[360] [PS3] Red Dead Redemption

[icycalm]

I am back home for a while and looking for something to play. The last game I left in my 360 was this, and I was meaning to continue it, but I just can't bring myself to do it. It's so goddamn boring. I only played maybe one or two hours of it, but considering I can't imagine myself ever touching it again, I thought I'd write a mini-review before moving on. If things improve after the first couple of hours by all means let me know -- that's why I am posting the review here first -- but I am fairly certain they won't, just as they didn't with GTA4. And if there are some decent missions a dozen hours in, that still won't change anything, and certainly not how boring the story and setting are quite apart from mission quality.

*** Red Dead Redemption
Red Dead Redemption is proof that Rockstar learned nothing from GTA4, and that there's no hope of them ever recapturing, let alone improving on, GTA3's magic. With every game they release the missions get duller and duller ("Guard a farm from a chicken-thief!" Seriously?), the driving (or riding) gets longer and longer, and the exposition -- though mostly well-written, and even downright hilarious at times, in this case -- more and more bloated. Red Dead downs the ante on the GTA games by also fucking up the story and setting -- John Marston's quest for who gives a shit unfolds slower than a TV procedural's while being duller than even the filler episodes, while the setting is the blandest Western setting I've ever encountered in fiction, period. This is a two-star game that gets an extra star for the same reason GTA4 did: technical accomplishment, mostly related to the scale of the world and the truly spectacular horse-riding mechanics.

If a PC port ever came out, or the game was emulated so that I could use 3 screens with it, I might be willing to give it another try. Or, like I said, if someone makes a convincing case that the game seriously improves later on. The Scathing Accuracy review, at any rate, is rubbish:

http://scathingaccuracy.com/reviews/249 ... redemption