Do you have what it takes to get a review published right here on Kotaku? Adam does, as he whistles for a new horse.
Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.
And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.
This review was submitted by Adam Ruch. If you’ve played Red Dead Redemption, or just want to ask Adam more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Red Dead Redemption (PS3)
Read Dead Redemption is the spiritual successor to Red Dead Revolver by Rockstar (San Diego). Using the same basic open-world framework and gameplay mechanics as Grand Theft Auto 4, the player is John Marsten: an outlaw trying to turn over a new leaf, but being played like a hand of cards by higher powers.
Loved
Wide Open Spaces: Red Dead Redemption has presented a truly beautiful, detailed and convincing representation of the American West. I lived in Arizona for many years and can personally vouch for the authenticity of most of the landscapes presented.
Procedural Encounters: Sometimes the desert is empty, hauntingly so. Other times it’s teeming with wildlife and random strangers to divert your attention. This is a remarkably entertaining variety of experience. The experience of hunting seems fairly genuine, unlike an MMO where there are always animals everywhere.
Gunplay: There are lots and lots of guns in this game, but none of them are out of place. In a gaming world of plasma cannons and multiple assault rifles, the economy of a single-shot rifle was really refreshing. There were the repeater rifles, but these weren’t fully automatic weapons either. The sound effects on the various kinds of weapons combined with the one-or-two shot kills gave the shoot outs some real oomph!
Riding Shotgun: Seriously, riding in a stagecoach flying down dirt tracks blasting rustlers or outlaws with my Winchester never got old.
Hated
Rookie Mistakes: The storytelling here is not as refined as I’ve come to expect in these big-budget titles. One of the first rules of effective storytelling is “Show, don’t tell.” The game gets off on a bad foot when we are simply told that Marsten’s family have been kidnapped, so we’re obliged to carry out their orders. This fundamental error troubles the entire plot, as it establishes (or rather, doesn’t) Marsten’s motivations for doing anything. I as a player had no idea what his family were like, I never saw them, didn’t see them kidnapped and so have no emotional connection to them at all. This could have been rectified with a simple cut-scene, or better yet, with a Mass Effect 2 style opening episode.
Grit in my Spaghetti: The game is a bit confused between the comedy of an over-the-top spaghetti Western and the grit and something darker and more meaningful. The entire cast of the first chapter (other than the MacFarlanes) are painful caricatures that a hardened outlaw like Marsten wouldn’t have allied himself with in a million years. He certainly wouldn’t have made himself errand-boy for them. The middle chapter is more balanced, and the third becomes increasingly dark.
They built a fantastic platform here—I just wish Rockstar had let the writers polish the story a bit more.
Reviewed by: Adam Ruch
You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 500 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.
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