Genre: Third Person Shooter/Action
Developer: Rockstar San Diego
Publisher: Rockstar Games
# of Players: 1-4
ERSB: Teen
Released On: May 3rd, 2004
MSRP: $49.99
Also On: XBox
If you saw the title of this review and started scratching your head "Red Dead wha?", do not fret. Cancelled, not cancelled, canned, change of developers, cancelled, change of publishers. RDR has went through more than its fair share of turbulence. Originally debuted way back in 2000 as a PS2 launch title, it didn’t even have a name and didn’t create much buzz. This was because what was shown wasn’t much, just a cowboy walking through an old west style town and a couple of gunfights. What Activition said to press wasn’t much more either. Eventually Capcom picked up the game and even under their watch its release was still not garaunteed. Tell me that isn’t saying a lot. Rockstar Games picked up the rights and the rest, as they say, is history. Red Dead Revolver isn’t going to be remembered as a revolutionary title, but it has given the shooter genre a shot of adrenaline.
Red Dead Revolver is an action title through and through. While the levels offer plenty of variety, you’ll be spending a majority of the game running around with your gun(s) drawn, blasting anything that moves. You are a gunslinger, a bounty hunter, and in RDR there is no shortage of criminals that need to die. The story starts off with a man returning home to his wife and son after a business trip. He’s a farmer, and he’s been away on a gold hunt and guess what? He struck gold. Before the family can celebrate though, their home is raided by bandits and your character, just a boy at the time, witnesses the death of his parents. After amputating the head bandits arm with a pistol shot from his fathers gun (which was laying in a fire when the boy picked it up.. burning his hand red, hence your characters name and the name of the game... deep stuff.) your character hides out until the trouble passes by. Flash forward some years later, your character, Red, is now a grown man and one helluva shot. And this is where the game really begins.
Presentation
Say what you want about Rockstars so called "obsession with pushing the envelope", but one area you cannot argue is their ability to create a submersing environement. From Max Payne to Manhunt to Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar knows how to make gamers feel like they’re part of something. With that said, Red Dead Revolver feels more like an interactive Clint Eastwood movie than it does a videogame. The menus are excellent and the voice acting is spot-on in most cases. Not only that but the story is actually quite good considering how many different teams were working on it. You’ll learn of deceit, trickery, betrayal, heroism, loss, despair. It is no Metal Gear Solid but Red Dead Revolver would actually make a pretty good western. Better than Young Guns anyways.
Graphics
Red Dead Revolver is set in the old west, and it shows in every level. Small little pathetic towns that were no doubt big cities back in the day. Horses, carriages everywhere. Sprawling areas of desert with nothing but Injuns shooting arrows at you. The lighting in the game is very impressive, as are the character models and animations. The game also has some pretty good loading screens, which feature whichever character you are currently using going about random animations. For instance, the main character Red will dazzle you with a quick display of how handy he is with his pistols, twirling and flipping them every which direction. Lastly, considering this is an action title with loads of gunplay, it’s important to say there are no frame rate problems in the game at all. Even in 4 player mode the action is fast and fluid.
It just isn’t too pretty. Aside from those strongpoints, the graphics in RDR are pretty average at best. The character models are plain and the backgrounds are too repetitive. The fire effects are also pretty lackluster and the horses just look wierd. But which would you rather have? A shooter with decent graphics and a solid frame rate or a shooter with awesome graphics and a sluggish frame rate a la Perfect Dark?
Sound
In the sound department, Red Dead Revolver is equally inconsistent. The music is topnotch, just as one would expect from Rockstar. The sound effects are also excellent. Each crack of a rifle, nay of a horse and ricocheting bullet sounds just like they do in western movies.
Where it begins to dissapoint though is in some of the voice acting. For the most part, the acting is great. This game is full of enough one liners to keep you laughing for quite awhile. Just listening to Ugly Chris scream "Ooooh sherrif, lay off them baked beans" after the sherrif farts in his face(as Chris has him over his shoulder, holding him hostage) makes me release a small amount of urine on myself from laughing so hard. Yea, a lot of the characters are done very well. Others aren’t, including the main character. He’s supposed to be a badass gunslinger but he sounds like a robot. However, given that Red barely speaks and most of the game is spent in gunfights, these complaints are rather small and irrelevant.
Gameplay
Red Dead Revolver would be best described imho as Gaurdian Heroes meets EA’s Lord of the Rings titles. Plenty of action and depth, loads of replay value, quite a bit of difficulty, interesting story. Like basically every other action title, RDR revolves around killing a lot of people. During each level, you will encounter an enemy who has a bounty on his life that you want to collect. You’ll know which ones these are as there’s a cool slow-mo camera pause when you kill these special enemies.
