With the news that Red Dead Redemption will be remastered for the ‘next gen’ consoles and PC late this year, I feel it’s time to revisit the ‘old west’.
I will make a statement here right now that Red Dead Redemption is one of the best games ever made by Rockstar. With its fantastic graphics, tense and thrilling storyline and overall atmosphere, it’s surely a contender for one of the best. The mainstay of these games (or at least the GTA series) is the ability to go off the beaten track. This is the case for RDR (Red Dead Redemption) too and has the NPC’s in order to bring the whole gaming area to life.
But why am I singling this game out for special praise when many other Rockstar games deserve their moment back in the limelight?
One thing is for certain, the background that the game is set in gave us a world in which we may have known little about enticed us to explore at our leisure. Although in some quarters the lack of vehicular transport of almost any kind caused most of the exploration to be hampered by the sight of a fast moving horse arses wherever we went. However, this was a small price to pay for having authenticity thrust upon us at almost every turn. The only thing lacking from the game was the debilitating diseases, the smell of unwashed bodies and the outright racism.
RDR to me was one of only two decent western/cowboy games ever to be released, the other being GUN, that ‘19th Century Grand Theft Auto’. The fact that RDR was developed and produced by one of, if not the, most reputable video game companies only seemed to strengthen its credentials.
To me the reason that RDR is such a great game and deserves all its plaudits is as follows.
1. History
It brings a part of history that many of us know very little about to life: the characters, buildings, language, way of life and overall environment are all painted before us in vivid colours. Rockstar gives us a world and invites us to make of it what we want. Although it may not compare to the concrete jungle of San Andreas or LA, the vast wasteland and its foreboding landscapes, sheer cliffs and towering mountains show us a world only really seen in Skyrim or Just Cause 2.
2. Story
The storyline is second to none, a tale of an outlaw come good for his family but on one final journey of retribution that takes him across international borders and across the vast western desert. The opening sequence, though a little long, gives you a fantastic glimpse of what your fellow characters are thinking and what their attitudes are given the year and the circumstances they are in. On the flipside of this,we do find ourselves breaking in horses or rounding up cattle or even having to follow someone on horseback for miles at a time – at least it adds to the overall flavour of the story.
3. Mission Variety
The ‘Stranger’ missions give you a welcome rest from killing outlaws, catching wild horses, skinning snakes and of course drinking yourself to death in saloons. But the unexpected meetings with those random NPC’s on your travels gives you a welcome distraction on your journey from one corner of the map to the other. My personal favourite was helping one man build his flying machine before watching him plummet to the ground with all the ferocity of an elephant jumping from a 10 metre diving board. But perhaps one which was a little more disturbing was seeing a man cooking human flesh on a camp fire as if it was just another rabbit or prairie dog. Either way they give you an insight into a world generated for our amusement and exploration and it shows us just how strange human beings really are.
4. Dead Eye
Dead Eye another brilliant addition in which it gives us that tantalising moment in which to choose exactly where to blow our opponents away. Shooting people or animals on horseback in rapid succession has never been so easy or so fun (why they didn’t put that on the back of the box I don’t know)
Of course no game is without its faults. The endless horse rides across the map, whilst interesting, wear out fairly quickly, even with the provision of a ‘taxi’ service, if you’ve got no money then you’re galloping until your kidneys are pushed into your ears. Gun fights tend to have a certain shortness if you’re not hugging cover like it’s your favourite teddy bear. The story tends to be slow to start and stutters in places when it comes to traipsing across the map to see X or Y and to bring a message to Z from A. But in the same vein, hunting down bandits, hog tying them and riding back into Armadillo like the all-conquering hero does have a certain endearing quality to it.
When it comes to the multiplayer aspect of RDR, what I experienced was short, frantic and ended pretty much how it began, with my character sprawled on the ground doing a remarkable human colander impression. But saying that it gave you the opportunity to try something different and new whilst in the same ‘Old West’ environment.
The ‘Undead Nightmare’ addition was in a class of its own, Zombies & Cowboys. It almost sounds like a Quentin Tarantino movie: waking up to find flesh eating monsters roaming the plains and attacking anything and everything at will gave new meaning to the phrase ‘ride like hell’. Help saving towns and rescuing helpless strangers in the dead of night adds a whole new dimension to the game, but having to re-rescue the same town three times after you’ve fought off another wave of the living dead until you’ve exhausted all your ammunition can be a little tiresome.
Overall, the way in which this games sticks in my memory is having the ability to ride across the plains without meeting a soul, capturing dangerous criminals and putting them behind bars, drinking yourself into a stupor in a saloon or lassoing a helpless NPC and tying them to the back of your trusty steed before riding along casually whilst your victim gets to know all the different kinds of flora and fauna that inhabit RDR.
When RDR gets released again, much like GTA V, I will throw my money at it and come away smiling.
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