Red Dead Redemption

So I have been putting some time into Red Dead Redemption recently. I picked up the game on a 5 day rental and have probably put about 30 hrs in thus far. I can say that a lot about the game impresses me but overall there are some significant errors that made it in that kind of hinder the game-play.

I started the game playing the single player mode and for awhile I was getting into the game and having a lot of fun. I was running missions here and there but overall I was riding around hunting trying to get all the in game challenges complete. This was all find and dandy until I decided to move the story along and play some missions. The mission structure in this game comes off as broken. A lot of it plays off as a ride to cut scene mission. You go to your mission start point and ride to another cut scene which explains the mission. It would make more sense to take me where I need to go and not waste a load of time having idle chit chat while I ride to my missions. To top all that off I had a lot of problems learning how to do what should have been easy items to take care of. The horse breaking was a large amount of trouble for me. I don't know if I just don't get horses but the explanation for how to do it never really helped me accomplish the goal.

Everyone knows about the random programming glitches so I won't waste time on talking about them as all you have to do is go here-> youtube to find some of those videos.

I have spent the most time in the game playing the online multiplayer. I have had the most fun with these modes and could see getting the game based on this alone. I haven't played with the free roam or the posse options as I don't use my headset and this seems like it would almost require it. I have however played the gang matches and the free-for-all matches and found them to be very satisfying. The levels are all your standard gameplay types such as Gold Rush which plays like a standard capture-the-flag match, and Shoot Out which is your standard deathmatch or team deathmatch. These were the match types I played most of the time.

As you put more time into the game you earn XP which is used solely in the multiplayer mode to unlock weapons, titles, mounts, characters, challenges, etc. This may be the main reason that the multiplayer comes off as more fun than the single player. I was grinding about 15 levels a day just to unlock more items and it's this feature that I believe will keep the audience coming back. I did have some issues with connections and at certain times it became a pain. I have been dropped from matches with only 15 seconds to go in the match and I was winning to boot.

The main problem with this game is it runs on an engine that is glitchy to begin with. Instead of fine tuning the engine they just re-skinned it and packaged it. Red Dead Redemption had a lot of potential but I feel it squandered it and they just pushed the game through as fast as they could. The game isn't broken but at times it does feel like it isn't too far off.

7.6 out of 10