With a good storyline and powerful combat, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a great entry point into the gangster world of the Wild West
It has been a long wait for Red Dead Redemption 2 and it surely was worth it. Everything you want from a Wild West game can be experienced in the world of RDR2, right from gambling, cattle raiding, hunting to robbery. There could very well be over 100 hours of total game-play and if you are after the 100 per cent completion tag, you may be in for the long haul.
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The new Red Dead game puts you in the shoes of Arthur Morgan, a core part of Dutch van der Linde's gang. The game begins with the gang on the run after some botched up robbery. The first portion of the game is linear, where you have to complete a certain set of tasks and jobs to survive. After the initial chapter, the map really opens up and what you get is the Wild West in all its glory and caveats. The map is huge, covering a whole range of American landscape - from snowy mountains to wet swamplands. However, traversing this vast terrain can get tedious, till you unlock fast travel or at least pay your bounties. Until that happens, you have to move around on horseback, which can get tedious at times.
The horses are really the lifeblood of the Red Dead world; a good horse can make or break missions and after spending so much time bonding with your horse, it can be painful to sell or put them down. You can also capture wild horses, an activity that I enjoyed a lot, along with fishing and hunting.
The story for Red Dead Redemption is a league above anything that Rockstar puts out for any of their GTA games. It has depth, it has wonderful side stories, and they put in the work to build characters and interesting conclusions. This also means that things can get a little long-drawn, but in the end, the reward is almost, always worth it.
Thought has even gone into the side missions. I also liked the inclusion of cheats; a lot of modern games have done away with cheats, choosing to charge players for premium equipment and other paraphernalia. Though you cannot save the game or get trophies once a cheat is activated, it is nice just to goof around.
Combat in RDR2 is also a treat; though, you may want to turn auto-aim on if you want to have any chance of surviving a gun battle. There's a huge arsenal to choose from and attacking stealthily can be very good for your health. Fistfights are a bit more complicated than pulling a trigger, but they do give you the Wild West vibe you are looking for.
During the course of the game, I did encounter a few bugs and glitches, but the frequency was negligible, not to mention it was fun to see a horse floating in thin air. Occasionally, some of the characters would also reload in a T position after I restarted a checkpoint, but then quickly move into position. Sometimes, you can also die by riding your horse into seemingly harmless pieces of shrubbery.
RDR2 is vast and despite having spent the better part of a week playing the game, I have only managed to scratch the surface. The sheer volume of things to be done itself pays for the price on entry, but consider the good storyline, the fun side quests and all the extracurricular activities, and you are looking at a masterpiece here. Sure, there are times where the open world fails with floating horses and weird shrubbery that can kill you, but those moments are few and far between. This game is an essential addition to any video gamers collection and not to be missed.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Rating: 5/5
Developer: Rockstar Games
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Platform: PS4, XBOX
Price: Rs 3,999
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