Red Dead Redemption.
I've typed out a very long explanation of why on another site and I doubt that I'd be able to remember all of my points off hand, so I'm just going to copy-paste it on here.
I can understand the appeal. It's a very well made game. However, it simply didn't absorb me. It's odd because it seems to have a bunch of features that I've wanted put into a single game for so long: A big open world, a strong western theme, fun gun play, free roaming co-op, a focus on story and tons of other stuff to do, to name a few. Unfortunately, while all the pieces are there, it lacks any sort of coherent reason for me to care.
I'm generally a fan of games with an exploration aspect, which is usually a given when a game possesses a big open world. However, RDR seems to suffer from a problem that plagues a lot of games with open world maps: density. While the world is there, it feels more like something you simply pass over when you're going from point to point.
While it could be argued that this is true of all open world games, the difference between an open world done right and an open world not done right is necessity. That is, a world only feels big and open when going places is the player's choice, not the developers. While there is certainly a lot to see in RDR, by the time I finished half game, I had the sense that I had gone to about half of the places in the world. In fact, before crossing into mexico, I literally went out of my way to find something I hadn't been force to see by the story.
After I discovered for the first time that Marston couldn't swim, I stopped following the river and went as far as I could in the opposite direction. Whats worse is the fact that you are not only taken to pretty much every spot in the game, most of those places have no purpose other than the one given by the story. This makes the problem even more apparent, because now not only are the only places that you have to go to there just because you need to go to them, their existence revolves around what you're doing there. In any case, the illusion of a big world only holds up as long as the sense that you haven't seen it all is there. RDR doesn't keep this illusion.
Now, there are valid reasons for controlling where the players go, as it allows the developers to tell a more effective story. At least, thats the theory. RDR dropped the ball here. Most of the things that the player is required to do in RDR is only tentatively connected to the main story. This would have been fine if it were optional, as the individual stories are fairly good compared to standard RPG stories. However, the fact that they're compulsory is so detrimental to the main story that they might as well have been made with the corpse of the main story. By the end, I didn't actually care when you-know-who dies at the end.
Whats more, the main story just isn't that good. It isn't just a poorly executed idea, it's just not written well. I never really get the sense that I actually have a need to kill my ex-compatriots. What did they really do? I know it goes into it eventually, but by the time it actually tried to make me care, I had a bigger grudge against the groups of bandits that always stand behind the broken down carriages. Sure, I'm supposed to care because his family is is in jeopardy, but why should I? I don't get to see them for 90% of the game anyway.
The western theme was there visually, but the problem with it is that seems it like it was trying too hard to take a cynical look at the genre, while still trying to incorporate the iconography. It's hard to take any observation the game makes seriously when it decides to relish in a standard affair of mass murder with utter glee.
The basic gun play mechanics are enjoyable, but it's attempt to both have spectacle and gritty pseudo realism clashes so frequently that it retains the strength of neither style, but keeps the flaws of both. It lacks the sense of weight that realism offers, but retains the slow pace. Yet, it stretched my willing suspension of disbelief without the impressive visual pay off.
While the game offers a ton of stuff to do, it has the problem of nothing actually having a meaningful reward. Everything you can buy optionally, you get anyway. You don't have to eat, so hunting and forging are just for the sake of themselves. Not an inherent problem, but it made the game feel way too "gamey." Even this in and of itself wouldn't be a problem, but it is a problem when at the same time the game assumes that player is still taking it seriously.
The free roaming co-op could have provided hours of entertainment, if it weren't for the fact that the game doesn't offer anything locally. I can understand the lack of split screen, but system link? Really? Why? There is absolutely no explanation that will ever, in any context, ever justify the lack of system link/LAN in a game that doesn't require an internet connection to play on single player.
It may sound like I absolutely hated the game. I didn't; it was enjoyable, but no more so than a really good online flash game or a summer action game release. I can safely say that I won't be remembering it as a medium pushing work of art.
