Jokersvirus
06-09-2010, 08:07 AM
Another great games comes from the studio of Rock Star in the Form of a western shoot em up, be the good guy bad guy, game of Red Dead Redemption.
As usual there will be a lot of spoilers in my review so just a fair warning.
Story: The game starts as you, John Marston heading to New Austin in search of two "old friends" some very special person are interested in speaking with. Well You find your "old friends," and end up on a ranch of a very nice rancher. You were shot and bought back from near death. The story advances in one direction, I want my family.. You are pretty much a "whatever you want" person. You are running around all of new Austin in the hopes of finding information that will lead you to the two people you want. After helping a fraud, a necrophiliac, and a Marshall, you finally make your way to get the two people you want. Come to find out they ran to Mexico..
So Off you go to Mexico to find the people you want. Needless to say You get the run around like you did in New Austin, which will take up over 50% of your time, not including if you stop and help people with their random problems.
At the end you get to people you want after a very long, bloody road. After this you return to a place spoken about many, many times: Black Water.
There you once again become the puppet for the federal government in their attempt to find Dutch, old leader of the gang you were apart of when John was younger. Well they do the same exact thing the run around trying to gain information and other things, finally you find Dutch and its finally over, and you get the one thing you've always wanted. Your Family...
http://www.techshout.com/images/red-dead-redemption-game.jpg
big time Spoiler DO not open if you don't not want to know what happens.
After finishing your job with the Feds you go home and see your family for the first time in the game. You start working on your farm, going to Bonnie asking for some cattle, stuff like that. All the quests from your home, which is run smack in the middle of an area you might pass a lot too and not even know it. You spend almost all your time with your son trying to convince him your home for good and nothing will happen, well if only that was true. The Army comes looking for you and kills your farm hand and you send off your son and wife to be safe. And you go out in a blaze of glory, leaving be hide a wife and son. After that you take on the roll of Jack who seems to have become what his father did.
Game-play: its static it is dynamic and always changing, the missions are always the same in New Austin and Mexico, but its the random encounters you will have fun with, which are pretty much the same too, but you will run into the rare person you help get something back and they try to steal your horse or kill you. Even thought you will be shooting and killing a lot of people, there is no reason you cant stop by a saloon and get a shot of brandy now and then or play some poker, liers dice, black jack, etc etc, cant buy any hookers, sorry i've tried :(.
There are some random people who out of no where for no reason will want to duel you which is funny cause I guess they got a death wish or two. What you do has an impact, if you want to go on a killing spree you will be haunted by bounty hunters and Law enforcement. If you are a good person and the higher your fame and honor get you can get away with more and more. The highest I got was I could do anything up to murder without having law enforcement called on me.
An interesting thing i noticed is that if you shoot someone in the body they will act accordingly if you shoot out back their knee caps they wont be getting back up, if you work your horse too hard it will die, happened to me. You shoot someone in the hand they will drop their weapon, the list goes on and on.
Also, they have different suits you can wear which can give you different abilities, one allows you to cheat in poker, which isn't easy, treasure hunter, a suit you can buy that will make law enforcement in Mexico very unlikely to do anything, even if you kill. They require you do different things from quests to do certain amount of things, skinning, shooting etc etc.
The also has a new concept called "Dead eye" which is epic! If you are being outnumbered you can use this slow down time and target several people, the number of people is Dependant upon how many bullets you have in a clip. If you have 10, 10 people can be shot at, you can waste an entire clip into one person if you like. Later on this ability is "upgraded" to expert where you can mark your targets instead of the game doing so for you.
http://www.joystickdivision.com/red%20dead.JPG
Upgrades: Well weapon rise you get several weapons through-out the game which are very and interesting. I enjoy my bolt-action rifle, plus all the hand guns. Also you can buy a weapon or two from gun shops when they say new weapons are available. Mainly they have common items, health, regen for dead eye, bait to attach wild animals.Also the new suits you can wear are upgrades since they give you different abilities, i suppose. Just because you get a new weapon doesn't mean the one being replaced isnt still good, mix it up and have some fun, you will enjoy it.
