Red Dead Redemption

[Octavious]

I think I was only at 89% when I finished the main story. Took me almost exactly 25 hours and I kind of powered through the second half so it could have taken much longer. Well worth the 60 bucks! Can't wait to see what DLC they provide for this as I can think of a ton of cool things they could do. (A whole storyline of the grownup son, The early life of the main character, The Sheriff could have his own storyline etc...)

[LawBeefaroni]

Can't wait to see what DLC they provide for this as I can think of a ton of cool things they could do.

There is a lot of detail that isn't used. I spend 20 minutes admiring the railroad camp and I think I only had to go there once during the normal course of the game.

[YellowKing]

I plan on knocking out Alan Wake over the next week or so then going back to try for 100% completion in RDR.

[Octavious]

Forgot to mention the thing that impressed me most in the game. The wildlife.. Holy crap when a bear comes at you it's f'n terrifying. I don't recall any other game getting it so perfect.

[YellowKing]

Spoiler:

I just blew Edgar Ross's face off. Six shots right in his piehole. I had no remorse. He kilt my pa, and he was an asshole.

While I didn't harm his family, I did stumble upon a hilarious message board thread in which people were describing the ways they tortured the Ross family, from tying up his wife and dragging her through a fire to blowing his brother up with dynamite in front of him.

[Kyosho]

Spoiler:

I just blew Edgar Ross's face off. Six shots right in his piehole. I had no remorse. He kilt my pa, and he was an asshole.

While I didn't harm his family, I did stumble upon a hilarious message board thread in which people were describing the ways they tortured the Ross family, from tying up his wife and dragging her through a fire to blowing his brother up with dynamite in front of him.

Hah!

Spoiler:

After I killed him, (and after the credits), I kept shooting his body to push it further and further out into the water. Kept at it until I was just guessing at where I was shooting because he was so far out. Figured he deserved no less than to be washed away. I then noticed his hat laying on the ground. Made me really wish this game had object interaction similar to Fallout 3. I settled with shooting it into the water as well, and watched it float slowly downstream.

[Doomboy]

I rolled around in circles swinging away like crazy with the knife. Had to use a few medicines. Fortunately it saves right after because some boars apparently didn't like what I gone and done and they killt me after the skinning animation.

Or you can "cheat"

Spoiler:

I was proudly telling a friend about my acomplisment and he said he just shot a bear a bunch of times with a pistol and then finished it with the knife.

I tried that "cheat". The damn bear ran away and found his big brother. They had fun with their new chew toy.

Edit: As I think back on it, it was rather amusing. Me chasing this huge grizzly bear through the woods swinging a knife at it. Occasionally it would look over it's shoulder to see if the crazy bad man was still chasing him. We almost ran off a cliff at one point, I think. It sorta felt like that scene in Star Wars where Han is chasing the squad of stormtroopers through the halls of the deathstar.

[Smoove_B]

I mentioned it earlier but this game has taught me that there is a definitely a bear Ninja clan and that all bears hunt in packs of three. I am pretty sure 80% of my deaths in-game were due to a bear attack.

I do keep seeing that the music (start of Mexico, reunion) is wonky which is too bad. I had all the music play for me and I think it added a lot to the overall experience.

I was also seeing that R* has acknowledged some problems with MP so I'm hopeful that they're going to tweak and patch it to the point where maybe I can play without having to somehow magically configure my router.

[Terrified]

Spoiler:

I just blew Edgar Ross's face off. Six shots right in his piehole. I had no remorse. He kilt my pa, and he was an asshole.

While I didn't harm his family, I did stumble upon a hilarious message board thread in which people were describing the ways they tortured the Ross family, from tying up his wife and dragging her through a fire to blowing his brother up with dynamite in front of him.

I did it a bit differently...

Spoiler:

Once I spoke to his wife, I thanked her graciously, then pulled out my sawed off shotgun and double-tapped her point-blank. And after talking to his brother, I drew my pistol and put a bullet through his eye socket. I thought there might be an opportunity to mention that to Ross before I killed him. I would've enjoyed that.

[LawBeefaroni]

I mentioned it earlier but this game has taught me that there is a definitely a bear Ninja clan and that all bears hunt in packs of three. I am pretty sure 80% of my deaths in-game were due to a bear attack.

I do keep seeing that the music (start of Mexico, reunion) is wonky which is too bad. I had all the music play for me and I think it added a lot to the overall experience.

