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

The first Red Dead Redemption was something I never finished when I was younger. I owned it, but never got very far, it was always one of those games that I'd load into just to mess around and just avoid the objectives completely. This all made revisiting the game over a decade later feel more like a first playthrough than anything else, and I'm very glad I was able to experience it this way after just replaying Red Dead Redemption 2. While its narrative and characters aren't nearly as compelling as its sequel/prequel, it manages to pull its own weight nonetheless. Red Dead Redemption's story follows the events of it's prequel in more of a subtle manner. For me it was incredibly hard to disconnect my prior knowledge of these characters with the events being presented in the game itself, as a lot of those important sequences from the previous game are only vaguely mentioned. Instead of having characters spew exposition at you, their story is presented through brief dialogue and mannerisms. When you inevitably encounter Bill, Javier and Dutch throughout the game, it's clear they aren't the same people they once were. Even if you never played the prequel, you can immediately get a grasp of the tension between them and John. I love the way the game goes about handling this, and I honestly couldn't have wished for anything better. For a game released in 2010, it holds up on almost every front. I applaud Rockstar's insistence on using motion capture for almost everything, it makes this game feel timeless and adds that extra layer of immersion. There's very few examples of games from this era that are this well animated and lifelike, and honestly, most games now still don't have as fluid of animations as this game does. There's no NPCS that'll stare you dead in the eyes and slowly move their lips like they're pretending to be a human, every character feels alive and the small mannerisms really add to an already great experience. The world itself, while sometimes visually dated, is still a technical marvel. The harsh sun over the war torn desert of Mexico is perfectly represented through coarse looking visuals and rough terrain that makes this place feel lived in. The sound design of horses galloping, distant gunshots and wildlife makes the open world experience of Red Dead Redemption hold up through a modern lens. Rockstar's mission structure is heavily criticized nowadays, and for good reason. While it may have worked back when these games originally came out, their consistently restrictive nature was always a detriment. In most Rockstar games, either you do exactly what Rockstar wants you to do or you fail the mission, and that philosophy is way too present in this game. There's so many missions where you're trailing a guy for far distances, but they're locked at a certain speed and if you go too far ahead of them or trail too far behind, the game will force you to correct it. You could be sitting it silence with no character dialogue, yet the game will require you to do exactly what they want without question. There's other missions that feel like they only exist to pad the game out, such as the early and tedious herding missions in the first chapter, or working on John's farm toward the end. Whenever this game has missions focused away from the main story is when it loses my interest, and unfortunately that ends up being a good chunk of the game. While the main story is strongly written, you're never really given a reason to connect with any of the other events happening around it, I know it's for world building purposes but in my opinion, the atmosphere already did a good job at showcasing that. Almost every mission feels like a shooting gallery. You travel to an area, talk to a guy, travel to another area, shoot some guys then travel back, this is the structure of 80% of missions in this game, and by a certain point it gets quite tiring. Luckily the story is engaging enough to keep you going, but something about mindlessly shooting faceless enemies doesn't hold the same weight after 10 hours. The combat itself is fine, it's nothing special but at least it has a working cover system, which is something I can't say about it's sequel. Since this game was only on console, it's heavy aim assist kind of makes the combat play itself sometimes, which kind of took a lot of the impact out of fighting anything. I tried turning off the aim assist just to try it out, but that just made the controls feel more clunky than they already were. This game also committed the biggest primordial sin by using one type of crosshair, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but as a result kind of makes every weapon feel exactly the same. Usually in other video games when you use a shotgun, or assault rifle your crosshair in the middle of the screen will change depending on the type of weapon you're using to show it's shot radius. Instead, this game just uses one for all guns, and it creates this same-y feeling between every weapon you use as a result. Speaking of nitpicks, there's a day and night system in this game that'll unlock or lock certain missions depending on the time of day. Lots of games do this, but usually those games also have an easy way for time to pass. NOT THIS ONE! If you want time to pass quickly, you either have to buy or rent a bed to sleep in or find a camp, neither of these are even guaranteed to pass enough time for the mission to activate either, so you might run all the way to a bed and then run all the way back for nothing. There were several moments in this game where the only spot I could sleep at was a good distance away, so I just decided to put the controller down and wait on my phone for about 15 real minutes for time to pass until the mission opened up. It's one of those things that feels like a huge oversight rather than a purposeful feature, as nothing is fun about doing this. Sometimes if you die during missions in a certain spot, it'll take you out of the mission and spawn you in the last city you visited, which can sometimes be across the map if you didn't pass through any cities on the way to your waypoint. There's plenty of autosaves in certain levels, why isn't that a thing for all of them? The last chapter of this game is is a mixed bag, with some missions that feel like they exist just to pad out the game, but the last couple missions are fantastic. Without getting into spoilers the Three or so missions of this game are a great send off to this series. Playing both of these games back to back felt like binging an entire 6 season TV show, a great one at that too. Red Dead Redemption is a flawed game, but one that's aged more gracefully than it has poorly. Its flaws are carried by its well crafted world, characters, dialogue and music and playing this after the prequel gave me new found respect for both of these games. While I started replaying both of these games originally due to the rumored "remake" of Red Dead Redemption, the possibly of that ever actually happening like I and many others had hoped for is near zero by this point. But honestly, I don't really think it needs a full-blown remake, but it should at least be accessible to every platform. I wish Rockstar and Take-Two wouldn't leech $50 off it's fanbase just to reexperience a half baked version of this game with content removed, all just for a quick buck, but that's modern Rockstar I guess. If you're planning on revisiting this game I beg you not to support Rockstar in this process, do NOT buy the Switch and PS4 port, please find other means of playing this game, whether that be through emulation or just by owning an original copy. I hope GTA 6 brings back the old Rockstar, even though the possibility of that is even slimmer than a Red Dead Redemption remake.