Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption actually starts off by making you a cowboy - early on you need to learn how to heard cattle, break horses and scare off rustlers while you repay Bonnie MacFarlane her $15 (for patching you up).

It’s a bit of a shock when compared to the average GTA experience, but things quickly ramp up to the sort of gameplay we’ve come to expect from the Rockstar team. The gunfighting mechanism is very similar to the shooting in GTA IV - snap-to targeting assistance does most of the work for you, and you can drag the cursor around to deliver more or less lethal shots depending on the situation.

Less lethal shots are an important tactical tool in RDR - capturing bounties alive does wonders for both your honor and your wallet. Catching someone alive can be as simple as shooting his horse out from underneath him - or even just lassoing him straight off his ride as he rides past.

When bandits chase you and others around, it can be a good idea to just shoot horses - lest you accidentally wing an innocent and earn your own Wanted status. And finally, adjusting your aim is useful for when people are being hung - shooting the rope can save their lives.

The honor and fame systems play a big part in almost everything you do. The honor system rates you as either a good or bad guy - though thanks to mission rewards you’ll have to try very hard to be a bad guy. The higher your honor, the more friendly townsfolk are to you - meaning discounts and free passes from the Marshals and Sheriffs.

The Fame system tallies up regardless of the morality of your actions - the more you do in the world of RDR, the more famous you’ll be come. This means most people will greet as you as you pass them by - but it means that some will want to make a name for themselves at your expense as well.

The iconic duel is prominent in Red Dead Redemption - if a little difficult to get a grip on. Successfully winning a duel will win you more fame points - losing will obviously end up with you dead.

Duels demonstrate probably the best use of the Euphoria engine in Red Dead Redemption - the slow-mo stylised graphics and devastating effects of your handgun throw your opponents body around in spectacular fashion.

These effects are present in most of the game though - liberal use of the Dead Eye meter will allow you to check out the effects of the various different weapons in detail, as it slows the world down to a crawl and allows you to paint as many targets as your clip will allow.

The different weapons range from shotguns to repeaters and from semi-auto pistols to your classic revolvers. The ‘High-Powered Pistol’ is clearly inspired by the Colt series of self-loading pistols introduced at the start of the 20th Century, but like any good cowboy I always found myself using the quick firing double action revolver.

Other weapons include throwing knives, sniper rifles, explosives and of course your Lasso, and it can take some time for the player to weigh up the benefits and drawbacks of each weapon while they decide on their weapon of choice for any particular situation.

You’re also spoiled for choice when it comes to horses as well - it pays to study the various horses for sale at the local general store for a little while, so you can identify the different broncos you encounter in the wild.

You won’t even be able to buy them all from the general store - even if you have the money for it. You’ll have to actively seek out some types of horses and tame them before they become available at the general store - leading to the other huge part of RDR.

The Ambient Challenge system is an outstanding way to keep the player going when they’re not doing core story missions. Instead of forcing the player to find a hundred prairie dogs (or whatever you might call the Western equivalent of a pigeon) in an effort to make sure the entire game world is explored, Red Dead Redemption has players hunting the various beasts of Mexico and America.



Everything from vultures to bears gets taken down as you strive to complete the tasks at hand - killing two cougars with a melee knife proving somewhat more difficult than killing three bears with a single shot to the head, though the second is scarier.

The Sharpshooter and Hunter challenges are fun - pure RDR experiences, they replicate elements of the game and provide enough challenge to require some thought on the part of the player. By the end of the Sharpshooter challenge you’ll have to shoot the hats off men - apparently hat shots only count if you don’t take out the head along with them, so you might find yourself in Mexico shooting sombreros.

And just finding cougars can be a big enough challenge - though often enough they’ll find you first. Keen hunters will see horses galloping away from an unseen threat in the Mexican foothills and realise before the characteristic snarl that a mountain lion is nearby.

It’s using those wits - using your understanding of the world Rockstar has created - that will see you reaping what RDR has to offer in most cases. Even the treasure hunting challenges are tests of your cognitive memory skills - I realised the location of one treasure thanks to the appearance of a rock and a hangman’s noose - my earlier tittering about a location called “Hanging Rock” and its relation to the Australia period mystery featuring the same name helping me find the treasure.

The one place these Ambient Challenges fail is in the Survivalist challenges. These involve literally riding around an area and looking for a specific type of plant to harvest. To find herbs at a distance you need to use a “survivalist map” - meaning your better off doing as many of the challenges in a row as possible.

