3.5/5 ★ – Blujus's review of Red Dead Redemption.

A lot of aspects of this game I really liked and a lot of aspects didn't quite gel with me all of the characters were so memorable Landon Rickets, Irish, Bonnie McFarlene, Seth, West Dickens, De Santa, Allende, Reyes, Luisa all of these characters were so strong oddly enough the only characters I found to be pretty flat were the three central antagonists and frankly that really hurts the story Bill starts off really strong, he shoots you and leaves you to die in the opening and gives you a real drive to find and kill him but outside of the opening and the final confrontation you have with him he's not around at all and you spend at least a third of the game preparing to attack his fortress then you do and he's escaped to mexico so you spend another third trying to track then subsequently kill him in Mexico. I spent so long tracking and trying to find this one fucking guy that had about a minute or less of collective screentime that it got to the point where I just wasn't very invested in killing him. He didn't seem worth the trouble. Also Javier Esquella is supposedly important but he only first shows up in the same level that you kill him so I didn't care much about him either. All the game tells you about Bill and Javier is that John has a history with them but as the player you don't have any meaningful interactions with these guys so you just end up not really caring. when you finally do kill them it feels both anticlimactic and unfulfilling because you've spent so long getting to that moment so by the time you get the chance to kill them and it just feels like killing a regular enemy it's just not exciting especially since you aren't hyped enough about killing them because the game hasn't really provided the player with much motive to kill them other than the game just asks you to and so that's what you go and do. This is in direct contrast with how one of the side antagonists is done in the game: De Santa. De Santa is such a fucking asshole the whole time and you spend a lot of time with him so when he finally tries to kill you and you barely escape with your life the player is really invested in killing him and so when in the next chapter you get to execute him it feels so much more satisfying than doing it to the main antagonists ever does because you get time to become familiar with his character and start to really dislike him whereas with Bill and Javier you don't get that oppertunity This is all leading up to the games real massive big bad: Dutch. Now they got so much right with Dutch but it was just too little too late. He just pops up out of nowhere in the back half of the game and so despite the fact you actually do get a lot of great interactions with him and his place in Johns life is so interesting it was all just done too late into the game for the game to utilise him as much as it could have. Had he been the main antagonist from the beginning and he continued to pop up and have exchanges with John throughout the game much like he does in the final third the game and the games story would have been so so so much better for it. As it stands that all feels like a wasted opportunity. As the game currently stands the story is still pretty enjoyable and engaging but I really just think that's because it gets you to care so much about the excellent supporting cast and getting to know them and do missions with them is a blast As for the actual missions themselves they could have done with a lot more variety. A few were really great like the one where you rescue Bonnie from being hung or the one where you break into fort mercer or even the one where you're about to be executed by the mexican army but the rebels come in and save you but really most missions are just "Ride horse to mission trigger, ride horse while taking to character, shoot lots of bad guys, ride away on horse while shooting bad guys who are also on horse" That mission structure is honestly pretty fun but its so overused and gets so stale that when I got to the back end of the game I was enjoying Johns farm chores so much more than the fucking shootouts. when you're not doing missions though you're probably just riding around the open world which was absolutely stunning. I played the PS3 version and despite the frame drops and shitty resolution Riding around the open world with the amazing visuals, music and atmosphere never got old. I never used the fast travel because I always just loved riding all across this massive stunning world and coming across poker games, stand-offs, random encounters, challenges, gang hideouts, etc. The open world felt so alive and I loved it Overall the game had a pretty good but kinda disappointing story, great but occasionally wasted characters, monotonous but still fun missions with a few standouts and an amazing open world with great music and visuals. Really solid game and I can't wait to play the sequel