Red Dead Redemption - Wild West GTA [split topic]

[Little Hoover]

But don't you see? He's only willing to help them carry out atrocities because he's been given a vague promise that he'll get information about that guy he's after, so it's okay.

[VegaLA]

New FREE DLC available soon. If not SOONER!

[I accept the terms of the]

I got excited but it all sounds like stuff I don't care about:

We just wanted to let all our Red Dead fans and especially multiplayers out there know that we have some fantastic and entirely FREE DLC coming your way as a show of appreciation for your amazing support since the game's release last year - including new fan-favorite playable multiplayer characters by popular demand as well as something for all players of Deathmatch, Grab the Bag, Gang matches and other online modes.

May as well be hats as far as I'm concerned. I was expecting a new expansion pack.

[Viero_Berlotti]

Horse armour?

[HappyTree]

I've just got this game. Was waiting till it was cheap. It seems fun, I love how you can climb up on buildings - an essential part of any sandbox game! First thing I did was ignore the mission and just dance around on the train. I was a big fan of Fields of the Nephilim so I'm loving playing Carl McCoy.

[I accept the terms of the]

Tip: Don't use the travel skip thing where you can set up a camp and travel instantly to your destination. The game is a lot more fun when you travel properly across the open landscapes.

[HappyTree]

Do you have any tips for the horse? It is a pain to get moving properly. How many times must I bash the A button before it will get a move on?

[I accept the terms of the]

You need to find a pace that makes the energy bar stay pretty much still. You'll get used to it. Going any faster doesn't make the horse go faster, so after a while you'll get used to tapping out the right speed. It's not much faster than once per second.

[NaCl]

im assuming they never released this for PC?

[Famous Mortimer]

I have just realise I haven't touched this in months...I think it had the same problem for me as the GTA games - sometimes the missions will be impossibly hard, other times you'll do them first time without really trying. Dunno.

Anyway, is the zombie version any funner? Can you just ride round knocking the crap out of the undead and not have to mess about with storyline and that?

[mobias]

Anyway, is the zombie version any funner? Can you just ride round knocking the crap out of the undead and not have to mess about with storyline and that?

The undead story is one of the best bits of downloadable content anyone has ever released for any game ever I think. It's just so brilliantly done. You have to play through the story to enjoy it properly but believe me you'll seriously want to. It's not hugely long anyway, just a few hours worth of gameplay but you'll be sad when it comes to an end. It's allover too soon. Very very good fun.

[HappyTree]

I totally forgot I was playing this. I got sidetracked onto Dragon Age, then ME2. I kinda got a bit bored of Red Dead I must say. But these things got round in phases, I'll pick it back up some day down the line.

[Penfold]

I never really got into the zombie add-on, I'm not a fan of survival horror and I just wanted to roam around on the prairie riding my horsey. I enjoyed what I heard from the soundtrack though.

The Undead Nightmare Pack is 400 Microsoft Points at the moment.

It's 1000 for that and the other DLC together.

[dr_christian_troy]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Dead-Redemption-Game-Year/dp/B005EPHVMQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318608564&sr=8-1

I may even buy this again just to have it in the one pack.

[mook]

due to a bout of insomnia i started playing this game again last night from the beginning, i think it's actually better after a couple of playthroughs. it's the little details that crack me up. after one mission for bonnie i ended up in the paddock, and thought i try and see if i could ride the big bastard bull, apparently not. not only can i not ride the bull but in trying to escape the bloody thing i somehow let it out and now he's got a vendetta against me. honestly, everywhere i go in macfalane's ranch he's there, pawing (hoofing?) at the ground and then charging at me. i'm loathe to save the game, just in case the mad bastard isn't there when i re-start.

[mobias]

I might give this a go again tonight. Got a bottle of wine in and I'm up for a night of gaming. I'd like to play the undead nightmare episode again, that was fookin ace.  Quite fancy a bit of GTAIV too, haven't played that in ages. 

[Norton Canes]

Been playing this since Christmas (when we caught up with the new millennium and bought an X-Box), and the credits finally rolled last night. Weirdly, given that the main attraction of Red Dead Redemption is that it's a sandbox game which places few restrictions on what you should do, I now feel utterly lost without a narrative to drive me on. I should be revelling in this opportunity to finally tear across the deserts and plains without any responsibilities to weigh me down, but instead I just wonder exactly what Jack's hoping to prove, riding out into a plotless wilderness. I'm starting to wish my hunt for Ross could have gone on a little longer; or that I could get myself embroiled in a little local conflict, just like my father when he was used as a pawn by the warring factions in Mexico. I'm having trouble coming to terms with the fact that my existence is instead going to consist solely of attempts to cajoule identikit outlaws from their hilltop hideouts, or lasso rattlesnakes, or armwrestle railroad workers. I drift from town to town, hoping to find myself in a cut scene, instead of hanging out in another bar room spouting the same generic repartee. I mean, it was OK for my father, he had my mother waiting for him - but I'm nineteen, I can't keep just tipping my hat to these scarlet ladies. I knew I should have stuck to my books, and gone to college. I hear there's a war breaking out in Europe - I might enlist, and see if I can head out to Flanders for some action. Or then again, I might just head back out to El Presidio, sit on the ramparts, and watch the sun rise over Manteca Falls. I'm sure there's a hidden cave under those falls. Sure of it. Let me just go and have one more look...