I was also seeing that R* has acknowledged some problems with MP so I'm hopeful that they're going to tweak and patch it to the point where maybe I can play without having to somehow magically configure my router.

Patch today fixed the Mo Van Barr bug for certain pre-order swag and lowered the experience rate for hideouts in multiplayer. Not sure that it did anything else.

[Jeremy]

I'm playing through a second time after finishing the game around 96% complete. The first time through, I didn't make use of Dead Eye much until Level 3, so this time around it's quite a bit easier. I also must have missed the part of the tutorial on how to stop your galloping horse. (And god forbid I RTFM.)

I love the game and can only hope they add some single player depth to any additional content.

The downside is that I was only a quarter of the way through GTA IV when I got RDR and it's tough to go back. Weapons selection and targetting are so much better in RDR, not to mention movement and taking cover. I also hate how I've got to replay all of the travel to get to a failed mission in GTA whereas in RDR you pick up pretty much where you left off. It does give me hope for future GTA titles.

As for the ending:

Spoiler:

The only thing that bothered me about the ending was not getting to play out the standoff at the barn. (Other than taking out a handful of them via Dead Eye.) I could have totally wiped out all those guys!

[Doomboy]

Endgame:

Spoiler:

Well, I guess having seen his dad massacred for no good reason made Jack a very bad man in my game. I too killed all of the Ross family. I even shot the guy who told me how great Ross was and where to find him. I wish I had thought of hogtying the wife and doing something bad with her. Like getting the dastardly achievement. By the end of the game, I had the highest bounty I have ever had in RDR.

I too thought he had been killed at Fort Mercer in the beginning. I think that would have been an interesting twist.

As for the ranch stuff at the end, I sorta kinda think it was originally supposed to happen in the middle of the game somewhere, like maybe they let his family go after he kills Williamson, and that is why they keep mentioning how Marston keeps leaving and not telling anyone where he is going. Because that didn't happen while I was playing it. I did a lot of ranch missions and didn't go off somewhere for weeks or months at a time.

For some reason, even after the game has ended, I can't buy the rebel scrap in Mexico. I also can't do that damned knife game. So I guess I will never get 100%.

[Moggy123]

I got this for the xbox today. I had a hard time deciding between that version and the ps3 one but the higher resolution made my choice.

I'd enjoy the game but I have a brutal sound bug. The sound stutters in and out. Turning the music down helped a little, but it's still unbearably bad. Installing the the HD didn't help. Neither did turning down the resolution down to 720p

Anybody else experience this? Is it solvable?

[Moggy123]

I got this for the xbox today. I had a hard time deciding between that version and the ps3 one but the higher resolution made my choice.

I'd enjoy the game but I have a brutal sound bug. The sound stutters in and out. Turning the music down helped a little, but it's still unbearably bad. Installing the the HD didn't help. Neither did turning down the resolution down to 720p

Anybody else experience this? Is it solvable?

SOLVED!

It was an amplifier issue. For what ever reason, my amplifier was switching back and forth between analog and digital. Changing from Auto Detect fixed the problem.

[JayDeath]

I finally finished last night with 69% completed. Yeah, I kinda just stuck to the main story missions. I was kinda dissappionted with the ending.

Spoiler:

I didn't lke that Marston was double crossed and killed. And what now, I play the game as Jack? Do ppl refer to him as Marston? Does anyone know that Jack is Marston's kid? Are there credits? And what's this about killing Ross? Am I supposed to do that now?

Really great game. My 360 GotY!

[LawBeefaroni]

I finally finished last night with 69% completed. Yeah, I kinda just stuck to the main story missions. I was kinda dissappionted with the ending.

Spoiler:

I didn't lke that Marston was double crossed and killed. And what now, I play the game as Jack? Do ppl refer to him as Marston? Does anyone know that Jack is Marston's kid? Are there credits? And what's this about killing Ross? Am I supposed to do that now?

Really great game. My 360 GotY!

Spoiler:

Yes, you can and should continue to play as Jack. People know who he is, or see the family resemblence figure it out. It's handled really well. I'd finish Stranger missions.

There are credits when you finish one of the missions.

Can't embed spoilers in spoilers so the mission is:

Spoiler:

The Ross mission that Jack gets in blackwater. It's called Remember My Family.

Be sure to read the newspapers too. They way they develop with the story is fun.

