Red Dead Redemption PS4 / Switch "conversion"

[oggyraiding]

How did this get so popular? I missed it the first time round because not my thing, but I'm playing the 360 version and it's not got a great opening few hours. Almost boring. Herding cows. Lassoing horses. Not nearly enough shooting. Character moves like he's swimming in molasses. It's not bad per se, but I don't see why it had such mainstream appeal.

[kalowski]

RDR?
I've just started for the first time and I've been helping the Marshall in Armadillo round up thieves and getting all sorts of shooting action!

[Pink Gregory]

How did this get so popular? I missed it the first time round because not my thing, but I'm playing the 360 version and it's not got a great opening few hours. Almost boring. Herding cows. Lassoing horses. Not nearly enough shooting. Character moves like he's swimming in molasses. It's not bad per se, but I don't see why it had such mainstream appeal.

It felt quite fresh at the time, I think maybe Call of Juarez and Gun (remember Gun?) had been out but there weren't really any high profile cowboy games at the time.  Plus Rockstar hype and maybe people had cooled on GTAIV?

[Peri Peri]

It was the world and the setting itself. The characters and story are occasionally decent but mostly very broad and ham-handed. The gameplay was never much cop but it was fairly satisfying lassoing some dude and dragging him behind your horse etc. Fundamentally, it was roaming them plains. We'd not really seen the likes before. The opening is boring though. In fact, all of the missions are repetitive and boring but the setting is still great.

[Pink Gregory]

When it broke the spell for me, I think, is when you're on a train with a gatling gun.

Up until then you were getting into smaller skirmishes and gunfights, admittedly sometimes with quite a few lads, but on that mission you mow down probably more people than you've met in the entire game up to that point, literal cannon fodder.

Just didn't seem like it was in the same world where you ride across the entire Mexico part of the map and encounter no one.  Misjudged, I think.

[Pink Gregory]

It was the world and the setting itself. The characters and story are occasionally decent but mostly very broad and ham-handed. The gameplay was never much cop but it was fairly satisfying lassoing some dude and dragging him behind your horse etc. Fundamentally, it was roaming them plains. We'd not really seen the likes before. The opening is boring though. In fact, all of the missions are repetitive and boring but the setting is still great.

I remember liking the opening, it was doing a simulationist kind of thing quite well, obvs. you notice when the game widens out in scope and starts to run out of ideas, like GTA the only thing to really do is go places and shoot things, but at least you have little distractions like hunting and treasure maps that are somewhat more involving.

The problem is that the whole 'search for John's old gang' thing is unsatisfying because the only one of them you meet in advice is a comedy wild west dirtbag, you don't even really know who you're after.  For someone who's supposed to be fairly significant I don't think Dutch is even mentioned that much until the final third.

[Jerzy Bondov]

I loved RDR at the time and it gave me everything I wanted in a Western game, but I don't feel any great need to go back to it. RDR2 with all its confusing 'cores' and fiddly controls and fiddly fucking everything was just way too much for me at this stage in my life. I'd like an RDR2 demaster if anything. Cut back a load of the systems, make it control like the first one, make it fun.

Mind you, remember that part of the map in RDR where you'd just get leathered by hundreds of bears? What were all those bears doing there?!

[oggyraiding]

Enjoying it now. I think having the first mission person give you three missions based around clunky animal herding was a bad move. As soon as I got to Armadillo and did the Marshal's missions, I was having proper shoot outs and therefore actual fun.

It's nice to play an open world game that isn't bloated with collectibles and towers to climb and all that Ubisoft shit that's been done to death by many other AAA games. I didn't enjoy what I played of RDR2 at release, felt it was overly complex in the worst kind of ways, but maybe after RDR I'll give it another chance.

[C_Larence]

For some reason or another I got bored with RDR and stopped playing for about 6 months just before you get to Mexico. When I eventually played it again I couldn't stop, it was like everything clicked. It's one of my favourite games of its generation, but I've got no desire to play it again.

RDR2 was similar, I found myself bouncing off it pretty hard due to the aforementioned fiddly controls and micromanagement. Once I got used to the former and realized you can basically ignore the latter with no ill effect it became another favourite  gaming experience.