What every good protagonist needs is something to drive him, and here the steering wheel comes in the form of Marston trying to capture his erstwhile band of thugs and cut-throats and deliver final, shooty justice.
The only problem with this is actually finding them.
As you might have guessed, or been told by everyone within earshot, the world of Red Dead is absolutely sprawling. Now Rockstar have had some experience in this, aha, field, and have given the player a lush environment for them to get their genocide on in. Rolling hills, acrid desert, heat waves on the horizon - the entire map looks stunning.
But what's often overlooked is the feel of the map. Size is all well and good, but unless it feels real, it's only so much padding - not unlike underwear. Thankfully, here we're given a world that not only seems real, but feels lived in and dangerous. Every inch is necessary and vital, and used to its best extent. Rockstar have displayed that they understand the first rule of gaming: less is definitely more.
The only drawback to this is transport. There is a fast-travel function, and very welcome it is, but you're going to have to use your horse a lot. Now unless you have a worrying fetish for watching horse rectum bob up and down like a yo-yo, eventually you're going to get so bored your teeth will fall out. Especially during the longer missions, unless you're passing the time perforating the local wildlife, you may have to rig up some contrivance to steer the horse for you while you do something marginally more entertaining, like read a book or chisel off your own kneecaps. In fairness it not only gives the map scale, it also explains why cowboys walk like they do.
Anyway, I mentioned hunting the local critters because that's actually something you can do to make money, and it also involves the mainstay of almost any game: The Shooting.
Now Rockstar are famed for the shooting in their games, mainly because it took them six instalments of GTA to get something even remotely workable on the go, culminating in IV's over-the-shoulder system[footnote]In what I like to call the "fuck it we'll copy Resident Evil" approach.[/footnote]. Thankfully Red Dead lifts the system from that almost wholesale, giving you the option between locking on to the target and allowing you to fine-tune for a headshot (Normal Targetting) or having complete free aim and dying a lot (Expert Targetting).
The morality system also rears its ugly head in the form of Honour. If you have honour, nice people will like you and give you store discounts (because that's how things work in real life) and if you are dishonourable they run away. Unless they are bad too, because if you're bad then other bad people won't shoot you or anything.
The thing is that John Marston constantly saying how he's trying to reform and get his family back to resume his simple life on a ranch doesn't exactly ring true when he's wearing local post office workers' innards as a necklace. It should really bring the game down, but instead it gives you a genuine reason to want to be good, and any crimes you commit become necessary evils to get your family back. It actually adds to the character, and makes it quite possibly the most effective moral system since Mass Effect 2.
Now aside from the story quests, which are engrossing, you also have the option to help people you meet along the way. Just simple little asides that add meat to the game's broth. Add to that a healthy selection of weaponry and horses to acquire, and you have a fairly lengthy gaming experience to look forward to. But horses and six shooters a sandbox game makes not. Everyone and their dog knows that what a game of this scale needs is minigames, and here you will not be disapointed. Poker, Liar's Dice, Finger Fillet, Horseshoes, Blackjack, Arm Wrestling - in short, if it don't need batteries you can do it.
I must say, once I played poker in a dusty saloon, a storm thundering outside, and thought to myself: "This is atmosphere."
All in all, it's really hard to fault the game. It looks great, the animations are smooth and fluent, and there's enough to keep you interested throughout the whole of its hefty play time. The only issue you can level at it are bugs, because spank mah' bootie and call m' Cleetus if there ain't a lot of them. Horses getting eaten by the map, sections of code not working and grinding the game to a halt, glitching... After a while it becomes less a question of incompetence and you begin to wonder if Rockstar actually have a quality control department.
But hey, it adds to the drama. In any "normal" or "finished" game you only have to contend with enemy AI, here you have the added tension of wondering if the game will actually work until you can hit a save point.
[HEADING=2]"You're just being mysterious[/HEADING][HEADING=1]because you don't have a personality!"[/HEADING][HEADING=3]I find that being grumpy works well too.[/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]... or I can put a bullet in your head and get on with my day."[/HEADING][HEADING=3]Redemption takes time.[/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]... The white man hunts for sport."[/HEADING][HEADING=3]What's surprising is that a game from this developer actually can take the moral high ground.[/HEADING]