[JayDeath]

Thanks for info LB!

Spoiler:

I gotta get to Blackwater. I want redemption!

[Smoove_B]

Jose Gonzalez stopped by Rockstar NYC and played an acoustic version of Far Away on their roof.

At this point it's still GOTY for me.

[Octavious]

Ya the only bummer for me is that all the upcoming dlc isn't new story like they did for GTA4. I figured they would release a dlc where you could play the sheriff or something like that. Maybe they still will :fingers crossed:

[Erithtotl]

So I finished this a little while back, and after all the hype, I was a little disappointed.

Don't get me wrong, its a good game, good enough that I finished the main story which I don't always do, but I think it had many flaws that have been largely overlooked by reviews.

My main beef is that there is such a big disconnect between the plot cut-scenes and the game itself. Basically you are watching a movie for half the game. It's a pretty good one, but you have no choice or effect on what is going on, in contrast to a game like Mass Effect 2. I feel like I spent half my time riding from point A to point B having a conversation with the NPCs, only, I didn't get to choose what I say.

Then, you are dropped into a long action sequence, after which its more riding and talking, or standing and talking.

And it's clear that the 'movie script' people and the 'game developer' people have a bit of a disconnect.

Spoiler:

In the final sequence where you are gunned down by the feds, did anyone else find this scene a little disconnected from the rest of the game? don't get me wrong, I anticipated a dark ending like this. But in order to get to that scene, I essentially killed 50 feds single handedly, and I still had plenty of health and red-eye refills. But now suddenly I'm incapable of fighting 15 or 20 of them?

I understand the writers wanted to have this end like a classic, 60s western, but then the gameplay should have been a little less Castle Wolfenstein leading up to it. As it was it robbed the ending of a lot of the emotional impact for me.

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A second issue is the repeditiveness of the side-missions and 'open world' after the first 10 hours or so of gameplay. Especially by the time you get to the final map area, there is really nothing new. The same shops, the same gambling games, etc..

I am not motivated by 'collecting' or getting '%100' in my games, so perhaps this just wasn't for me.

But honestly I found the gameplay stayed a lot more 'fresh' in Assassin's Creed 2 than in RDR, which by the end, despite the great story, I was ready to finish and move on. AC2's side quests often had more impact on the game than what RDRs did (like hunting for the tombs). And I LOVE westerns, especially the type RDR bases itself on, but I still felt that AC2 was better as an open world game, and so was GTA 4, but GTA 4 suffers from the lack of checkpointing (a blessed addition for RDR). AC2's storytelling wasn't as good as RDR, but it also wasn't as intrusive, I didn't feel like I was watching a movie between action scenes. And both it and GTA4 had activies that felt more meaningful or fun as part of the 'open world' mechanic.
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The collecting brings me to the general pointlessness of all the side activites. Don't get me wrong, most of the 'stranger' quests are pretty good. But the other things, like WTF am I gathering flowers and shooting beavers? Not only is it silly and again, disconnected from the revisionist western feel of the game, but its boring.

And the gambling? Its not bad but its not as good as an actual gambling game, and if you are semi-competent you can basically win at will at poker and the dice game. But since money is meaningless, doesn't really matter. I finished the game with more money than I knew what to do with.

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Another thing I missed: Music. Yeah there are the two reasonably nice tunes including Jose Gonazelez's at the end. And the incidental music if fine. But its too brief. The Sergio Leone movies that RDR is such a homage too are practically defined by their Ennio Morricone scores. I would have liked to have had some of that in the game.

So in the end, I enjoyed the game, I thought the story was well written, the setting was excellent and the action mechanics were well done, and the voice acting was top notch without stunt-casting. But I think Rockstar needs to be pushed for better integration of their story into the gameplay. More roleplaying and less 'interactive movie'. And I don't mean roleplaying like D&D stats-focused style, but rather, I'd like to be playing a role, and to have a part in telling my own story. In RDR I am playing a story that someone else has already written.

[Kyosho]

In the final sequence...

Just in case... Did you see credits? If you didn't, the game's not over.

As far as the side stuff, well, I rarely do that stuff in these sorts of games. And the issues you had with their storytelling methods didn't bother me either. Then again, some of my favorite games are pure adventures, which are probably as linear as you can get.

[Erithtotl]

In the final sequence...

Just in case... Did you see credits? If you didn't, the game's not over.

