Red Dead Redemption Review

Races aren't especially difficult but following your makeshift path can be tricky.

While the towns may be the primary source of information, it is the untamed plains that you spend much of your time exploring, and once you’re given the opportunity to stretch your wonderfully animated steed’s legs, the plains are both daunting and exhilarating in scope. Divided into three mammoth areas, New Austin, Nuevo Paraiso and West Elizabeth are massive beautifully constructed environments, rich with vivid detail, each with their own distinct wildlife, architecture and characteristics, and missions in each of the Western Border States are varied enough to keep you absorbed over the course of the 20 hour main campaign. From smoking out a posse of gangsters holed up in a hideaway in the hills to riding alongside a train protecting it from explosive-hurling assailants, Redemption ticks every box in the checklist of classic Wild West set pieces, even reviving that most venerable of 16-bit video game staples – the mine cart chase.

You can bound criminals up and throw them on the back of your horse for delivery to the sheriff, but where's the fun in that?

Outside of the main campaign there are plentiful side quests and mini games to distract you, and although many of the help-a-stranger quests tell a unique tale, there are a few not so random encounters that crop up with alarming frequency – Perhaps the town of Armadillo is truly that uncouth but having to rescue a “working” lady from an overbearing john three times within an hour seems a little overdone. The mini games are a varied bunch with plenty of ways to gamble away your hard-earned bucks and most stand up to repeated plays with items and clothing prizes for the dedicated hustler.

John can also be the victim a hold up resulting in a loss of cash, but with dead eye at your disposal, there's little need for surrender.

The comprehensive ecosystem with a menagerie of 40 animals is woven organically into the game, with quests rewarding the persistent hunter and proving a fine source of income for those willing to peddle their pelts and furs across the border, as well as proving sinister amusement for those with enough imagination. There’s something perversely satisfying about mounting up, lassoing a man, dragging him helpless through a thickets of brambles and leaving him to be terrorised by a pack of ravenous wolves.