I may be a tad late to the party, but I just picked up Rockstar’s wild wild west take on sandbox third-person action games, Red Dead Redemption, today. While you can clearly see the influence that Grand Theft Auto had on this game, it also has many of its own factors that make it a title completely separate from any previous Rockstar work.
Now, this won’t be a full-blown review. As I said, I just got the game today — I haven’t had time to play through, or to even touch the multiplayer. But I’ll fill you in with what I’ve played so far and how awesome it’s been.
Let me start off by saying how overly impressed I am by the voice acting. As with most Rockstar titles, the voice acting is absolutely superb and really contributes to the overall feel of the game. It feels much more authentic than it would if some other company (say, Quantic Dream) was in charge of voice acting. This is in addition to all the other excellent sound design in this game that pull together the whole package in a way that creates an unforgettable audial experience. (I didn’t even know “audial” was a word until Chrome didn’t correct me…)
This also comes together amazingly well with the incredibly visuals. The landscapes are fantastic and even up-close, all the textures look amazing. The animation is one of my favourite bits in the game, with all movement, including that of horses, being incredibly realistic. Rockstar takes full advantage of the Euphoria physics engine with Red Dead Redemption, making fantastic looking weighted ragdolls out of dead bandits.
The gameplay in this game is also pretty fantastic. Riding the horses feels great. I heard (in a review somewhere, I can’t recall) that Rockstar had completely separate motion capture sessions, just for the horses. It’s not hard to believe, watching them gallop with amazingly detailed animation. And as bad as it feels to kill an animal in this game, shooting a deer in the leg just makes it collapse in a freaking awesome way. I love these physics.
Not much has been revealed to me of the story yet (and what has been I will not spoil for you), but I really like the characters. The incredible voice acting leads to believable-sounding characters. A lot of random people actually make you want to help them. And not for your own needs, but out of compassion for their situation.
That’s another thing. The morals system is awesome in this game. You can be famous, feared, and everything in-between, all depending on actions that you take and decisions that you make throughout the game. I’ve chosen to make my first run-through mostly based on how I actually feel about the situations. I’ll try to put myself in a more role-playing kind of mood the second time through to convince myself to be evil. But it won’t be easy.
The missions are always a load of fun. The only kind of mission thus far that I’ve found to be even a bit tedious is the herding missions. Getting a huge amount of animals to all follow what you want them to do and go in a certain direction can be hair-pullingly frustrating at times. Most of the time it’s not so bad, but it does have its moments.
So far, with the little experience I have with this game, I’d say it’s a definite buy. But stay tuned for my full review sometime in the future (as in, whenever I have time to fully explore every exponent of this game).
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