As far as the side stuff, well, I rarely do that stuff in these sorts of games. And the issues you had with their storytelling methods didn't bother me either. Then again, some of my favorite games are pure adventures, which are probably as linear as you can get.

Yeah, I know, but once the plot is over what is there left to do? Collect flowers....

[LawBeefaroni]

In the final sequence...

Just in case... Did you see credits? If you didn't, the game's not over.

As far as the side stuff, well, I rarely do that stuff in these sorts of games. And the issues you had with their storytelling methods didn't bother me either. Then again, some of my favorite games are pure adventures, which are probably as linear as you can get.

Yeah, I know, but once the plot is over what is there left to do? Collect flowers....

I think Kyosho is trying to say that there is a quest that rolls the credits. That is the "final sequence."

[Kyosho]

What he said. You have something left to do. Do you not? Think about it.

[LawBeefaroni]

Ok, hearing that Undead Nightmare is better than RDR vanilla.



May have to stay in tonight.





I mean there...are...Sasquatches!

[Carpet_pissr]

I couldn't find a demo for this...is there one?

Also, any deals? I'm 98% PC gamer, and I just DO NOT pay $50 for a game, no matter how good it is.

[LawBeefaroni]

Well, I'm about 30% through Undead Nightmare. Worth the $10, easily.



I'd call it a "total conversion." At the single player menu screen you have the choice of regular RDR or Undead Nightmare. When you select Undead Nightmare you start a new game. Timeline-wise, it's sometime after Marston's homecoming.

Very survival horror and I'm dying a lot more than I did during the regular game (although that could be also going into UN after months off and not really remembering the controls). Undead bears are a bitch.

You get new sharpshooter, treasure hunter, and hunting challenges, as well as 2 outfits. You don't keep your challenge bonuses from regular RDR.

[Apollo]

I'm not "online" with my X-box, so my only choice was to buy the disc from Wal-Mart. But $29.95?! I understood that it would cost more than $10 since I'm buying a physical copy, but three times as much? Guess I'll be waiting a while to play the Undead add-on.

BTW, RDR won a slew of awards from Gamespot in their "Best Games of 2010" story. More than any other game!

[Smoove_B]

That does seem a bit pricey considering they dropped the cost of the base game to ~$35. I remember seeing Undead Nightmare on sale for around $19 around the time it was released. I'm guessing some type of gold version will come out this summer for around $40 and I'll get it then.

Absolutely my GotY for 2010.

[Kyosho]

Absolutely my GotY for 2010.

Ditto. If they do end up releasing a version with both I will pick it up. I only rented the main game from Gamefly when I played it. Haven't gotten around to Undead Nightmare.

[Blackhawk]

And...

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare Coming to PC October 29

That's a short-notice announcement, but I never did get around to finishing it on the XB360. Hopefully they don't GTA San Andreas it.

Also, no mention of platforms. Hopefully they put it on Steam and not just on Rockstar's launcher.

[Rumpy]

That's a holy-shit moment if I ever saw one. Then again, good things come to those who wait.

As for platforms, the announcement says this:

Check out the new trailer above and stay tuned for more details, including information later this week on how to pre-purchase Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare at the Rockstar Store, Steam, or the Epic Games Store.

[Max Peck]

Now listed on Steam (and elsewhere, presumably).

[jztemple2]

Now listed on Steam (and elsewhere, presumably).

It's a bit pricey.

[Blackhawk]

I was going to be waiting for reviews anyway (after the GTA trilogy debacle), but at that price point I'll either wait for a sale, or wait until I'm ready to actually sit down and play it (whichever comes first.)

[Max Peck]

For me, it also doesn't help that this is releasing just 2 days before Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I'm not inclined to pick it up for full price at release and then immediately relegate it to the backlog.

[Daehawk]

Im not buying into it for sure.

[Grifman]

I'm excited but I'll probably wait for a sale - maybe.

But which should I play first, RDR or RDR2? Should I play them in order of release or in order of the time line?

I'm thinking I should play RDR first, mainly because after playing RDR2, RDR would probably be a step down in gameplay, which might be frustrating or disappointing.

[Blackhawk]

I'd agree with that. And (having played, but not finished, both), references are going to be tied to release order, not chronological order.

[Rumpy]

Except for the epilogues in both games. Seeing as RDR2 is actually a prequel to the first game, RDR2's epilogue leads directly into RDR.