If you’re a fan of Rockstar, Spaghetti Westerns or simply supporting an affinity for huge grizzly moustaches and mucky ponchos, Red Dead Redemption for Xbox 360 and PS3 will have probably caught your eye.
This gunslinging 3rd person shooter offers players the chance to jump into the spurred boots of a typical problematised cowboy type, hunting high and low for bounties in all their formats: be it a mindless hunting expedition for bears and cougars, or ripping half the face off posse members across ‘tEh WesT’.
Sound familiar? Well it should. Love it or hate it, RDR had been built on the same engine Rockstar used to create the sublime GTA 4. You’ll soon be noticing little similarities, such as the stupid leaning into corners while walking, the very wooden running animation, hookers (which pleasingly the main character refuses as he’s fighting to save his wife and son) and the slightly off centre driving/horse riding cam.
What you may not remember is the hideous catalogue of glitches and bugs. This game is very buggy.
From characters not spawning or behaving correctly, to your tamed horse being wedged into walls or running away from you when you wish to mount it.
What it also loses out on is the finishing touch which made Red Dead Revolver captivate the real nostalgic grit, drama and even cheese of Western movies of old – the distressed crackly film reel overlay. Instead, we’re left with a clean cut and beautiful landscape, which is ironically the wrong way to execute a game sugar coated with classic Western clichés and a cracking soundtrack.
The cutscenes are as edgey and dramatic as any GTA or 3:10 to Yuma scene, which the occasional chuckle thrown in.
There are a tonne of weapons, which is good. You can pull off ridiculous one hit kills from miles off with a spud gun, this is not good. The gun fights in this are very easy, and don’t seem to become any more powerful, difficult to use or useful as the game progresses.
Another pointless features ripped straight out of the GTA mould is clothing, which you unlock to style your guy. Yep, you can wear a poncho or a big coat with variations between to two.
Unknown to me before playing Red Dead was the multiplayer, which is quite fun but ultimately tiresome. Players can join the map as a character of choice – including posses of American Indians, Mexicans and assorted Varmits’ – and hunt each other down. A bounty is put over your head when you commit a crime, and – stinking of the Vigilante mode of GTA – other players right the wrong and track you via the 100 year old GPC system floating in the bottom left of your screen, with a pretty gold skull marking your location.
It IS a fun game, but it IS just GTA in the West. A fun concept, but nothing worthy of a full on new gaming experience that’ll have you knocked off your saddle in amazement. With a steady flow of bug-fixes and updates – Ballad Of Gay Rootin’ Tootin’ Tony – Rockstar will hopefully heave this game out of tarnation and into a real gold rush of Western gaming we’ve all been gasping for.
Fingers crossed.