World of Warcraft players will instantly recognise the similarity to the “Herbalism” skill - a desperately boring skill, the player simply walks around picking flowers. It’s far worse in RDR though - John Marston is a hunter, not a gatherer.

We move on to Neuvo Paraiso and encounter the other gameplay flaw in RDR - lengthy gaps between cutscenes appear to be the only punishment for deaths, meaning the trip across the river to Mexico is punctuated with restarts when you accidentally step off the raft/unluckily cop a stick of dynamite to the face.

John Marston can’t swim, if you’re wondering why stepping off the raft is a problem. It’s not implausible that a man mightn’t be able to swim back then - he lived in a desert, and swimming skills weren’t exactly high on the priority list of mass murdering gunslingers. The swimming thing is a bit of a sad face - not a problem, just a bit disappointing.

Once you make it to Mexico you begin to make liberal use of the various quick travel options in the game - to get around the map, John can either ride a horse, walk on foot, catch a stagecoach (like the taxis of GTA IV) or mark a target on his map, set up camp (outside of towns and away from roads) and then use the fast travel option to jump across to wherever you’ve marked.

This mechanism becomes especially relevant later in the game when the entire world opens up, but the benefits aren’t lost on anyone looking to skip quickly through the reds and... reds of Mexico and onto the vast vistas of West Elizabeth.

One interesting thing about Mexico is the way it refuses to pull any punches in the language department - the banditos all speak Mexican and punctuate their English with their native tongue - it adds to the authenticity.

Mexico is also where you’ll get the sniper rifle for the first time - those expecting to combine Dead Eye and a scope will be disappointed when the snap-on targetting system doesn’t combine with the scope - and neither does painting targets.

Before long you’ll have moved on to WE, but not before you’ve made good use of the game’s horse’s AI and auto-pathing - if you hold X (A on Xbox) while riding with someone, your horse will automatically match their speed at no cost to your horses stamina.

When on a wagon, horses needn’t be steered when you’re trying to shoot banditos or corrupt Mexican army officials, as the horses intelligently stay on the road as you carry on - though they can take the wrong turn on some occasions, meaning you need to stay vigilant.

You’ll also experience ambushes using dynamite (planted in the sand on roads) and the only Stealth mission in the entire game before you find yourself moving on to WE - after a suitably Rockstar (read ‘explosive’) set piece, of course.

And into West Elizabeth we go. The town of Blackwater houses the best gambling, and the end to my favourite ‘Stranger’ mission.

The Stranger missions only appear should you go near them during normal play - if you do you’ll find them, after which you’ll have the choice of engaging them. Or not. That’s up to you. My favourite involves a peculiar man who knows far too much about your past - and the people it effected. The voice acting and chilling manner in which he encourages you to do things is outstanding - and the way his mission chain ends is fantastic.

Gambling is the game’s other strong point, featuring Blackjack, Five Finger Fillet (don’t worry, I’m not hurting your precious table), Liar’s Dice (it involves lying and dice), Arm Wrestling and Texas Hold’em Poker.

The table games (Blackjack, Hold’em and Liar’s Dice) feature personalities, allowing you to successfully work out systems to beat a table - and Texas Hold’em even allows you to cheat (provided you’re wearing the right outfit).

The games are surprisingly deep, and it can be both frustrating and rewarding to clean out a table. Conservative AI players can draw out your inevitable win - still, a lucky hand (or well placed extra card) can change the betting landscape in an instant (and maybe finance that new semi-auto shotgun you had your eye on).

Eventually though, all good things must come to an end. Covered above is only a portion of what RDR has on offer, and it’s fantastic. Which makes the multiplayer simply a bonus.

Due to the constraints of pre-release code GameArena hasn’t yet played the final code of the multiplayer in RDR - check back a little while after release to get our official low-down on the net-code, mp modes and more. If you can’t wait, check out our preview of the MP.

Red Dead Redemption blows Grand Theft Auto IV out of the water, delivering gameplay, range and story on a scope the latest GTA game couldn’t dream of. In terms of sheer size and variety, it rivals Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - and it does it with technology only available at the turn of the 20th century.

Most importantly, it proves that Rockstar have what it takes to do literally whatever they want with the Free Form Action Adventure genre. They’re not restricted to gangsters and gats - if they want to take us to Feudal Japan, Dark Ages Europe or even (especially) back to the Wild West I’ll be there - ticket in hand, first in line.

GameArena has tested Red Dead Redemption on both Xbox 360 and PS3 for this review.