Ambience and environment make for a fun FPS "skin"
distinctive, though, even if the gameplay dynamics aren't. Nice models for the opponents, good snippets of combat-dialog & matching animations, and level that's faithful to the Old West aesthetic. Overall, the art direction for this title is excellent.
Beginning to end, there are twenty or so missions strung together, interspersed with cut scenes to tell the story of Red's revenge.
It feels like Rockstar might have originally meant for the game to either be a little less linear, or include greater focus on Red's companions.
After the first half-dozen or so missions, Red arrives in the town of Brimstone. You can walk around brimstone, stop inside a few places (the tailor's, the saloon, etc.), but there's really not much point. There's nothing to do except find the Sherrif's office to launch the next mission. Not a flaw in the game, exactly, but it does feel like something was cut here to make a ship date.
The other area where Red Dead Revolver feels a little threadbare is in its handling of the "supporting cast." There's a great set of character concepts here, including the Jim-Dandy, bowler-wearing English sharpshooter, Red's Native American blood-brother, etc., but they're not fleshed out much. You play one mission as each member of the supporting cast, and that's it. There's nothing really different about those missions, either, so while it might feel like a nice break for a minute, it quickly becomes just
another Red mission... in different clothes.
While the GameSpot reviewer felt that the game mistakenly focuses on these side characters at all, I'd say the problem is just the opposite. It's great for gameplay to mix things up with a change of pace or style, but unfortunately there's not enough for these guys to do to warrant their inclusion.
On the plus side, the inclusion of a few different types of mission objectives does help relieve the monotony. The quick-draw duels are fun, if a bit mysterious (it's not just that they're difficult to master from an execution perspective; the basic mechanics that you should be trying to execute are also pretty murky, requiring a lot of trial-and-error to understand). The occasional stagecoach robbery, artillery assault, or riding shotgun missions break things up just enough to freshen your enthusiasm for the next shootout level.
On a technical note, the bot AI is very disappointing. Path-finding is terrible, and in some levels the bots will get trapped in infinite path loops (climb this rock, jump down, run around and climb it again, etc.). This can be more than a little annoying, especially if the bot is a Boss that can only be killed when _not_ running around. This generally leads to levels being made harder simply by virtue of spawn sizes, as opposed to the inclusion of more skilled enemies.