I had a little bit of Christmas money left over and I decided to take a gamble on the PlayStation 4 version of Red Dead Redemption, it was also released on the Nintendo Switch. Now, Red Dead Redemption is a top ten game of all time for me. I played the hell out of this on the Xbox 360 (check out my top 5 Xbox 360 games) and I have also played through the game on the Xbox One when it was made backwards compatible and spruced up a bit. I had heard less than great things about this remaster which was what put me off from buying it for full price.
I picked the game up for £24,99 and I honestly feel like it was well worth the money and this remaster is nowhere near as bad as people are making out. It is a hell of a lot better than the Grand Theft Auto collection that Rockstar pooped out that is for sure. The game looks as good as I have ever seen it and by the time the credits rolled and before I started my Undead Nightmare playthrough, I only encountered two glitches in the whole time I played the game. One saw John stand on the horse instead of sitting on it which was hilarious. The other saw an NPC float up into the sky and go into the great beyond, where this cowpoke went I had no idea!
Red Dead Redemption is a typical Rockstar open world style of game and it is important to remember that the open world game has been improved quite a bit since this was initially released two console generations ago! However, Red Dead Redemption Remastered I feel holds up fairly well. I will admit that even hours into playing this, I would try to push in the left analogue stick to run, only for John to crouch instead as this game has you have to frantically press the X button to run. You cannot press a single button to bring up the map, you cannot skip the cut scenes where you skin an animal or loot a body. These are little things that I think should have been improved for this remaster, but they are not game breaking nor did they spoil my experience.
Just like when the game was first released, Red Dead Redemption Remastered (calling it a remaster may be a bit of a stretch by the way) the best part of this game is the story. It is a fantastic Western story about the dying days of the Wild West where an outlaw who thought he was out of that kind of life is dragged back into it in order to save his wife and son. John Marston is such a well-written and well-acted character that he is impossible not to like. I was very impressed with most of the character animations and even the lip-syncing was not bad, I have seen games made in the last few years that have way worse lip-syncing and character animations than this does. I would wager that someone who never played Red Dead Redemption when it was first released may have a bit of trouble having as much enjoyment with this as someone who has. However, with that being said, I do think the story is so good it may get you through it.
If you played Red Dead Redemption when it was first released and loved it, this is well worth it if you can find it for £25 or so. I would not say that this was worth the initial full price Rockstar put it out as, as it seems like they did very little to this game. However, even after what was my fifth playthrough of this game, I can still say that this is one of the greatest video games I have ever played.