Stop barking, Rufus

[Norton Canes]

So I think my copy of RDR is bugged or something. At the start I was playing as John Marston, a grizzled warrior with a heart of tarnished gold. Now I'm playing as some other character who seems completely unconcerned by the face that his Mexican BFFs are running rape camps and murdering families. HOWEVER the game seems to load in the same character models and voice files as John Marston. Crazy. What will happen towards the end of the game, when these two completely different characters undoubtedly meet?

I sympathise. It's like trying to reconcile the cool, aloof Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart in The Web Of Fear with the fuddled dolt of a Brigadeer in The Three Doctors.

I'm with Edgar Ross on this matter, and his opinion that John Marston is basically pretty thick. 

[mobias]

It may not surprise anyone to know that it sounds like they are full steam ahead with the sequel to RDR. There was a rumour going round that its supposed to be much more epic and possibly set during the American civil war. Not sure if it'll be Rockstar's next big release or not.

[Viero_Berlotti]

Excellent news, think I enjoyed RDR much more than GTA IV and V.

[mobias]

Its online mode was certainly much better than GTAV's. Its the best open world online game I think I've played. 

[The Boston Crab]

And to offer an alternative (but clearly not original) opinion: When does RDR start getting good? I've figured out how to fast travel and stuff, done about a dozen missions, maybe more, done a fair bit of roaming and skinning animals and picking flowers and getting unnecessarily fucked up by bandits. I've got a few guns. I just don't know what the fun bit is supposed to be yet. I find the dialogue en route to missions corny and heavy handed, but with no sense of humour. I think the open world setting clicks but very very occasionally and by this point, GTA5 had me agog, with the beauty and detail, if not the writing or gameplay. And on that note, the shooting is desperately unsatisfying. I seem to have spent about five times more herding fucking animals and stopping horses bucking than I have cunting bad lads in the face with a repeater, and any time I cut loose a little, the game makes me feel demotivated to continue by turning the world against me unless I rustle some more fucking cows. It's basically an errand simulator. I heard when it opens up into Mexico or something it gets a bit wilder but I also heard it gets shit then and your character becomes as inconsistent and stupid as Nathan Drake.

[mobias]

The missions are certainly much more epic in the second half thats for sure. I actually quite enjoyed herding cattle and the general slow pace of the first half. I think the game really kicked into gear for me once I realised you could add your own soundtrack to it. Once I had the theme music from all the great cowboy films in there the game really became quite gloriously cinematic. At the time of its release RDR really did set a new bar in open world gaming for its attention to detail. Going back to it after playing GTAV might seem a bit of a step backwards because obviously some of the mechanics of RDR have been added to and improved upon for GTAV. Although interestingly the graphics, particularly the 360 version, of RDR are apparently still superior. It at least has some anti-aliasing filter applied. GTAV has next to none. 

[The Boston Crab]

I think this is about my fourth or fifth attempt to get stuck into the game though. It was one of the first I bought for the PS3 about two years ago and it's just never clicked with me. I've been quite picky over the years but I've nevertheless found enough in about twenty games to bother finishing them but I don't know where this is going. I don't do enough shooting or killing the give a fuck about better weapons. I don't know what honour or fame do for me to care about accruing them. I find the story stuff quite dull and samey, at this point. I find the world repetitive and uneventful. I actually enjoy westerns and love the idea, it just makes for a pretty boring game so far, for me.

[mobias]

The one thing I think it does do better than GTAV is the randomly generated side missions. They do feel quite dynamic and are much more randomly placed than GTAV's scripted ones which really don't feel that different from GTAIV's. Some of RDR's little side missions are actually more fun than the main ones. They do a good job of drawing you into the world.
Incidentally there's lot of extremely complex coding in RDR's AI. The coding controlling all the different animal behaviours in particular the AI controlling your horse and making it not want to walk over cliff edges took ages so I've heard. The reason RDR has never appeared on PC is that the PC version was such a mess that they really didn't think it was worth the man power at the time making it work even though the console version had been such a huge success.   