http://gamerinvestments.com/video-game-stocks/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/red-dead-redemption-new-screens-100.jpg
Online: Well I haven't played much in this area but You have free roam with up to 15 buddies on Xbox live but when you start out you are a stupid looking deputy with a donkey as a ride, yes a donkey I kid you not. You level up the better horse and things you get. They is also capture the bag? Duel and some other similar games we've all played but with a western twist on it. Online looks awesome even thought I've only spend maybe about 10 minutes online playing.
http://www.joystickdivision.com/RedDeadRedemption_83785_screen.jpg
Graphics: I enjoyed them, one thing i look for when playing a game is do the graphics help me feel like im apart of the story and helping advancing the plot, kinda like those you pick the path books. They are beautiful you get the feeling you are in the west, in this case the south. they are a very issues with the graphics, when im using my lasso and bringing a horse back to its owner the rope goes through trees or my horse getting stuck inside a bounty hunter pay house. When i went on a killing killing spree on a farm i went into the jail and shot someone at point blank, which will give you a little cinamica action of you sticking the gun under the mouth and because of that i was trapped inside a jail cell getting shot at by 15 plus law enforcement, before i killed the guy in the cell, i shot him in the knee and he pulled out a rifle?? WTF did he get a weapon??
http://cache.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/152133_S/First-Look-Red-Dead-Redemption.jpg
Final Thoughts: Overall this game is damn near perfect, there are some down falls of the game mainly running all over and not being close to a stagecoach, or after a mission your left where the mission ends and never offered a ride back into town. The storyline is awesome, a classic story of redeeming yourself and protecting those you love while breaking your foot off in someone's face and blowing stuff up. The missions did become boring quickly but to ease the pain of that you got other things you can do, and many many side quests to go do, which are kinda fun. I Loved the game and i'm glad i bought it instead of something else.
5/5 Buy.
As usual there will be a lot of spoilers in my review so just a fair warning.
Story: The game starts as you, John Marston heading to New Austin in search of two "old friends" some very special person are interested in speaking with. Well You find your "old friends," and end up on a ranch of a very nice rancher. You were shot and bought back from near death. The story advances in one direction, I want my family.. You are pretty much a "whatever you want" person. You are running around all of new Austin in the hopes of finding information that will lead you to the two people you want. After helping a fraud, a necrophiliac, and a Marshall, you finally make your way to get the two people you want. Come to find out they ran to Mexico..
So Off you go to Mexico to find the people you want. Needless to say You get the run around like you did in New Austin, which will take up over 50% of your time, not including if you stop and help people with their random problems.
At the end you get to people you want after a very long, bloody road. After this you return to a place spoken about many, many times: Black Water.
There you once again become the puppet for the federal government in their attempt to find Dutch, old leader of the gang you were apart of when John was younger. Well they do the same exact thing the run around trying to gain information and other things, finally you find Dutch and its finally over, and you get the one thing you've always wanted. Your Family...
http://www.techshout.com/images/red-dead-redemption-game.jpg
big time Spoiler DO not open if you don't not want to know what happens.
After finishing your job with the Feds you go home and see your family for the first time in the game. You start working on your farm, going to Bonnie asking for some cattle, stuff like that. All the quests from your home, which is run smack in the middle of an area you might pass a lot too and not even know it. You spend almost all your time with your son trying to convince him your home for good and nothing will happen, well if only that was true. The Army comes looking for you and kills your farm hand and you send off your son and wife to be safe. And you go out in a blaze of glory, leaving be hide a wife and son. After that you take on the roll of Jack who seems to have become what his father did.
