The Good
- it's very similar to GTA, in map and progression design. And I love it. The sandbox is one of the best for its time, especially when combined with its strong narrative and characters.
- I appreciate the "skip to destination" option. But the dialogue is usually interesting enough that u stay for at least a bit of the ride. Skipping to your waypoint was extremely convenient.
- being able to fast travel from anywhere in the wild is very convenient, unlike in Red dead 2
- steering the horse is really easy. The control is reactive and fluent. Matching speed with your comrade is really useful.
- The narrative is much darker than Red dead 2. There's more about rape, murder, and deception. Despite the time period being a bit later, it seems things are more wild.
- I like how your horse will go faster if you keep it on the trail, instead of the grass. This was a good reward for steering the horse on track, and gave me something to do if I couldn't fast travel.
- I like John Marston as a character. He's Sharp and critical of others for the right reasons. He's a good judge of character, and he's good at verbally destroying another character through a mix of sarcasm and seriousness.
- marking targets with deadeye isn't automatic unlike Red dead 2, which I think is a good thing because it makes it more challenging and technically more demanding.
- five finger fillet is pretty fun.
- it's interesting seeing the corruption in the early Mexican government.
- is it actually possible to unlock I turning lock on a safe without some special hearing equipment?
- this game has villains that make me want to kill them because they are so evil. Like Allende. Compared to Red dead 2 where the villains that you are fighting icons or actually just trying to follow the law, while you are against it. As of person who is living in a civilized society AKA the year 2020, it's hard to relate to the van der Linde gang point of view.
The Bad
- I want to be able to free aim, but trying to free aim while riding a horse in trying to shoot enemies while they're on the horse it's very very difficult. Which means sometimes I need to rely on aim assist, which just feels like cheating. Dead eye runs out too quickly.
- the textbox tutorials disappear too quickly. I find myself trying to perform the task while reading it, but most of the time halfway through reading it, it disappears. Though u can go to the journal brief to check what was said, but this breaks the pace of the gameplay. This affects tutorials as well. Like during the duel tutorial, I'm trying to read the text, look at the opponents, and look at the red and blue bars, and they are in separate parts of the screen, and it happens all at the same time. So where am I supposed to look? I'm trying to read the text, I'm scared the dude's going to shoot me. And the tutorial only happens once, so if you miss it, then tough luck. Or you can go back to your logs to read through it, but that obviously isn't going to be the same.
- it's weird how in some missions, everything related to a mission just disappears The moment the mission is finished. Your comrade disappears. This is a recurring thing in the GTA series, and I never liked it. Even if they showed your comrade riding off and disappearing in the distance would have been better then them just vanishing. It's as if the mission was nothing but a dream.
- some of the reasons for dying is kind of ridiculous. There is one parts where I rode my horse into I guess water that was a bit too deep and died. Curious thing is that I walked in really slowly, then the screen just turned black immediately with the word dead. Instead I think the game should just pop you off the horse. It would make more sense. Nico in GTA IV didn't just die when riding a motorcycle into a lake. And the game is older than Red dead, so why?
- it's annoying how if you accidentally run over a townsfolk you fail your mission. Sometimes they're just in the way, and steering the horse isn't the most precise thing in the world.
- objects render slowly on PS3. It kills the immersion sometimes
- there was a time where I wanted to buy snake oil, but the shopkeeper literally just walked out of the shop and started walking around like a regular pedestrian. I don't know if this was an intended programming as part of the AI, but it was quite annoying cause I couldn't end up buying what I needed as the shop keeper never went back to his shop.
- I feel like they could have changed up the premise and the reason that John Marston helps so many people. It just seems like the reason he's doing all these missions it's always to try and get some information. I just find it a little unrealistic that anyone what do this many favours, and get betrayed, Survivor and still continue doing favours. Especially John. a normal person would have snapped long ago, and threatened violence if the information still wasn't given after like 10 favours.
