Perfect in many ways, Redemption is a great game with a few development issues
RDR exceeds any of Rockstar's Vice City titles in terms of overall look, performance and playability. This is the best game that Rockstar has ever released, in my opinion. The storyline is great, the characters are great, and the experience of chasing outlaws and living life on the frontier is extremely fun.
As far as open world performance, Rockstar has done a fantastic job. You can't overstate how impressive this game looks (and sounds), from the dry dusty towns of the border country to the majestic sierras, sunsets and sunrises, and the invigorating openness of deserts and plains. Redemption offers it all for fans of the Old West -- every archetype and stereotype of the western genre comes to life. The level of detail - shadows in particular are amazingly impressive, as they track flawlessly with the position of the sun and adjust for cloud conditions - and historical reference is simply awesome. Redemption's visual achievement is one of the great triumphs in video game history, a title that sets a new bar for beautiful, immersive, open world game design.
That being said, it is apparent that Rockstar is still only #2 in terms of integrating open world development and gameplay. Bethesda remains #1. That's because Bethesda offers one-click shift between first person and third person view (a major plus), and keeps its open world interface easier to use and more intuitive in terms of moving and saving and lapsing time. If you want to lapse a few hours, you push a button and it happens. If you want to fast travel anywhere, target the map, push a button and it happens. And by the way, it automatically saves and pinpoints your game load to that exact location. In RDR, you have to go to certain locations or execute a campsite command to make it happen. And when you return from a save, you appear at the closest "nearby location" -- this is peculiar. It's not necessary. KEEP IT SIMPLE. The inability to fast travel by using the game map is really unfortunate and should not have been overlooked. Rockstar wants to be Rockstar and do things their own way, I understand that. But spend a few hours playing Fallout 3 and a few hours playing RDR, and you'll see the difference. It's not huge, it's not a dealbreaker, but it's noticeable.
On that note, there is another area that Rockstar continues to lag. That is the complexity of game controls. Like a website that requires just one too many clicks to get to the info you need, RDR requires just a bit too much manipulation of multiple triggers and buttons to execute certain actions. For example, the duel mode is completely unintuitive and does not offer an outside-the-game tutorial where you can practice it. I can not understand why Rockstar introduces this complex interface, instead of simply using the dead eye control, perhaps with the added benefit of a simple trigger zoom to help time your draw against your opponent, as it appears at any other point of gameplay. When in doubt, KEEP IT SIMPLE. It's a video game. Ease of use and intuitive control are major parts part of the game experience.
In the interest of full disclosure, cumbersome controls are well known in the gaming world -- for example, it's a problem that exists with the outstanding game Assassins Creed 2 (Ubisoft), and it occurs here as well. Again however, it points to the fact that you can not give this game a perfect score, because the development platform does NOT represent the industry's best practices. Bethesda remains the king of integrating simple, intuitive controls with open world environments. Like RDR's duel interface, the VATS system in Fallout 3 also offers a new take on targeted, visceral gunplay, yet it's extremely intuitive and easy to use. Hopefully Rockstar can observe and improve on this for its next titles/platforms.
One other area of concern is "mission control" -- specifically the mission where you rope a wild horse and break it. It took almost an hour of game play and elapsed over 24 hours of in-game time trying to complete this. In the end, I just threw the lasso at random toward the horses, with minimal effort and finally it roped one and I was able to mount the horse and complete the mission. This was after spending a good deal of time and carefully targeting the horses at close range, with zero success after 40 or 50 dead accurate throws. As I found after the fact, you are supposed to hold the L2 button for several seconds to brake the stallion. It does not indicate this in the pop up guide. It cost me a good bit of wasted time on something that should have been clearly communicated. I hope this doesn't occur again as I continue through the main story line.
OVERALL SCORE: 9.5/10
Story/concept - 10/10
Graphics - 10/10
Sound - 10/10
Controls - 8.5/10
Gameplay - 9/10
Shelf life - 9.5/10