything for it.

          Multi-player for the PS3, at least, is practically dead. From what I have read, the same goes for the 360 version too. You may get lucky to find a few people to play with, so you don't buy this game for multi-player. Only clearing gang hideout can be done alone, but even that won't last forever as Rockstar could shut down the servers any time.

          Negative:

          Animations can ether be an issue or an annoyance. Animations for getting off a horse or

switching guns can be an issue when playing hardcore mode as you can die from 2 to 4 shots. The annoying animations are the ones when you gather from plants and animals, loot a body, chests, and closets. Unless you avoid doing these things, you will see them constantly and they take about 7 seconds to finish. It's tedious and tiring with no way to skip them unless you get lucky and trigger a glitch that skips the animation. There is a delay when triggering these animations. The lasso is quiet buggy. First there is a slight delay before the animations for preparing it starts, then there is a slight delay when releasing it. If you click too much it will release it automatically or not start the preparing animations.

           Movement is clunky. Marston runs funny and has a slow turning radius. Climbing and navigating up step hills is awkward. All of this won't be an issue, but action is fast paced, and Marstons's movement does not fit well for this. Especially for hardcore mode where enemies can pick you off far away and kill you fast. The open world nature also means you won't always have cover that would offset the issues your movement abilities. Along with enemies can hit accurately and move a lot, shooting accurately is difficult. So you end up relying on dead eye as a crutch for these issues, especially when on horseback or shooting enemies on horses.

          Red Dead Redemption is filled with many bugs. There are plenty that are minor, but there are some that do hurt the game. Horses like to run off cliffs or run away from you when you summon them. I learned the hard way that you don't want to summon your horse where there are cliffs near by. There are other notable bugs like the music for the mission not playing, hideout clearing missions can be invalidated by stranger missions, some bounty missions can disappear when you get killed, etc. The stealth mechanics are buggy as you can be seen inside houses when looting even if you are out of sight.

          You can find outfits in the world by completing various tasks and challenges. Sometimes you have to find the a chest located somewhere, completing stranger quests, and completing a mini-game challenge. There are 18 outfits to find, but in the end, most of them are useless. The ones that give you good reputation among groups are found after you are done with the said groups. Other have no effect besides changing how you look. Only about 5 costumes have any benefit and they are strictly for a single purpose. Out of all of those, only the deadly assassin one is one you might use constantly, but that only applies to normal mode.

          Challenges are various tasks you can do in the world. These challenges can include; hunting, gathering plants, using a certain weapon, finding treasure, etc. When you complete one, you gain some fame and unlock new items at the shops. At first, you can do these easily while between missions, but as you progress through the ranks, they become more of a detour. Once the challenges reach about level five, you've unlocked everything in the shops. The challenges become pointless filler for 100% completion and ultimately can be ignored if you wish as you can get the good weapons by completing gang hideouts. When you die, you lose progress on challenges and items you collected before the next save or challenge completed, but the time of day will advance. On hardcore mode where you can die a lot this makes completing challenges very tedious. Ultimately, you get some achievements, some costumes, and points towards 100% completion.

          The last problem depends on what difficulty you chose in the Game of the Year edition. Hardcore mode changes the difficulty by lower the amount of hits you could take from 8 to 10 hits to 2 to 4 hits. Health regeneration takes longer and dead eye does not automatically regenerate anymore. Auto aim is almost completely gone except when up close to an enemy. Prices around the game world also increased which makes purchasing equipment more harder at first. If you do evil deeds though, this is less of an obstacle. The low amount of hits you can take makes challenges such as knifing 2 cougars, very hard as they can kill you while you are down and unable to activate your menu.

Technical:

          Input lag and buttons presses not being recognized is another issue. Going into menu's isn't instant and it takes about 0.5 seconds. Frame-rate can make this worse with the button presses not registering. The frame rate starts at 30, but can easily drop into the 20's and even 10's when lots of action or objects are being loaded. Stuttering sometimes happens when moving too fast into a new area, but it lasts for a second. Exiting multi-player mode can leave the game to be reloading forever.

Audio:

            The music in Red Dead Redemption is rather disappointing. There are not many songs and a good amount sounds similar. You will hear the same songs often even during missions. Rockstar missed an opportunity to have some different themes playing for the missions. One of the missions has you riding a trail while defending it with a Gatling gun. The music for the level is the same as the over-world despite it being an intense action mission. Voice acting for the game is high quality with no bad performances. The voices fit the characters perfectly and the dialogue never seems out of places.

Thoughts:

           This was a tough game to review. Red Dead Redemption was hyped up to be a great game and even got Game of the Year Awards on many magazines and websites. So I went in with high expectations and I was disappointed. I was disappointed early on due to knowing that I could have gotten a different game that would be better, in my opinion. So many thing issues and flaws stood out and it bothered me that no one talked about this. Never the less, I stuck with it and try to give it as much of a chance as possible. With all the issues with the difficulty, bugs, and disappointing game-play leads me to not like. Red Dead Redemption is a game that has a great idea and a lot of potential, but it didn't fulfill it in an objective sense. Overall, I can't recommend this game to anyone even if you want to play a western game. There are much better western games out there.