User Rating: 7.3 | Red Dead Revolver XBOX
More like a rusty six shooter than a colt rifle... The first thing you notice when starting up RDR is the style. It's most definately 60's spagheti western that we're talking about here. The second thing are it's graphics. Based around the same tired old rederware engine used for GTA 3 and 4. So you know the style and if you've played GTA you know how it looks. How does it play? Pretty good actually. Most of the levels are short but sweet. Small mining towns, abandoned farms, runawau trains etc. But they give you just enough space to make the primary focus of the game, the gunbattles, fun and exciting. The control scheme used for this is slick without being too easy. You actually have to draw your gun with one trigger while you fire with the other. Special moves like Dead-Eye (a kind of slo-mo sharp shooting mode) keep the game interesting. One thing I did find strange was the difficulty curve of the game. For example one of the earlier bosses is pretty tough until you figure out that he can't actually see you when you hide somewhere. Strangely all other enemies in the game can smell you from 2 miles away. Even then this boss takes about 30 mins of well timed shots and sneaking around to kill. The difficulty goes up and down but almost all of the levels aren't that hard once you work out where everyone is or what a certain bosses weaknesses are. All in all, not a bad game and perhaps the best western game this year...but that's not saying much.
