Introduction
Red Dead Redemption rereleased last year in Oct 2024 with the price tag of ₹3799 (or $45 in USA). If this price is too much for you then you can access it for cheaper with their GTA+ subscription. The original game was released in 2010 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It was a successor to their 2004’s game Red Dead Revolver. Fun fact, Red Dead Revolver was the first game to have a cover-shooting system which Gears of War is known for. Just recently I have played the remastered version of Red Dead Redemption game for an hour. I am going to put my thoughts about the first hour that also includes my experience playing this game in this Red Dead Redemption Remastered review. So, let’s get started.
Gameplay
I have divided this Red Dead Redemption remastered review sections into ‘Story So Far‘ and ‘Gameplay Experience‘. In ‘Story So Far’ section, I will cover the story till my first hour mark. In the ‘Gameplay Experience’ section I will talk about the mechanics.
Story So Far
Exodus in America
Game starts with John Marston getting out of a ship and heading toward train station to board the train to Armadillo. During his train ride, he overheard some interesting chit-chats. Couple of women, sat behind his seat, talking about the ‘savages’ and how the ‘migrants’ civilized the ‘savages’ in fair exchange of their (native’s) land. In front of his seat, a lady and a Pastor was discussing about the innovations that industrial revolution brought to the world, cars. Later on, the lady mentioned flying peoples in Kansas which Pastor refuted, calling only angels can fly. The camera pans to a lady sitting in front of them. We didn’t know her then, but very soon we were going to acquainted with her.
Anyways, John meets a man named Jake in a Saloon and asked for someone named Bill. John follows Jake in a trail to Fort Mercer. John met Bill and they embroiled in some heated exchanges, Bill and his goons pulled up their guns, but as soon the John would pull up his gun, Bill shot him. We (the gamer) saw a man and a woman dragging John’s wounded body to presumably to their carriage for treatment.
New Friends, Old Problems
John woke up in a shed, where he met Bonnie MacFarlane, Miss Bonnie MacFarlane, emphasis on miss. She let John know that she spent $15 for his treatment. After a while, Bonnie shown him her ranch and asked him to get rid of some animals that are destroying her produce and scavenging her cattle; she also gave John a Carbine Rifle to make the job easier. I completed the mission with some difficulties provided by the control mechanics which I will mention later in this article.
Obstacles in Our Path
In her next mission, she asked John to race with her, we saw here feminist side in the race since she mentioned about John’s “male pride” and threw some comments about being her a female. The mission gave us nothing but served as a practice mission for controlling the horse.
This is Armadillo, USA
Bonnie asked John to take a ride with her on her carriage to Armadillo. Upon arriving, she gave him some money to grab medicines from the doctor. She left the town alone introducing us to a new mechanic, paid fast travel.
Political Realities in Armadillo
I approached the Sherrif’s office after having the view of the town. There, John met a snobbish lawman resting inside an open cell. He exchanged some heated arguments with John, and he pulled up his gun, that also made John pull up his gun as well. Until the Marshall pops in and commanded him to back off. Marshall asked John to follow him to a saloon, there we stealthy followed an outlaw named Walton Lowe, he mounted his horse and rushed toward his hideout. Marshall asked John to follow him. There we had a fight with his goons, and I successfully captured Walton Lowe alive as Marshall requested us.
Women and Cattle
Later I marked my waypoint to MacFarlane’s Ranch, but some on-screen alert asked me to save some guy with treasure map, he was killed by an outlaw. I approached him and killed the outlaw and fetched the treasure map from that guy’s corpse. I killed another outlaw in the sight, but a guy nearby saw me shooting and alerted the bounty hunters. That put $80 bounty on John’s head. I evade the bounty hunters that were chasing me and reached the Bonnie’s ranch. Bonnie was fervent about getting to know John. John gave up and spilled the beans. Bonnie asked John to herd the cattle for her toward the pasture. I did the mission successfully, saved my game, and then I had my first hour completed for this Red Dead Redemption remastered review.
Gameplay Experience
Since the game was originally released for consoles, controlling the horse with keyboard was abysmal. There is a setting that let you change how you want to steer the direction of the horse; I said steer not taking turns. One of its options is mouse relative, making your mouse movement toward the direction you want to move and then take turns with A or D. The other is horse relative, taking the turns itself (using A or D) will steer the horse, similar to moving the left stick. Mouse relative was much snappier than horse relative though.
Horse movement in itself is a pain though. To gain the speed you need to continuously tap the “Shift” key, once you find the best speed, maintain it by holding the said key. You are going to get many “Sticky key” popups while doing so. Another thing, you cannot stop or slow down the horse with “S” key, you need to tap “Left Ctrl”, in my case, leaving all the keys and moving my thumb to the very edge of my keypad.
On foot movement was not comfortable either. There is no way to change the camera. You can only change the shoulder views, from left to right and vice-versa, using the “X” key.
Shooting feels light and simple, just point your reticle toward your enemy and shoot. There is not much depth, a bit unsatisfying but worked flawlessly (so far). One more thing to point here, I was not able to holster my weapon while on horse. I tried multiple time, thought a couple of time was bugged, but the holster icon was cross marked in the weapon switching wheel. Weird!
Let’s talk about other aspects of Red Dead Redemption review:
Graphic wise, this game looks beautiful. The sun, the heat wave in the desert, the lightning, the cactuses, all of them look gorgeous. It is obvious that this game had a face lift that made it looks spectacular, but I will give credit to RAGE to make that face lift possible. Regarding the performance, I was playing on Ultra Settings with Motion Blur turned off. I was getting 90+ FPS easily on my laptop with the power settings put to “quite mode”.
Map was minimal but stylish. One thing that should be there was marking a waypoint using the mouse (double click). It requires you to tap the “Enter” key on the desired location.
UI was a bit clunky; Menu options are aligned vertically, but navigating through them felt floaty. There is no weight to the elements or some sort of magnetic effect.
Besides all of these issues, I didn’t find any other bug or complications so far.
And off course, this game has Honor meter which is objective. I personally dislike this system in the video games. I am not sure how it influences my game ending.
One last thing but certainly not least, game plays pleasant theme-appropriate music when there is nothing going on. You can explore the world of Red Dead with calming music.
Conclusion
First and foremost, I don’t recommend you playing Red Dead Redemption with Keyboard and Mouse. I am pretty sure that you will have a better experience with gamepad.
As far as story and characters are concerned, I find them engaging. However, playing the Red Dead Redemption 2 before this will influence the gameplay for me.
Price wise, I can’t believe they are charging ₹3799 or $45 for a remastered game. I strongly recommend you buy this game on discounted price. Or you can choose to subscribe with their monthly subscription and play the game that way. Anyway, this was my Red Dead Redemption initial review. I hope you have something to add to the discussion, please use the comment box below to share your opinion. I will be back with another article, till then, have a great day!
