Red Dead Redemption while at first sight may seem to be a sequel to Rockstars Red Dead Revolver it is far from it, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
You play John Marston a retired outlaw who is abducted from his family by government agents, however the government agents claim that if he is to kill the members of his former gang then his family will be returned to him. Thus starts the story of hunting and killing in the wild wild west.
The game features a fairly limited tutorial in that you learn as you play basis. During the few opening campaigns you learn the various techniques required to see yourself get killed…. I mean…. kill enemies. While going through the first few missions the game can feel complex due to yourself adapting to the controls as they can be fiddly to begin with, but once you master them, they become second nature.
The world of Red Dead Redemption is massive, and you can access any of it at any time without long loading screens, however that being said when loading the game up and during some cutscenes you can experience some fairly drifted loading times where you can be sat for a couple of minutes twiddling your thumbs.
Most open world games feature a hefty single player campaign and then a tacked on multiplayer mode that just doesn’t have the same spark as the single player, however RDRs multiplayer world is so vast and there is so much to do that it could be a stand along multiplayer game by itself, you can go around in the same massive environment as the single player with up to 16 players and do so much more, you can also form posses which is where a group of your friends or strangers can become a team and participate in various other multiplayer modes together. The free roaming mode aspect of the game (which was just mentioned above) is the equivalent to a multiplayer lobby in any other game, it serves as a portal to any game modes you want to do such as free-for-all or team based games, and while this idea seems very good I struggled to get more that 2 players into a game at once, maybe that was due to me playing during *off peak* times or whether or not I’m just too l33t for some of these players
The graphics are on par with Rockstars other major hit Grand Theft Auto 4 but only this time the engine the game runs on has been more optimised and allows for smoother changing of environments and all round looking better. And I can still say that the game has some amazing graphics even for an open world game, heck the graphics are better than some more enclosed games coming out soon *cough* alpha protocol*end cough*
During my time of playing I did experience a few hiccups with the multiplayer, such as getting randomly dropped from games and some clipping animation issues, really nothing that cannot be fixed by a few patches. I must say this game is very polished and Rockstar as usual have delivered a very well made game. The promise of DLC will also keep me enticed in this game for many months and I can already see it being easily the game of the year, I would highly recommend you buy this game.
My Verdict:
9.5/10
