Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360) review "You’ll want to squeeze every second of life from Red Dead Redemption. You’ll do this because you know that, sooner or later, the game will end and you’ll no longer be a part of its world. You‘ll want to elongate your stay. And John Marston will let you, because there might be someone out there somewhere he hasn’t shot at yet."

John Marston is an angry man. A lot of people tell him this, but they often have reason. He’s probably shot at them, shot at people they know or saved them being shot at by other people so he can threaten to shoot at them some more. If Marston is around, odds are, someone’s going to be shot.

His anger is somewhat justified. Back in the day, a younger John was part of a nefarious gang that did nefarious deeds such as rob banks and shoot people. Though he paints himself a reformed character, the government do not look kindly on his past discursions, as governments are wont to do, so they kidnap his fledgling family and hold them ransom. He can have them back, he’s told pointedly, once he goes and silences his old group.

As such we join him, and his rugged stubble beard and manly collection of facial scars, aboard a train headed for the wilder parts of the West. He listens to preachers justify their continuing genocide of the natives in the name of advancing civilisation and God. He listens to people cream over the still dripping new steam train he arrives on, and he swaggers into a saloon after sidestepping a lone tumbleweed doing its best to supply ambience. He meets up with a grizzled old man with that comedy Western voice long now made obligatory (yes, the senile prospector one) and he rides out to a bandit camp where his old gang have taken residence. He implores them to give themselves up quietly, explains the situation and hopes for a quick, painless resolution.

He then gets shot.

By the end of my play through of Red Dead Redemption I owned no fewer than seven pistols, seven rifles, two shotguns, two sniper rifles, two different types of explosives and two different kinds of knives. It is a game very much invested in shooting people.

It’s also a game born from the slightly homicidal minds at Rockstar, so other contractual obligations are swiftly met. Red Dead is a turn of last century sandbox game set at a time in America’s history when, for better or for worse, civilisation has started to take a foothold and the romantic notion of the lone cowboy is becoming obsolete. John knows this: he’ll tell anyone who listens that he’s left that life behind. He just wants to find some wanted men and get his life back.

But first he’s going to play some poker. Then he’s going to herd some cattle. Then he’s going to track down a deranged cannibal, put out a barn fire, pick some flowers for an old guy and tame him a stallion.

The Wild West is a lively place, filled with critters to shoot, skin and sell on. It’s drowning in wrongly accused men at the gallows to save and bandit camps writhing with ne’er-do-wells to put down. You can ignore a lot of it; John tries to ignore a lot of it but life never turns out to be simple. He’s saved from the world’s quickest Game Over by a nearby ranch owner, who he then feels indebted to, so helps around the place when he’s not off murdering brigands. He wants the help of a local sheriff, but finds a man a little too long in the tooth too busy with the slew of crimes his jurisdiction is plagued by. He helps out there where he can, too. A snake oil merchant, a grave robber and a filthy drunk all hold information or services that he needs, but they’re not willing to fork them over for free.

And so he rides with charlatans and pretends to drink potions that grant him super-human speed before shooting the hat off someone’s head to prove its competency. He delves into mines lit only with flickering lanterns to further his cause, and he plays both sides of a Mexican revolution off against each other until he has the information he needs. John is a focused man: he needs to complete his job, then get his life back.

But first he’s going to have a game of horseshoes, do a couple of night patrols around a settlement and compete in a horse race.

John’s lackadaisical attitude is often no one’s fault but yours. The world created around him is vibrant, alive and never static, always presenting something new to do. Challenges have you taking on wolf packs with just your hunting knife, or trying to snipe down flocks of birds from a moving train. You can gamble away collected wealth with cards and dice, or play a game of dare involving a sturdy table, your favourite hand and an especially sharp blade. Stagecoaches need either protecting or pilfering, wild animal attacks are rife in the plains and shopkeepers will look to you, the heavily armed guy famed for shooting people, to retrieve their earnings should their shop be robbed.

You can choose to sidestep the majority of these, but doing so robs you of the chance to procrastinate in Marston’s world. You don’t have to listen to him debate right and wrong with a swindler who’ll answer his accusations of taking hard earnt cash off poor farmers by pointing out that, not long ago, John would have shot them in the face and simply taken everything of worth. You don’t have to accept one-on-one duels with local bullies or drunken thugs; you don’t have to shoot the gun out of their hand and let them live or fill their chest full of lead. You don’t have to rescue bumbling newspaper reporters from criminals or continue to try and save a man mad with starvation and sunburn from his crazed path towards death. You don’t have to do any of this. You can just find a few wanted men and get John what he wants. A way back to his life. A way back Home.

But you won’t. You’ll stop along the way to help someone build a prototype glider, to eliminate a brood of vultures that scare local residents and spend some time obtaining new clothes. You’ll fall for traps laid by corrupt officials, get mauled by a mountain cat after disturbing its meal and blow away some rabbits because they keep eating those damn crops. You’ll thwart rustlers, you’ll free whores from abusive pimps and you’ll be wary of the guy in the tall, dark hat who seems to know more about you than you feel comfortable with. You’ll lurk in every shadow, explore every outhouse and shoot at everything that looks at you cross-eyed.

You’ll want to squeeze every second of life from Red Dead Redemption. You’ll do this because you know that, sooner or later, the game will end and you’ll no longer be a part of its world. You‘ll want to elongate your stay. And John Marston will let you, because there might be someone out there somewhere he hasn’t shot at yet.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (January 08, 2011) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.