Red Dead Redemption

I REALLY struggle to play games more than once (not a true gamer, I know). Yet I have played this game twice.

I REALLY hate the current obsession of gaming industry with open world games filled with nothing. Yet I feel at home in Thieves' Landing.just by looking at a drunk-to-the-bones cowboy exit from the saloon, pass out and drop like a log in the mud.

I'm growing INCREASINGLY tired of Rockstar's game design and I'm pretty sure my views on their older releases are clouded by nostalgia. Yet my second playthrough of this game was 1 year ago and I enjoyed it even more than when I played it for the first time, almost 10 years from now.

This game has Liars' Dice. FREAKING LIARS' DICE. Instant 5/5.

Also I learned to play poker at 13 years old. I still remember that one game in Chuparosa with Landon Ricketts.

All the HD-era open-world Rockstar games tend to have the same strengths and weaknesses. Rockstar's greatest strength is the worlds they build, and RDR's richly detailed, evocative, living slice of the American west is a prime example. This is a game where you can just sit and play poker in a smoky saloon for an hour, and in another developer's hands, this would be some half-assed minigame, but Rockstar puts the fine details into every little thing.

The gameplay here feels a bit perfunctory, being more constrained in what you can do compared to GTA due to the setting, and the mission design is definitely not Rockstar at their most inventive. But it does the job of engaging you with the world.

What Rockstar are not so great at is telling good stories inside their worlds. RDR does a creditable job with its characters and dialog, but the overall single-player narrative is weirdly paced, never builds up much narrative momentum, and ultimately doesn't lead anywhere satisfying. I came away feeling a bit let down in the end, but this game is more about the journey and the sights and sounds along the way than the destination.

Poucos produtos da indústria do entretenimento souberam captar com tanta profundidade a atmosfera desoladora do Velho Oeste. Cada centímetro desse jogo é uma obra-prima.

The most over-fucking-rated game I've ever played. It has an emotional ending and it's in the wild west, great. Like all Rockstar games that aren't GTA V, the game is visually average, and the controls for this, like all Rockstar games period, are a complete mess. Unlike GTA however, the non-linearity and open-endedness of that franchise is completely thrown away because this is basically GTA set in the 1800s so you can hijack fucking horses and buggies. Wow, badass. The combat is messy as per Rockstar's modus operandi as well, but lacks the absurd charm of GTA's combat. And there's just overall less bombastic things to do in this game when compared to GTA. And why the GTA comparisons? Because the game uses the exact same fucking controls as Grand Theft Auto does. It's basically a reskin of GTA 4 from a gameplay standpoint, just stripped of all the modernity and given a better storyline. If I wanted to "play a western", I'd watch a damn movie. Terrible game.

Red Dead Redemption holds up today as a powerhouse production; its world is richly and realistically detailed, it looks awesome on the Xbox One X, and the music and sound design is absolutely brilliant. The experience is marred only in that both the gameplay and the manner in which its excellent premise unfolds don't often meet quite the same standard--too many of the characters are clichéd caricatures, albeit well-acted ones, and the game is bookended by mundane farming missions, whilst others are always predictable and too similarly designed.

3.5 stars / Good

Red Dead is essentially GTA but in the Wild West, you ride horses instead of cars, you use dynamite and revolvers instead of grenades and machine guns, and instead of a big open city the game is mostly desert and small towns. There are some similarities though, the game does focus on the changing political and technological atmosphere of that time, which was near the end of the Wild West and when the west was starting to phase out and industrialize. Red Dead plays okay, but like most Rock Star games, its really not about the gameplay but the story and characters, and this game has tons of memorable and quirky characters. They all feel right at home in this game and setting and there are just many great characters and moments. Marston is easily one of the greatest gaming protagonists and feels more than just a one dimensional character, and the game has a pretty suspenseful story that keeps building up into what is easily one of the most shocking and tense gaming climaxes. The missions for the most part are basic, just going to a town, killing some guys, or there are things like cattle wrangling, wagon races, card games, and even some stealth missions to add some variety, although the combat ones are easily the best. The combat is pretty easy since you get the ability to slow down time and mark enemies, which will then instant kill them if you get all head shots, and well on one hand it does make the game incredibly easy, it does speed the game up and gets you to the next story mission. Red Dead may be somewhat lacking in gameplay, but it makes up for it in quality characters and story, and it has a good variety in locations and is a good length. Plus it has some side content and there are animals you can hunt.

Now there are a few flaws in the story, the pacing feels a bit odd, near the end the game really doesn't have a lot of development or variety near the end of the game once you get to your family. The epilogue feels like it could have been slightly fleshed out more and maybe given more missions. And of course, some characters I feel aren't given proper closure. But at the end of the day, these problems are minimal compared to some of the issues that are in the early PS2 GTA games. As it stands, Red Dead is one of the best games set in the Wild West and many have high expectation for the sequel coming out this year, so hopefully Rock Star only improves the formula. This was the final game I played on PS3 before I started college and it brings back memories for me of that final Summer at home.