Red Dead Redemption Video Game Views
Red Dead Revolver was a remarkable videogame from the previous console generation. So remarkable in fact that it made my Top Ten Videogames of the Decade List. The combat wasn’t perfect but the characters were delightful exaggerations of Western clichés, the plot was crazy in all the right ways and the eccentric music was lifted directly from such underdog Spaghetti Westerns as the Django series. Although there was a hub of sorts, Red Dead Revolver wasn’t much of a sandbox game despite the abundance of actual (read: virtual) sand. It was like the Grand Theft Auto series, also by Rockstar, but without all the aimless wandering around between missions. It also didn’t sell very well, but nevertheless after seven years, this week marked the release of the highly-anticipated sequel Red Dead Redemption: a sprawling epic action-adventure game that officially puts all that sand back in a box and turns the Red Dead franchise into yet another familiar, albeit excellent, GTA-clone.
Speaking of your horse, you can whistle for it at any time throughout the game, no matter where you are, and it suddenly comes trotting up to you Ocarina-style. While this might seem convenient (and it is), it’s also one of the many aspects of Red Dead Redemption that conflicts with the Grand Theft Auto gameplay design. In GTA stealing cars was a necessity to get around San Andreas, Liberty City or wherever else you ended up in the series. In Red Dead Redemption there is literally no need to steal a horse at any time since yours is always available, and usually better than the other options at hand. As a result, the moral choice meter provided almost never goes into the red unless you just get bloodthirsty and start blowing people away.
But Red Dead Redemption doesn’t want you to do that either. No, Red Dead Redemption might offer you the opportunity to play John Marston as a bloodthirsty psychopath, but all of the cinematics present a man on the road to, you guessed it, “redemption.” John Marston might once have been a cold-blooded killer but now he tries to solve his problems, at least at first, by talking, and is constantly guilt-tripped by NPC’s into performing good deeds for them. You spend the first few hours of gameplay getting to know nice people and helping them out with their errands, and the rest of the game just trying to get back to your family. So whenever you take the “low road” it always feels like you’re doing something wrong (and not in a cathartic way).
And yet Red Dead Redemption is still a fantastic gaming experience, beautiful to look at and entertaining to play. All the little moments are full of excitement, from the way Marston slides dramatically into cover to the elegant Deadeye mechanics used for precision targeting or multiple opponents. And the cast of characters give unusually strong performances, each worthy of praise. But it just seems like this game was forced into the wrong genre: a superb linear action-adventure experience that’s simply too small for such a big sandbox. Luckily, there are so many redeeming qualities that the game overcomes these flaws. Red Dead Redemption might not be what fans of Red Dead Revolver were hoping for, but it was well worth the wait anyway.
Red Dead Redemption Video Game Images