The game is very linear. You go from chapter to chapter, playing each level out and unlocking new things. After each level you are graded and can unlock 1 new thing woth a good rating or 2 things with an excellent rating. You can unlock anything from a multiplayer stage to a multiplayer character to a new weapon or upgrade. And you cannot replay a chapter any time you want so you’ll have to replay each mission until you geet that excellent rating if you want all the goodies.
What RDR lacks in freedom is more than makes up for in level variety. In one level you might be storming a town to clean it out. On the way back from that town your train might be held up. Then the game becomes more of a platformer, as you must just from train top to train top, ducking platformers and hopping over walkways the entire way to the engineer. Then you have to protect the engineer from bandits on foot and horseback for a set amount of time. Later, you’re involved in a full blown barfight. Not only do the levels vary, but so do the playable characters. You play everyone from Red, an Indian male, a Buffalo soldier, a female rancher, a Mexican general, etc. And each character has their own agenda, their own unique weapons and their own unique playstyle. For instance, with Red you might shoot people from a distance. With someone like Shadow Wolf though, up close melee attacks work better than his weak arrows.
Each character also has their own special attack. The attacks are called "Deadeye" and each characters is different. You hold down on the R2 button (in the PS2 version), and depending on your character, different things happen. Say you’re controlling Red. Holding R2 will slow the game down to "bullet time" a la the Matrix. By moving your crosshair over enemies, you’ll see red targets appear on limbs, chests and other vital spots. Once you’ve either gotten 6 targets or hit the fire button, Red will unleash the 6 bullets in a fury of gunfire. It’s great for clearing out baddies when you’re being ambushed or great for lining up a headshot. Or, say you’re using Buffalo Soldier. His Deadey attack is an explosive blast from his rifle, perfect for say... killing a group of enemies bunched close together or knocking someone off their horse. Deadeye is a really useful tool and makes the game much more enjoyable what with the combo system and all.
Another awesome gameplay feature in RDR is the dueling. Duels are what make western movies and RDR pulls them off perfectly. With a quick motion of the analog stick your character will pull out his gun. Then, just like with deadeye, you move your crosshair along the enemies body. However, in duels, the targets don’t appear by themselves and aren’t always red. In duels, the slower you move the crosshair the more likely the shot. Carefully move the crosshair over your enemies head and get a red target- you win. Fail to get a red though and you might miss. Take too long and your enemy might get his shots off before you. Sometimes you’ll even go 2 on 1 and 3 on 1 in duels as well, it is very intense.
Red Dead Revolver also has a multiplayer mode, and while it is no Goldeneye 007 or Halo, it is quite enjoyable. There are 3 different modes and a few options for each one, some make a load of difference, others dont.
Bounty- Typical multiplayer mode, but with a very western twist. Poker plays a part in these games. Each time you kill someone, you get bounty money and a card. The cards do various things, such as giving you health, weapons or special abilities. If you change the game to Stud, each time you pick up the cards you get the powerup and the card goes into a pool. Each time the 5th card is picked up, all cards go back to their original owners and whoever has the best hand gets a special power up, depending on the hand. Or you can play Hold Em, with is just like the real game. Each player starts with 2 face cards, and as people are killed they can pick up other cards, which go into pools. Once the 5th card is obtained, whoever has the best hand using the 5 pooled cards and your 2 face cards get the special power up. These little twists add some life to the multiplayer.
Sundown- Basically the Bounty mode just with a time limit slapped on.
High Noon- Multiplayer duels. These things never get old.
There are atleast 11 multiplayer levels, and 46 playable characters. Some characters are awesome, others are pretty useless. Some have devastating Deadeye attacks, others have weak attacks. Each character is different though and since there’s 46 characters (46 that I have unlocked, I hear there are 48), that means a lot of tinkering to see who you like best.
There are just small problems with the gameplay. As in every action title ever made the gameplay does get old every once in awhile, but usually right when you’re sick of hearing Red’s monotone voice, the game switches characters on you and all is well. Some of the game, particularly the duels, are trial and error to the point of frustration and there should have been a way to go back to a level you previously played to get a better rating.
Overall
Between the interesting, fresh gameplay of the single player game and the great fun of the 2-4 player multiplayer modes, there’s a lot to like about Red Dead Revolver. It has put some life back in the action shooter where games like Gungrave and Kill.Switch have failed. The game is suprisingly light on the gore considering it is a Rockstar title, so people who are fed up with the companies supposed need to push the envelope to the point of refusing to try their games should have no problems here. There’s no sleeping with prostitutes or cross-town gang rivalries, just good old fashioned quality gameplay and an excellent job on the whole western setting. And to think we almost didn’t even get this game.
