Red Dead Redemption

I know this is the review a lot of you have been waiting for, and here it is Red Dead Redemption!!

Blending the open world gameplay of the newest entry of the Grand Theft Auto franchise into an epic western story is one of the ballsiest moves I think Rockstar has ever pulled, and it worked out fantasticly.

From all the previews, the game seemed just like that, a GTA style sandbox game set in the wild west. The crazy thing is, that's pretty much what you get. The world definitely seems bigger than GTAIV, but I think it's just more open and spread out than the compactness of Liberty City. The nice thing is, to me, unlike GTA IV, there is seems to be a lot more to do when just wondering around between missions. I liken it more to the exploration in games like Oblivion or Fallout 3 than anything you could do in GTA IV. The random encounters that you may stumble across just seem more organic in RDR than some of the things you could occupy your time with in GTA IV.

On the flipside of that though, the actual missions you find yourself doing are pretty much ripped straight out of the GTA handbook. This can either be good or bad, depending on how bored you get with random fed-ex missions and that sort of thing.

The story is pretty epic, though the midpoint jump down to Mexico seems a bit lackluster, and really slows the story down when it should be racing along, but once you get those missions out of the way, the story really takes off.

Multiplayer is leaps and bounds better than anything GTA IV had. The lobby is basically just a free roam where you can your friends can join a group, or posse, and just run around the country side doing whatever you please. You can easily jump into the same sort of random missions you would run into exploring in the single player game, or easily jump into a number of different match types. Even in the free roam, there are other people running around, giving it an almost MMO feel.

All in all, I'd have to say that RDR is a definite must.

Happy Gaming

Kira