Ever since I purchased it a little over a week ago, Red Dead Redemption’s been pretty much all that’s been in my XBox. When I get a game that I love, I play it to death, and it’s rare that I trade them in. But something has caught my attention about Red Dead Redemption – it’s both the best and worst game that I’ve bought in 2010.
This isn’t a review, but Red Dead is the only game I’ve played this week so I just felt like talking about it (god bless not being paid to do this website; it means we haven’t got strict deadlines to work to, I’d hate for playing a game to become a well-timed chore).
I’m going to explain that best/worst comment below decorated with wonderfully western puns for your amusement:
The Good, The Bad and the Multiplayer…
Unless you open up a private game and invite your friends in to go and clear gang hideouts and go shoot some cougars, at the time of writing I wouldn’t touch multiplayer with a ten foot cattle prod.
There have been numerous, angry comments from fans on the internet who have been booted from public games (and that’s on the odd occasion they are actually able to join one due to ‘connectivity issues with other players’ – a common error message around the world). This is a little more than annoying and until Rockstar fixes it, this error has rendered half my game unusable, which is annoying given the amount of money I shelled out.
A Fistful of Glitches, For a Few Glitches More…
Whilst aesthetic glitches like the infamous ‘donkey lady’ and ‘cougar man’ don’t hamper gameplay and merely make a fun game funny, Red Dead has some more serious glitches that need ironing out. On more than one occasion, I’ve walked over, say, a bucket or a bale of hay only to be rocketed 100 feet in the air and fall to my death. This can be annoying if you’ve not had a chance to save your game after a difficult mission.
Another glitch, if you can call it that (I call it bad game design but there you go), is doorways. You can open a door, but then spend ten minutes face-planting either side of the door frame until you eventually sidle through like there’s an invisible net blocking you from advancing. The same tends to happen when your horse rides between rocks on the road, or obstacles in a town.
Once Upon a Save File in the West…
This brings me nicely onto the lovely modern world of autosaves! Come on Rockstar, get with it! You autosave after every change in honour, ever store purchase, every animal skinned and every stranger mini-encounter (you know, the ‘help, he stole mah horse!’ ones), so why oh why can’t you just take a leaf from the Assassin’s Creed II book and just ‘save as you go’?
Surely the game can cope? Safe houses and campsites would still be useful for changing clothes, sleeping to advance six hours and refilling ammo. The fact that there are so many places to save makes me wonder why autosave isn’t an across the board feature all the more.
Sandbox Drifter…
One of things that I love about this game is the size. It’s ruddy massive; and beautiful to boot. The sweeping, desert lanscapes, the weather effects, the quaint towns and ranches… I’m an out-of-the-closet country girl at heart and those who know me well know that I listen to more country music than I’ve had hot meals and have always had a penchant for the Old West. I just love how dusty and raw it all is.
That being said, I realised I’d clocked up a good 11 hours of gameplay before I realised that I hadn’t even finished the story – in fact I’ve still got West Elizabeth to unlock. I’d been so bound up in rescuing whores from kidnappers, having shoot-outs in gang hideouts, getting stolen horses back and picking flowers for old perverts that I’d totally forgotten somewhere along the line about the story – about what John Marston originally set out to do, and that was catch Bill Williamson.
You remember Bill Williamson? The guy at the beginning who shot– oh never mind, he’ll die of old age if I keep playing Blackjack long enough.
When Rachel's not killing zombies or pratting about on Portal, she can be found sipping fine Hock with her friends, or kicking giant tubs of popcorn over at the cinema. 
