Red Dead Redemption – Review – Xbox 360

Some people say this game is just GTA with horses based in the Wild West. Is this true? Perhaps! Will Rockstar Games bring another hit to the world? Will this game be more like GTA or Gun and Call of Juarez?

Story: You play as John Marston, an outlaw in 1911 in Texas and Mexico. His duty is to capture his old gang. Including his partner, Bill Williamson or the feds will kill his family. What a predicament!

Gameplay: The game is a third-person sandbox game. Like the other Rockstar game, Grand Theft Auto, your controls are similar. Your health bar stays the same though instead of picking up more, they decided that cover will add the lost health back. You have an endless supply of ammo at your safe house and retain it if you die. If you die, there is no fee, but you return to your safe house or have the option to restart from the last checkpoint or cancel the mission. You have 3 vehicles at your disposal, along with walking of course.  1. You have a stagecoach that you can ride on, like a taxi. 2. You have a horse, many different types and colors. 3. A stagecoach that you can drive/ride shotgun. There are gun duels in the game.  Compared to the Call of Juarez series, these duels are cake.  You enter into a bullet time slo-mo effect and it allows you to mark targets on your enemy’s body, then you hit the RT to fire.  During gun battles, the developers also added a lock-on effect, like in FPS’.  The world is pretty big in size compared to the other R* games. The police force is almost the same as the other games, except they have 2 levels, the Marshalls and posses/bounty hunters. As you escape from the police, you will have a sign that says “WANTED” on your HUD. It starts out colored red and gradually goes into white. There are 2 circles within the wanted level, red being the police and gray being the posses/bounty hunters.  When you are in the gray circle, you’re wanted bar changes from red to white. If you end up escaping from the law, you will have a price on your head and the posses and bounty hunters can go after you at any time. To eliminate the bounty, you can either go to a train depot and wire money/give a “get out of jail free card” (called a pardon letter) to them or you can also try bribing a police officer. Along the route to the end of the game, you will meet up with characters that are pertinent to the story/side quests (marked with a capital letter) and also random people (marked by a question mark) that will let you have Honor and other points, which will net you better equipment and such from stores. They added features such as  the ability to herd cattle and tame a bucking bronco. You can also collect different costumes, which will let you do special things, such as hide from a gang wearing their uniform and cheating at poker. One even looks like it came straight out of a Clint Eastwood movie. You also have the opportunity to collect a lot of item such as different plants, hunting animals, bounties, and finding buried treasure.

Sounds/Graphics:  Being that this game is based in Texas/Mexico, there are a lot of different accents and languages spoke. From English, to Irish to Mexican and even a stutterer!  Animal noises, trains thunder, and much more. The game sounds pretty clear and has no real problems. The graphics are pretty accurate to the time frame and territories.  As you kill people and animals, there are blood spatters that hit the screen depending on how far away you are. If you jump over ravines/gorges/gaps, it will cut to a bottoms-up view as you jump which looks pretty cool.

Multiplayer:  There are 3-4 different modes in multiplayer. I say 3-4 because one really isn’t playing together. The modes are:  Free Roam, Capture the Bag, Shootout, and Social Club. Free Roam allows you to go through gang hideouts, play mini-games, hunt animals, and do challenges specifically for MP. Capture the Bag has 3 separate modes inside it. Gold Rush is scored by whoever gets the most bags/chests. Hold You Own is a simple Capture the Flag match, where both teams have one bag, and you have to protect and capture the other team’s bag. Grab The Bag is a single bag capture the flag. The Social Club is a challenge based place, found on the start menu where you go against your friend’s scores in certain challenges, such as fastest time going through a certain hideout. All of the modes allow you go gain XP and level up, giving you the ability to have better guns and equipment.

Overall: If you like ANY of the GTA games or the other games in the sandbox genre, this game PWNS all! I would recommend buying it ASAP.

Pros:

• great story line
• Multiplayer is fun!
• wonderful graphics
• people love Sandbox games

Cons:

• collecting things get old, barely find things you are looking for
• some of the missions seem to be on a different level of difficulty

Score 9.5 out 10

A Copy of this game was provided to the reviewer for reviewing purposes.

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