Y'know, for years I lumped Rockstar together with all the rest of the companies that make good, if brainless games whose greatest ambition are half-hearted attempts to appear as if they've got something to say, and in some respects I still do. But Red Dead Redemption came a bit out of nowhere as not only a truly conscientious Rockstar game. Hell, we're halfway through this decade and there's still scant little competition it faces in terms of being the decade's greatest game. (How much of this is owed to the perceived lacklusterishness of the decade thus far up to you, however.)
The marriage of Rockstar's open world sandbox gameplay and a Western setting is nothing less than a match made in heaven. In fact, its non-stereotypical approach to the setting—from the snowy north mountains to the dusty, arid plains of Mexico, and everything in-between—makes it probably my favourite open-world setting in video gaming. I could just ride around the entire map just looking at all the little details (and indeed, I have). And the typical feelings of open-world emptiness are mitigated by the fact that it feels true to the era, too. And that dynamic, atmospheric soundtrack... it's just perfect.
I won't deny peoples' complaints that the story elements of RDR are massively derived from various classic Western works, but tropes are not bad, as they, uhh, used to say. Featuring an instantly classic grey-area protagonist in John Marston—a "feck-ugly man, but not a bad one"—it's a pretty dark story about the end of the American Frontier, and the cost of societal "progress." It's a little undercut at times by Rockstar's typical plodding plot progression: you have to do favours for what seems like at least fifteen different characters that inevitably take ages to result in anything (if they don't turn out to be dead ends altogether), but it's got it where it counts. Its entire ending act is one for the ages. As a huge fan of Ford, Peckinpah, and Leone, this has my whole-hearted stamp of approval.
Also featuring one of the few online modes I've ever really liked and devoted a significant amount of time to, Red Dead Redemption is the total package in every sense of the word, and the best Western-related piece of entertainment produced so far in this millennium.
Rockstar's Redemption
Y'know, for years I lumped Rockstar together with all the rest of the companies that make good, if brainless games whose greatest ambition are half-hearted attempts to appear as if they've got something to say, and in some respects I still do. But Red Dead Redemption came a bit out of nowhere as not only a truly conscientious Rockstar game. Hell, we're halfway through this decade and there's still scant little competition it faces in terms of being the decade's greatest game. (How much of this is owed to the perceived lacklusterishness of the decade thus far up to you, however.)
The marriage of Rockstar's open world sandbox gameplay and a Western setting is nothing less than a match made in heaven. In fact, its non-stereotypical approach to the setting—from the snowy north mountains to the dusty, arid plains of Mexico, and everything in-between—makes it probably my favourite open-world setting in video gaming. I could just ride around the entire map just looking at all the little details (and indeed, I have). And the typical feelings of open-world emptiness are mitigated by the fact that it feels true to the era, too. And that dynamic, atmospheric soundtrack... it's just perfect.
I won't deny peoples' complaints that the story elements of RDR are massively derived from various classic Western works, but tropes are not bad, as they, uhh, used to say. Featuring an instantly classic grey-area protagonist in John Marston—a "feck-ugly man, but not a bad one"—it's a pretty dark story about the end of the American Frontier, and the cost of societal "progress." It's a little undercut at times by Rockstar's typical plodding plot progression: you have to do favours for what seems like at least fifteen different characters that inevitably take ages to result in anything (if they don't turn out to be dead ends altogether), but it's got it where it counts. Its entire ending act is one for the ages. As a huge fan of Ford, Peckinpah, and Leone, this has my whole-hearted stamp of approval.
Also featuring one of the few online modes I've ever really liked and devoted a significant amount of time to, Red Dead Redemption is the total package in every sense of the word, and the best Western-related piece of entertainment produced so far in this millennium.