Review: Red Dead Redemption - Xbox 360, PS3

by Steven Williamson on 24 May 2010, 11:25 4.6

Tags: Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games (NASDAQ:TTWO), Xbox 360, PS3, Action/Adventure

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Whiskey makes your friskey

Set at the turn of the 20th century, you play as John Marston a former outlaw who now finds himself hell-bent on revenge against the people who he used to call his friends. Inevitably, this leads to a typically entertaining, Clint Eastwood-style spaghetti Western story that acts as a great excuse for you to jump on your horse and cause carnage, attacking bandit strongholds and taking part in dawn showdowns.

There's also plenty of time for meeting some whores down at the saloon, drinking yourself into a whiskey-induced stupor and then sleeping it off under the clear skies and twinkling stars before you start a new day again chasing stage-coaches and rescuing kidnapped citizens, before rounding the night off with a game of poker and more whiskey. Red Dead Redemption feels authentically epic like the spaghetti Westerns it attempts to emulate. Partly, this is down to the stunning visuals and animation, but plenty of praise should also be heaped on the array of mission objectives, brilliant set-pieces and the vast range of authentic characters which you'll meet that inject life and soul into every inch of the game.

There’s a lot of variety to the gameplay, more than we ever imagined you could squeeze into this combat heavy genre. The beauty of Red Dead Redemption is not in just ploughing through the main missions, that's entertaining enough, but it’s wandering off the beaten track taking it at your own pace and enjoying the vast range of scripted and random events that combine magnificently to create various shifts in pace.



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