Game-play: its static it is dynamic and always changing, the missions are always the same in New Austin and Mexico, but its the random encounters you will have fun with, which are pretty much the same too, but you will run into the rare person you help get something back and they try to steal your horse or kill you. Even thought you will be shooting and killing a lot of people, there is no reason you cant stop by a saloon and get a shot of brandy now and then or play some poker, liers dice, black jack, etc etc, cant buy any hookers, sorry i've tried :(.
There are some random people who out of no where for no reason will want to duel you which is funny cause I guess they got a death wish or two. What you do has an impact, if you want to go on a killing spree you will be haunted by bounty hunters and Law enforcement. If you are a good person and the higher your fame and honor get you can get away with more and more. The highest I got was I could do anything up to murder without having law enforcement called on me.
An interesting thing i noticed is that if you shoot someone in the body they will act accordingly if you shoot out back their knee caps they wont be getting back up, if you work your horse too hard it will die, happened to me. You shoot someone in the hand they will drop their weapon, the list goes on and on.
Also, they have different suits you can wear which can give you different abilities, one allows you to cheat in poker, which isn't easy, treasure hunter, a suit you can buy that will make law enforcement in Mexico very unlikely to do anything, even if you kill. They require you do different things from quests to do certain amount of things, skinning, shooting etc etc.
The also has a new concept called "Dead eye" which is epic! If you are being outnumbered you can use this slow down time and target several people, the number of people is Dependant upon how many bullets you have in a clip. If you have 10, 10 people can be shot at, you can waste an entire clip into one person if you like. Later on this ability is "upgraded" to expert where you can mark your targets instead of the game doing so for you.
http://www.joystickdivision.com/red%20dead.JPG
Upgrades: Well weapon rise you get several weapons through-out the game which are very and interesting. I enjoy my bolt-action rifle, plus all the hand guns. Also you can buy a weapon or two from gun shops when they say new weapons are available. Mainly they have common items, health, regen for dead eye, bait to attach wild animals.Also the new suits you can wear are upgrades since they give you different abilities, i suppose. Just because you get a new weapon doesn't mean the one being replaced isnt still good, mix it up and have some fun, you will enjoy it.
http://gamerinvestments.com/video-game-stocks/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/red-dead-redemption-new-screens-100.jpg
Online: Well I haven't played much in this area but You have free roam with up to 15 buddies on Xbox live but when you start out you are a stupid looking deputy with a donkey as a ride, yes a donkey I kid you not. You level up the better horse and things you get. They is also capture the bag? Duel and some other similar games we've all played but with a western twist on it. Online looks awesome even thought I've only spend maybe about 10 minutes online playing.
http://www.joystickdivision.com/RedDeadRedemption_83785_screen.jpg
Graphics: I enjoyed them, one thing i look for when playing a game is do the graphics help me feel like im apart of the story and helping advancing the plot, kinda like those you pick the path books. They are beautiful you get the feeling you are in the west, in this case the south. they are a very issues with the graphics, when im using my lasso and bringing a horse back to its owner the rope goes through trees or my horse getting stuck inside a bounty hunter pay house. When i went on a killing killing spree on a farm i went into the jail and shot someone at point blank, which will give you a little cinamica action of you sticking the gun under the mouth and because of that i was trapped inside a jail cell getting shot at by 15 plus law enforcement, before i killed the guy in the cell, i shot him in the knee and he pulled out a rifle?? WTF did he get a weapon??
http://cache.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/152133_S/First-Look-Red-Dead-Redemption.jpg
Final Thoughts: Overall this game is damn near perfect, there are some down falls of the game mainly running all over and not being close to a stagecoach, or after a mission your left where the mission ends and never offered a ride back into town. The storyline is awesome, a classic story of redeeming yourself and protecting those you love while breaking your foot off in someone's face and blowing stuff up. The missions did become boring quickly but to ease the pain of that you got other things you can do, and many many side quests to go do, which are kinda fun. I Loved the game and i'm glad i bought it instead of something else.
5/5 Buy.