Red Dead Redemption: A Review

Last week Rockstar Games and Take 2 released their latest video game titled, Red Dead Redemption. It is a wild west themed video game. As one of my good friends said, "Red Dead Redemption is Grand Theft Auto IV meets The Oregon Trail." I could not agree more. I spent part of last weekend playing this game and love it. The best part about the game though is not the story although, main story is pretty cool and you meet some pretty interesting characters and strangers as you progress through the game. The best part is the multi-player over Xbox Live or the Play Station Network if you have a PS3.

Sunday night, I decided to play Red Dead Redemption and mess around in the multi-player mode. Once I was in the free roam world of the game. I started hunting wild animals. Some other things you can do is heard cattle, hunt and bring outlaws to justice, do some horse wrangling or be part of a Mexican Standoff. There are so many options in multiplayer mode and I have only listed a few.

Anyway back to my story. I had not been hunting five minutes when bullets start whizzing all around. I turned my character around to face the direction of the incoming fire and saw a posse of seven cowboys, galloping at me full speed and trying to kill me. They did and continued to keep hunting me down and kill me for the next two hours.

I never seemed able to outrun this posse. Finally I managed to escape with only one of the posse members right behind. He chased me across the map and once we reached the other end of the map, I found a ravine which had a campsite at the bottom. I ran to the bottom and the single posse member followed me down. As he was searching for me, I made my way back up to the top, got a good angle on him and start shooting at him.

I had this guy pinned and he was not going anywhere. After five minutes of taking cover from my rifle fire, he calls on the other six of his posse members to ride as fast as they could to where he and I were and help him. He then proceeded to whistle for his horse.

I was set on not letting this guy escape so I shot and killed his horse. He whistled for about seven or eight more horses and all met their end with bullets from my rifle. By this time another five or ten minutes had passed and I saw on the map that the rest of his posse was almost caught up.

I shot at the single posse member a few more times and then mounted my horse and rode to the nearest stagecoach and had it take me to the nearest town.

Upon arriving in the new town a torrential rain and lightening storm blew in. I found myself horseless and walking down the middle of a deserted street lit by only a few street lamps.

Suddenly the posse of seven turns the corner and they start trotting towards me slowly and then they come to a stop. We face each other and it looks like the calm before the storm before an epic western shootout goes down like in the movies.

The posse member I had pinned and hiding rides to the lead position and tells his posse to "Stay here, I'll handle this."

So there we were me standing in the middle the road, rain and lightening everywhere and seven mounted cowboys all with their guns aimed at me.

The single posse member starts galloping towards me at full speed and looked like he was just going to trample me to death with his horse...I was not about to let that happen.

I drew my six shooter and put six rounds into his horses chest killing it instantly. The horse buckled throwing it's rider face first onto the ground, stunning him. I used this to my advantage. As he tried to stand up I shot him five times and he did not go down. He drew his weapon but I was faster. Seeing that my revolver had only shot left, I drew my double barrel shotgun and plugged him with both rounds which not only sent him flying back towards his posse who were idly watching but also killed him. His posse members began to freak out. "What! How did he kill you?" The single posse member then says to me "Good job." I then whistled for my horse and rode away before they decided to resume the hunt.

Events like this are what make playing this game fun. If you are thinking about buying this game. Think no more and go buy it. It is well worth every cent spent!

If you would like to see a reenactment of this epic showdown. Let me know and I will get some of my Xbox Live friends to assist me in this reenactment.