This is the first western I've played since Wild Gunman on the NES (check out the avatar), and also my first game review. I had no interest in Red Dead Redemption until recently, but it turned out to be one of the best gaming experiences this year. The gameplay is excellent from start to finish. The the atmosphere, level design, menus, and shooting in RDR are Rockstar's finest work to date.
While very similar, Red Dead Redemption is not just GTA with horses. Rockstar took things that worked well with the GTA franchise and improved them, such as the open-world mission structure, map, mini map, and tutorials. Riding horses is easy after a few minutes of practice, and they are awesome. They look and move exactly like real horses do. Shoot an enemy's horse in the face and watch it dive face first into the ground, sending the enemy flying through the air. When traveling with a NPC to an objective, you can hold down the X button and your horse will match the other horse's speed. Your horse will also stay on the road while you are aiming a gun. If you get bored riding to missions, there are plenty of animals to shoot at.
I played the entire single player and online free roam using the expert targeting system, and I strongly recommend using it. If you do, it's some of the best combat in all 3rd person shooters. It also adds some much needed difficulty to the missions. Missions follow the GTA formula where you go to a place, shoot it up, and return, but there is so much variety to it and the combat is so good I doubt you will even care. There is only one mission in the game I didn't enjoy, because I kept crashing the wagon or going the wrong way. I will say the enemy AI can sometimes make some really dumb decisions. After wounding them, sometimes they will run at you and then duck behind cover with their back against you. It's pretty funny to witness. The racing missions are a complete joke cause they are so easy. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll just say RDR is one of my favorite stories told by Rockstar, the other one being Vice City. It took me about 14 hours to complete the main missions, but there are tons of side missions that have surprisingly good stories to them. Some distraction games include poker, blackjack, five finger fillet, arm wrestling, horseshoes, and liar's dice. My personal favorites are liar's dice and poker.
The online is also great, but this is where most of the bugs are. PvP matches are good, but nearly everyone uses auto-aim in them. Free Roam is where I spent most of my online time. In Free Roam, it's basically the single player enjoyed with up to 16 other people. You can form posses and hunt down other players, hunt, or do some co-op and shoot up a gang hideout. The gang hideouts during Free Roam are awesome and a great way to earn xp. You get a bonus for pulling off kills within a short period of time, and a bonus 100xp for using expert aim. While the online is a blast, it is not perfect. Major bugs that I've encountered more than once include players and horses turning invisible, enemies (that need to be killed in order to finish the mission!) getting stuck in inside mountains, and server issues that will occasionally disconnect you from the game. These are equally frustrating and will hopefully be fixed soon, since every other aspect of the game is incredibly well polished.
This paragraph is little, but very important. There is no loading when traveling across the map. Whenever the game does take you to a loading screen, it is almost always a short load time. Guessing, I would say usually under 20 seconds for initial startup, and under 8 for story-based missions. This is a huge technical feat, and is greatly appreciated. I hope San Diego Studios and Guerrilla games take note, because it makes great games even better.
You can tell Rocktstar spent a lot of money making this game, and from a gamers standpoint it shows. Nearly every aspect of the game is very well polished and it even gets the little things right. The menu style and world map are the best I've used in my 18 years of gaming. Look past the bugs and you will find a masterpiece. Red Dead Redemption is a leap forward for the videogame industry and I highly recommend it to anyone over the age of 15. We will almost certainly see a direct sequel to Red Dead Redemption if it gets the support it deserves. This is easily one of my favorite games this year. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section.
As for my grading technique I start at zero and the more it impresses me, the higher the score I'll give it. The game has to earn it's review points. This may result in lower than average scores. Overall score is graded based on my overall experience with the game, not an average of the other scores. I will use the same technique in all future reviews. (if I decide to do more)
GB: "With this feature, we talk about 15 games on the PS3 that should be remade for the PlayStation 5."
The head of Nightdive Studios has posted that The Darkness is on their list of games they want to do, so hopefully something comes from that
Little Big Planet 1 and 2 deserve a mention, IMO.
Good call on Motorstorm, a game released 2 gens ago but still looks and feels so good. Motorstorm 2 and Motorstorm RC were gems as well. They followed up the Motorstorm games with the brilliant Driveclub, which still manages to put modern racing games to shame. Imagine closing down a studio as talented as that ... (!) Incredible.