[Viero_Berlotti]

I think for me it made a refreshing change from the countless GTA clones, involving gangsters that say 'fuck' a lot, that there had been a glut of at the time RDR came out. I found the rural setting to be less claustrophobic and more immersive than GTA's cities as well, and I didn't tire of it as half as quick as I seem to do with the GTA games. I didn't have any problems with the combat, and I thought the Dead-Eye 'bullet-time' effect worked well. Loved the mini-games like poker and horse shoe throwing and my favourite side missions were the treasure map missions. It was a nice change to have something that wasn't just a series of check points on the mini-map to tick off. You got the clue from the treasure map and you just had to keep it in your minds eye and hope you'd decipher the clue and spot the area where the treasure was buried when you were on your travels. The treasure map missions made their way into GTA V in the form of the bounty hunting missions which were probably the most fun I had playing GTA V. In fact most of the things I really liked about GTA V could probably be traced back to innovations made in RDR.

[Bored of Canada]

And to offer an alternative (but clearly not original) opinion: When does RDR start getting good? I've figured out how to fast travel and stuff, done about a dozen missions, maybe more, done a fair bit of roaming and skinning animals and picking flowers and getting unnecessarily fucked up by bandits. I've got a few guns. I just don't know what the fun bit is supposed to be yet. I find the dialogue en route to missions corny and heavy handed, but with no sense of humour. I think the open world setting clicks but very very occasionally and by this point, GTA5 had me agog, with the beauty and detail, if not the writing or gameplay. And on that note, the shooting is desperately unsatisfying. I seem to have spent about five times more herding fucking animals and stopping horses bucking than I have cunting bad lads in the face with a repeater, and any time I cut loose a little, the game makes me feel demotivated to continue by turning the world against me unless I rustle some more fucking cows. It's basically an errand simulator. I heard when it opens up into Mexico or something it gets a bit wilder but I also heard it gets shit then and your character becomes as inconsistent and stupid as Nathan Drake.

I don't think you're going to enjoy it more. Myself and a scant few others have said similar things about it. The world and sound design's very well developed but I didn't click with the narrative or any of the real gameplay, and I don't think you're going to enjoy it more if you're not already. I understand why people love it, and I'm always been so disappointed with myself that I could never enjoy it like that, because I want so badly to enjoy it.

I'd recommend that you try and push through it and finish the game, since the conclusion is really something else, but I'm a firm opponent of "It gets good after X hours" excuse. Especially with games, especially especially with big open world games like this which'll take you a long time to finish when you're probably time poor with life and work and such.

I remember trying to vocalise my complaints in here, and someone pointed out that all my points were being addressed in I believe this review here BUT it does contain spoilers: http://www.gamermelodico.com/2010/06/flawed-ballad-of-john-marston.html

[syntaxerror]

I picked this up for a fiver a while back and couldn't really get into it either and just ended up playing the poker mini game a lot. It all seemed very well made and all but, meh.

[Norton Canes]

Arse. Big post about the appeal of Red Dead Redemption obliterated when I accidentally closed the browser.

Right, salient points...

It's a cliché, but with Red Dead Redemption, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. You may not like the simplistic narrative, or the inconsistent characterisation, or the vagaries of the combat system; but the narrative works up a head of steam, culminating in its poignant conclusion. Yeah, Marston is strung along like a patsy, something that becomes excruciatingly clear in the Mexico section. But as I mentioned in my reply to Mister Six's post above, I don't honestly think he is supposed to be terribly bright. He reminds me a bit of Rick Deckard, who seems to blunder towards his goal of tracking down the escaped replicants in Blade Runner.

And if the story really isn't working for you at all, there's always the real star of the game - the landscape. In the same way that, according to Claude Debussy, music is the space between the notes, the appeal of Red Dead Redemption lies in the desolates expanses between the points of civilisation, and the time it takes to traverse them. Having played only linear first/third person games in the past, like Half-Life, that are a succession of meticulously choreographed set pieces,  I  like the chance to stop somewhere between chapters where there's nothing going on (although there usually is, given how frequently trouble finds you out).

I don't know... I suppose this is tantamount to admitting that the game has an intrinsically mundane side. Ideally there would be three or four independent and exclusive main plot lines that you could follow, according to your actions early in the game. I'm sure the rulebook mentions something about being able to side with the outlaw gangs and shoot up the law enforcement, perhaps that could have been explored further, maybe giving you the chance to attract followers of your own. I think what the game does well instead, is portray a disquieting vision of the decay of the freedoms afforded by the old West. Within that, there's enough scope to set your moral compass.

And there is certainly, from my experience, no shortage of bad lads to cunt in the face with a repeater.

[Edit: Woah! And in the time is took to re-type this, three replies appear]

[Norton Canes]

I mean, OK, it's not a game that ever really throws any radical ideas out of left-field. It's basically and unashamedly a mash-up of every Western cliché in the genre, and you have to just revel in that.