Once in a awhile game comes out a bit under the radar and upon experiencing it you feel as if you need to climb to the top of a mountain and shout it’s praises to the world. This is the type of game that Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption is. Amazing does not fairly sum it up and it isn’t because of new game mechanics, over-the-top graphics or genre defining elements. No the sum of everything together, running smoothly, forcing hours upon hours of gameplay out of you is the reason why this game is so great.

Red Dead Redemption is the life experience of one John Marston and his journey of revenge and redemption to win his wife and child back. His awful past of criminality, gangs, and sin has robbed him of his family when he thought he had put it all behind him to try the life of a rancher and family-man. John is ugly, a product of his time – which is around the transition from the West being wild to being a bolster of civilized society. You have trains, automobiles and brick buildings in the more advanced cities, but ride out into the unconquered land and you have small towns, saloons, horses, cowboys, outlaws and prostitutes. Lovers of Clint Eastwood’s Spaghetti Westerns will no doubt be at home atop a horse riding into town for some adventure.

The characters of Red Dead look the way you would imagine people to look that lived the hard, painful life of the old West. The beauties are few and far between (in terms of our standards), men are stringy and skinny from the life, the prostitutes are foul and the atmosphere is dirt, dust and leather. One of the most impressive things to me about the game is the backdrop, one can lose himself in the world of Red Dead, riding from town to town thanks to Rockstar’s world engine (made popular by the Grand Theft Auto series). I have ridden for an hour before, taking my cowboy from Mexico to West Elizabeth without so much as a stutter in the loading.

Red Dead Redemption allows you to choose your poison in terms of behavior. Unlike Grand Theft Auto where good and evil acts are not necessarily punished based on reputation, residents of John Marston’s world spread the word fast and you can either be revered as a hero, or be public enemy #1 being hunted relentlessly by lawmen and bounty hunters. There are a million dynamic events that occur throughout your adventure, you will ride past women begging for help in the wilderness only to be ambushed by bandits. You will be called out to duel in towns, save prostitutes from Johns trying to kill them instead of paying and you may stumble upon an execution of a prisoner, choose to take sides or simply watch it play out in front of you.

My only gripe with the amount of dynamic goodies is that the one portion that my perverted wiles wanted is not given to me like it was in former Rockstar games. See Marston may be a killer, a bandit and an ex gangster but the man has an iron-clad loyalty to his wedding vows that will not allow you to dabble in the sexy senoritas of a Mexican brothel. Damn it Rockstar, how am I able to hog-tie a woman and put her on the train tracks to see her go splat but you won’t let me whore it out in every saloon that I come across? Bah! But honestly folks this is my single, solitary complaint.

Red Dead Redemption is American RPG perfection, it seemed Rockstar borrowed a bit from Bioware’s Paragon/Renegade decision engine and tuned their already awesome Grand Theft Auto engine into something surreal. I don’t even look at Red Dead as a game, it’s a cowboy experience and the diversity of the cast, the solidity of the story and the charisma of Marston are just tiny things compared to the game as a whole.

Go out and buy it now! There has already been many free downloadable content items for us hardcore players and there will be plenty more to come. Don’t let this one pass you buy gamers, you really need to own this.

GOD KING GRADE: (A)   ★★★★★