Ah, the Western.
Thanks to a mid-2000s gunslinger renaissance, everything's comin' up cowboy on the silver
screen, but where video games are concerned?
They remain the runt, suckin' hind tit on a great big, sweaty hog that is the video
game industry.
And fuck, between Custer's Revenge and Call of Juarez: The Cartel, I don't blame a fucking
soul for not wanting to put all their eggs in the pistolero basket.
Hell, even when they managed to get western games right, it didn't happen over night.
2005's underrated classic 'Gun' managed to get the gunplay, open-world and storytelling
down, but fucked the dog on atmosphere and customization.
"Pardon my French."
"Oh, I speak French."
2007's Call of Juarez nailed the atmosphere and open-world, but couldn't be more linear
without a vanity mirror and one of Amanda Bynes' nostrils pressed against it, Ditto
for Dead Man's Hand, and that goes double for Red Dead Revolver.
But Red Dead Redemption?
Now we're fuckin' talkin'.
Three years removed from its 2010 release, and Red Dead Redemption remains one of the
most gorgeous games I've ever played.
Desert landscapes teeming with arid flora and fauna, verdant forests standing becalmed
at the feet of regal, snow-crowned peaks.
I've said it before, but I'll reiterate the cliché: Graphics aren't even mostly everything,
but when applied in service to atmosphere, they turn an inanimate, digital playground
into a living world.
And while the character models haven't fared a third as well as the vistas, the more realistic
art design has aged considerably better than, for example, GTA4.
Wherein skin the shade and consistency of bubblegum and bulbous dwarf noses the size
of October cabbages evidently constitutes 'photo-realism'.
The gunplay - while perhaps a hair too easy - is nevertheless perfectly intuitive and
fun, and makes for a control scheme that's tighter than Jamie Pressly's ass.
The only real problem is that carrying over the GTA4 duck-and-cover approach to gunfights
doesn't translate nearly as well in a western genre where, frankly, players just want to
walk out in the open and murder everyone where they stand.
Is not the primary appeal of the entire gunfighter genre not to feel like a high-octane, tobacco-chomping,
bandolier-bedecked, duster-draped, grizzly-punchin' badass?
Does not the concept of cowering behind a wooden box for fear of having your entire
head taken off by a purse gun run incrementally contrary to this concept?
And don't you fucking dare explain it away with the standby 'realism' argument.
When I'm blowin' zombies the fuck away on the prairie, dodgin' jackalopes and leaping
from moving locomotives for half the fuckin' game, the last word I want uttered is fucking
realism.
That said, Red Dead Redemption stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, as one
of exactly two existing western games that manages to include high-noon pistol duels
without shitting every bed in 6, adjacent city blocks, in the process.
And with their reliance on design hallmarks like timing, atmosphere, tension and perhaps
most offensively of all, skill, the reason why it's a plunge most modern studios refuse
to take isn't exactly an Agathe Christie novel in the making.
The vast majority of modern developers think 'atmosphere' is what happens when you desaturate
the screen, smother it in lens flare, and the sound designer devotes 21 separate audio
tracks to what sounds like a belt sander deflowering a pitch-shifter... which, according to the
game box, is something named 'Skrillex'.
When I envision the circumstance under which Skrillex could provide the soundtrack for
one man blowing another man to kingdom come... let's just say neither of them has a gun.
"What a type you must consort with, that you not fear beating for such an insult."
Where the controls are concerned, the only substantive black mark materializes when our
pal, John Marston, occasionally decides that taking cover, scaling a wall or mounting a
horse is considerably less entertaining than falling on his fucking face.
Thanks a million, Euphoria!
I've lamented Rock Star's dogged insistence on shoehorning their beloved Euphoria Physics
Engine into every conceivable release, no matter how inappropriate, but as back-bendingly
batshit as Euphoria was when it was launching Greyhound buses into low-level orbit back
in GTA4... it's twice as invasively ludicrous in Red Dead Redemption.
Flying cows, bipedal coyotes, bandits with horse animations... the consequences of once
again banking on a half-cocked tech demo masquerading as a retail-ready game engine are as palpable
today as they were at launch.
Red Dead Redemption's glitches are practically their own YouTube genre, at this point!
I'm begging you motherfuckers.
Don't make the Dysphoria mistake a threepeat with GTA5, Rock Star!
Devote a few cents of your untold, mountainous billions in raw profit... to the purchase
of a fuckin' clue.
"How's THAT a fuckin' recommendation?!"
The story is masterfully told and narrow enough in scope that it never ventures too far into
full-blown historical epic cheese.
From the opening crawl to the close of the supremely-satisfying epilogue, it remains
a deeply personal tale of vengeance, forgiveness, redemption and the price tendered for all
of the above, albeit with chapters that are bookended with immensely out-of-place licensed
music.
The soundtrack's received metric shitloads of praise, so it sure as shit doesn't need
mine.
And with obnoxious granola-chomping guitar folk wailing over the your first Mexican sunset...
I like to believe I'm in the fuckin' right on this one.
If they'd stuck to the Ennio Morricone worship and shut the fuck up with MTV Unplugged, I'd
be right on board.
Either way, the only proper soundtrack for Red Dead Redemption remains available solely
through the Xbox 360's custom soundtrack feature, and it's name... is Motörhead's 'Ace of Spades'
album.
"No... that's not true... that's IMPOSSIBLE!"
"Search your feelings, you KNOW it to be TRUE!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
Upon repeated playthroughs, subtle flourishes in even the most innocuous sidequest bring
Red Dead's masterful story into even sharper focus.
Not that it couldn't stand to cut a little flab.
The entire Mexico sequence takes up over half of the game, for one fuckin' thing, with the
far more interesting sequences in Rio Bravo and Tall Trees acting as glorified bookends.
Then again, all I have to do to feel like I'm in Mexico is drive 15 minutes into South
Phoenix, so I won't rule out locale fatigue.
The downside?
What the story builds to is considerably less enthralling than the sum of its parts.
Yeah, I know, 'Leave it to RazörFist to find a black cloud for every silver lining', but
fuck you, I don't like this ending.
SPOILER ALERT for the 3 1/2 people who have yet to imbibe in Red Dead Redemption three
years after its fuckin' release!
Color me cynical, but I find it a smidge incredulous that the same man who shanked a rampaging
grizzly with a bowie knife like a narc in a prison shower - when faced with a military
firing squad that's already proven itself incapable of hitting the broadest side of
the broadest barn - gets dropped like a side of beef in front of one.
The ending is preachy, it's gimmicky, and perhaps most offensively, it flouts the same
looney tunes logic that the preceding 20+ hours were fuckin' predicated on!
Now, where have I heard that before?!
"You...
motherless fucking whores."
"...FUCK you!"
"Fuck ME!?!"
Now, now.
It's not as bad as all that, but the absence of a negative is not evidence of a positive.
Just don't tell that to IGN's review staff.
I find nothing quite so frustrating as a narrative comprised of one protracted flash of brilliance
after the other, that inexplicably makes like bad fellatio, and falls the fuck apart at
the conclusion.
How fortunate for Red Dead Redemption, then, that the preceding 20 hours or so of narrative
ascent is so profoundly satisfying.
There are some really good western titles on the market.
But none as fucking fantastic as this.
The perfect hybrid of sandbox, shooter, RPG and adventure make this, hands-down, the finest
product ever produced by the foundry of 'fuck-yeah' that is Rock Star.
I'm shruggin' fairly hard at GTA5, these days.
But wherever the fuck Red Dead Redemption came from...
I'll take another five, please.
I'm RazörFist.
God - fuckin' - SPEED!