• Summary

• Reviews

• News
• Images
• Videos
• Downloads
• Hints & Cheats

Genre: Third-Person Action Publisher: Rockstar Games Developer: Rockstar San Diego Players: 1

By Keith B (19th Dec 2009)

Note: This was written from a hands-off preview Rockstar walked us through, it is not a review of the final product. Gamestats.com has listed this in its reviews section - please be advised that it is a preview only.

As a sequel to Red Dead Revolver, released in 2004, Red Dead Redemption might very well hold the title of Longest Development Time for a Sequel, although it’s true that the various Rockstar studios around the world have been cranking out other titles in the meantime. The long window of time has, however, allowed Rockstar to develop the RAGE engine along the way, and the fruits of this labour are evident everywhere in the two demos we were whisked off to Sydney to see in the last few months.

While the predecessor was very much Good Guys vs Bad, Redemption takes a very different approach, allowing a much more freeform approach to missions and general play. The timeline in which it sits is the turn of the century in America, circa 1900, which was a time when the Wild West was being tamed by the Federal Government and rail lines were spreading across the continent, hamstringing the business of being a bandit and ushering in a new age.

Gamers take control of one John Marston, a semi-reformed gang member who decides to change his ways to settle into a life around family and good honest work. The Federal Government is increasing its authority across the more remote areas of the country, and when The Bureau - which history shows will become the FBI - chase down our protagonist and offer him a difficult ultimatum, it leads to the main thrust of the story as Marston saddles up to undertake a series of wide-reaching missions for his new taskmasters.

I may as well point out right about now that I'm a big fans of the western genre, and while I certainly enjoyed my time with Call of Juarez and Bound in Blood, it would also be fair to say that while delivering a story based in the wild west, it never shook the linear path lines and failed to really recreate any feeling of existing in the era. Redemption smashes that problem to pieces, because rather than being curtailed by the environment, the environment actually becomes an integral part of the experience. This is an open world game, and we mean open world. If you have a better memory than I, then you may remember that giddy feeling when you first stepped into Liberty City, that excitement as you imagined all the things you could do with a playground of that size. Where recreating that feeling might seem difficult in a time when there are few settlements, no high rise buildings, and no cars to get around in, fear not.



Redemption may have masses of open space to explore - there are three distinct areas, all linked, called New Austin, Nuevo Parasio, and the West Elizabeth - but hidden somewhere in the cogs of the 360 (the platform we were shown the demo on, although we weren’t allowed to put our grubby hands on it) sits a Random Event Generator machine that whirrs constantly and spits out things that make the desert, or plains, come to life.

These events don’t need you to interact with; they will unfold all by themselves with the player as a spectator. You can come across bandits raiding a convoy, prisoners escaping their jailors, or any number of unforseen events as you mosey across the landscape. You can interact with them as you wish, and depending on your approach, you can gain or lose two of the indicators of your standing within the community, your Fame and your Honour. Kill the jailors and let the prisoners free and you may be rewarded with money, ammo or one of the game’s many treasure maps, but the lawmen of the area will be gunning for you. Capture the escaping convicts and your reputation around the area may rise as a nice guy, but perhaps you’ll lose the chance to garner something special hidden out in the world.



It’s true that Redemption has lots and lots of space, and it’s true that the space is often open expanses of plains or desert, but don’t let that concern you. The cycle of night and day provides countless moments which flicker memories of Clint Eastwood movies with the hero silhouetted against a burning sky. The horses are easily the best we’ve seen in any game, with some superb movement and each having a distinct personality. Then there are the range of other animals you come across, with prairie dogs chasing down and killing rabbits, snakes bursting from the brush to attack horses, and the circling vultures that will arrive shortly after you leave a trail of corpses strewn around the sand. There is an ecosystem in place that really feels alive, where big animals eat the small, and the big also often try to eat humans.

The level of detail is really impressive, not only with the environments but the characters too. When watching the action unfold, it's hard to pick areas where a sharper approach could be used. Just look at the screens to see for yourself.



In the demo we saw, Marston arrives into a town called Chuparosa, whereupon he pulls an active bounty poster from a wall. Bounties can be collected in two ways, either dead (self explanatory) or alive (by pulling down the target with a lasso). As we watched, John killed the target and searched his body for proof of his demise, then returned to town to collect his reward. As events unfolded, Marston, while wearing a disguise, murdered a lawman in plain view, thus blanketing a portion of the map in a red circle. Riding or running outside the circle causes it to slowly fade, while removing the disguise speeds this process up. Once the circle fades out, there still remains a bounty which must be paid. Get a high enough of a bounty on your head and bounty hunters will ride out to hunt you, although visiting a sheriff and paying your record away grants you a pardon letter. The slowly-increasing difficulty associated with a climbing bounty seems like a suitable way to reflect the effects of having a growing reputation for being a murdering bastard.

In another section of the demo, John gets roped into helping some revolutionaries take over a fort. One of the many characters in the games gives John instruction to ride a stagecoach bristling with sticks of dynamite towards the gate, whereupon he must leap from the vehicle, allowing it to slam into the gates, blowing them to pieces. A massive firefight ensues, with the player searching the burning buildings for an ammo cache. As the fort is finally cleared, John runs to the roof to repel a counterattack, which he does by firing a cannon into the oncoming soldiers.



These set-piece missions really create chances to unleash mayhem on a massive scale, but while they are impressive, so too is the simple act of moving around the buildings, shooting lanterns to set people on fire, and doing it all with a couple of shooting irons or a powerful rifle.

First impressions are very good, but we need to get a hands on to really see how it feels. Once we know that it steers clear of predictable stereotypes while still having a sense of belonging based on the celluloid world of the Western, we’ll be even more eager to strap on our spurs and start gunning.

Scoring is disabled for this preview

Share On: