A Quick Review of Red Dead Redemption

Believe me, I don’t want to be writing as I would rather be playing said game until my eyes turn square and my thumbs fall off but the TV in my flat is currently rudely tuned in to “90210″, of all the stupid things to watch, so I may as well tell you how “amazing” it is and I will try, I promise, to refrain from saying things like ‘Yee-haw’ and ‘Giddy up’ in the process.

Yee-Haw! Giddy up there, pardners! I am sorry. I have cowboy fever now and, rather than being outside turning pink in what has to be one of the most gloriously sunny weekends in a good five years, the closest I am getting to a tan is from the flickering tubes inside my television. I have to sit very close to the telly because, like Grand Theft Auto IV, also by Rockstar Games, Red Dead Redemption can be a bit gloomy and hard to make out sometimes, especially when the sun insists on shining.

That is the first easy parallel that can be drawn between Rockstars’ masterpiece and the new pretender, and the one and only real criticism I have of RDR.  Red Dead Redemption isn’t just GTA:IV in leather chaps, but it obviously borrows heavily from it’s spiritual predecessor: the control system is pleasingly familiar, as is the invaluable radar and the countless other touches, from mini-games and Wanted levels to changing outfits and – of course – wandering around shooting people for fun. The key difference is the how refined and subtle Redemption is – the epic landscape scrolls into view without any pop-up, while the assorted animals and people who inhabit whichever nameless American state circa 1911 don’t seem to jerk around so cartoonishly (and, in the cut-scenes, they don’t have massive hands). The humour is parred back a bit, as well – no more phallic rocks or Area 69s – not at all to the detriment of the game, while the mini-missions you run into while traversing the vistas on your trusty steed – stopping lynches, fighting outlaws, picking flowers – are no longer a tiresome diversion from the main missions, but something engrossing and entertaining all on their own.

It’s unfair to simply compare RDR to GTA:IV, but if you draw a Venn Diagram of the as-yet-untapped and soon-to-be-very-vogue-indeed Western genre and Grand Theft Auto, the chunky, meaty overlap in-between makes for one hell of a game. And one that I am wasting precious gaming time not playing.

Words by Joel Golby