A little 'arcade-gem' back then was The Last Guy, a top down 'follow the leader' snake-like game where you had to find and lead survivors to safety during an alien invasion, on terrible looking 'Google-earth' maps. Graphics were poor, even back then, but would love that same gameplay with modern maps and graphics.
Street Fighter 4, once it finally had a full roster, was quite good, but it was always an ugly game, sadly. Imagine bringing that back while using the current SF6 engine.
Good suggestions, I'd be in for
LittleBigPlanet
LittleBigPlanet 2
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift
Motorstorm: RC
God damn I love motorstorm so much
At the time I had a low-mid range sony 40” tv, The latency to the controller was waaaay too high, would to play a modern version
In saying that later I got a 3d lg tv and playing the 3d motorstorm in my bedroom with the environment crumbling around the track, was something special, specially compared to what others were playing at the time, will always remember that
Some good choices here and Resistance: Fall of Man is my most wanted PS3 remaster/remake. Not sure about their claim it was Sony's answer to Gears of War though.
I’d rather have sequels than remakes. Look at Dead Space 1 Remake. Would’ve been cooler if we got a new entry and it failed with sales sealing the fate of a sequel rather than just replay the same game and it fail in sales and we never get a new entry.
Remakes are great for things like PS2 and earlier games to really get a crazy new graphical coat, but I think we should ease up on all these remakes and actually do sequels.
Yeah for sure, sequels would be ideal. But in the current market environment where many big publishers are risk-averse, I'd rather get a remaster or remake that a developer can do on a budget that will be approved, rather than nothing for an IP.
I rather they remaster and port over to PC and current gen all the games permanently stuck on PS360. Those games don't need remakes, they need to be given a chance to live again outside of their confined consoles and then give a few proper sequels. Like Sleeping Dogs, Motor Storm, LA Noir, should get another entry.
Yeah I'd be fine with remasters of PS3 games too, they don't have to be remakes.
Whispers of a potential remake or remaster of Rockstar's classic cowboy epic Red Dead Redemption have intensified.
PC gamers never got RDR1 ... of course gamers are ecstatic.
hell, bring other old titles to PC too, like Killzone 2,3 & shadowfall, infamous 2nd son, MGS4, Uncharted trilogy, TLOU 2, Halo 5, Fable 2, Bad Company 1, Bloodborne, Demon souls, Army of Two, etc ...
PlayStation games probably also no longer have a convenient way to play either with the game on a console Sony isn't willing to emulate it's a bit of a forgotten game like GTA IV
Only be exited if it's a Remake.
If not, then it's likely another crap remaster like the GTA3 remaster.
Supposedly the studio behind GTA remasters is no longer working with Rockstar, like they arent involved with them at all anymore so im curious whos working on this remake if its true.
Hell yes.. I recently went from gaming on Switch OLED to doing all my gaming on my laptop and I definitely wouldn't mind blasting through Killzone on it. Also want Gears 2 and 3 on it as well. All available on Steam would be a mighty blessing as well.
The earliest rumours due this remaster must go back like 10 years basically when the PS4 came out this however is the first time I've felt confident saying it's happening
Eh, I'll believe it when I see it. Also I don't see a remake happening, maybe a remaster, but no way a remake.
Yea, they've never even properly remade a GTA game yet, as much as I'd love to have a RDR remake. Hopefully we'll be proven wrong, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I actually just started playing the original again for the first time since it originally released. Not sure when this remaster is supposed to be out, but maybe I should just wait.
The Red Dead Redemption remaster may also be coming to Nintendo Switch, judging from some recent findings on the newly updated website
People on Reddit have been saying that the logo they put up says rockstar presents on top of it. Let's hope rockstar does it and it not pushed off onto another untalented house
The switch is just under or about as powerful as the base Xbox One. Why don't you think it can run an Xbox 360 game well?
@Terry_B
I mean, I have. Most if not all older game ports have ran better along with better resolution/Updated graphics. There's a few bad ports here and there but the majority run great.
The Switch would probably run the game better than the 360. I have an original 360 and the game has noticeable frames drops all the time.
Seems more likely that some rockstars games are on the way to a switch 2 when it Launches in 6-12months time
I don't see why not Rockstar dropped LA Noire on the Switch and they dropped that GTA broken trilogy on the Switch as well.
You can turn up the brightness, it's pretty effective. Otherwise good review.