- I don't know if it's just the lighting bye often times people are so blended into the background that they become really hard to see especially when fighting against the soldiers in Mexico.
- shotgun is weak. How on Earth can the person still get up when I shoot them with a shotgun point blank in the chest close range. Makes no sense
- the AI is kind of stupid sometimes. On the mission where are we infiltrate Allende, I took out the automatic machine gunner, then one of his comrades would run to the gun can I just line my headshot right there to kill him. It was like a conveyor belt in a slaughterhouse, the day I had no presence of mind that I would just wait for them to get for a gun and head shot him.
- there's like a one second lag after shooting from cover. This can be costly sometimes during heated gunfights. It's definitely a glitch.
- I wish the fast travel which show the locations on the map. It's hard to remember all the names, so scrolling through the text does it help sometimes. Meaning I have to open the map, check the name, then go back to fast travel. Which is a lot of unnecessary menuing.
- one part of the game where I was shooting from the roof with the agent, I think one of dutches men managed to escape, but the mission didn't fail, causing there to be a soft lock, since I couldn't leave the roof and Chase the escapee.
- I don't understand the point of buying a property, when you can do everything on a campsite plus fast travel. And you can set up a campsite anywhere outside, which is more convenient. And there's unlimited use.
- the music and blackwater is like something out of a horror game.
- there are hit detection problems sometimes especially with the scoped rifle
- having to wait for daytime for so many missions is a little inconvenience. Yes, you can sleep and fast forward the day, but it's not always very convenient to find a bed.
- not being able to swim is kind of lame, especially when previous GTA games allowed you to swim. It just seems like a feature they took out intentionally for no good reason
- I am surprised at the lack of scenes and dialogues that Dutch got, considering he is the main antagonist in the game, to both the law enforcement, and our protagonist, John Marston. Though the handful of cutscenes and dialogues that he got we're good, I felt it wasn't enough. There are less important characters that got more screen time and dialogue then he did, which doesn't make sense to me.
- the ending is so anti-climatic. Everyone just dies, but there is no build up to it. Their home just gets raided with no cutscene or dialogues on the agents side 2 give us a reason why he came back to get John Marston. It feels like they just rushed the ending to reach release deadline. Then afterwards there's a small bonus mission where is Jack Marston takes out agent Ross, there's just a few one liners with no depth on their state of mind and emotions. Again, there is zero build up, no backstory on how Jack and Abigail handle themselves after John died. The narrative was very good until the last two missions. It's like they summarized maybe a few hours worth of gameplay that would have wrapped everything very nicely, into a 10-minute rush to the credits. It's absolutely disappointing, and just nose-dived my experience out of nowhere. It's also extra lame that you can disarm agent Ross in The final duel, while almost every other do all you can. it was a perfect opportunity for them to include an alternate ending by sparing Ross, but they missed out on it. It's like the devs just got lazy.
- and the mission where John Marston faces like 20 law men, agent Ross is right in the middle, but even if you Target and unload all your bullets into him during deadeye, he'll still smoke a cigar in the next cut scene. I understand that the plot has to move on, but they could have added a small animation where Ross grabs another agent and uses him as a bullet sponge. It would have strengthened him as and an antagonist, poured more gasoline on the fuel of hate that Jack has for him, and would have urge me to complete the final mission even more. It's just another missed opportunity to build on the narrative.
- usually games start off slow, and maybe a bit boring, but gradually builds up and usually ends with a bang and the epic boss fight. Red dead Redemption is the complete opposite. It starts off exciting and remains exciting all the way until Dutch dies. Then it gets boring while you just tend to your farm. All the way to a face-plant in cement, immediately followed by credits. On a graph a normal game will have the line start off low, and rice to a high point, by the end. Red dead starts high, then drops below into the negatives by the end. Red dead 2 also had a boring segments, but things picked back up again, when they found Micah, then the game ended with the bang.
----------------
Play time: