Red Dead Redemption: Game of the Year Edition - Xbox One and Xbox 360

I’m a day late and a few dollars short getting to the Red Dead Redemption party. I bought the Game Of The Year edition some time ago. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 action-adventure game debuted on May 18, 2010. The game proved to become one of Rockstar Studio’s masterpieces. I’ve been a fan of Rockstar’s storytelling since Grand Theft Auto III released back in 2003. Their particular brand of storytelling shines through in Red Dead Redemption. Red Dead Redemption is based inside Rockstar’s version of our universe (which is not the same as the Grand Theft Auto universes) in 1911. The Wild West is dead and dying as American civilization reigns in outlaws and charlatans. John Marston, a reformed outlaw, is caught in the middle of progress’ warpath. As Marston, you step off a train at the station in fictitious Armadillo (based on Amarillo). There you head to Fort Mercer with a local guide where you are shot in the gut and left for dead. Marston awakens in a ranch hand’s hut. It’s revealed through the ranch owner, Bonnie MacFarlane, scooped you up, put you in a wagon, and took you to a doctor in Armadillo. Bonnie politely interrogates Marston, revealing that he was hunting wanted outlaw and gang leader, Bill Williamson. She then asks Marston to work off the fifteen-dollar medical bill and he obliges. After the bill is paid, Bonnie recommends heading to the U.S. Marshall’s office in Armadillo concerning any aid in assaulting Fort Mercer in search of Bill Williamson. I’m going to stop with the plot here because I hate spoilers as much as the next person. Where gameplay is concerned, Red Dead Redemption functions like any other open-world game that you would expect from Rockstar. The major difference here is that many towns, settlements, and cities are in-game days apart. It gives a more realistic experience, but after two hours real world time it becomes a pain in the ass. Over time, Rockstar has learned a few things about what fans want. In Grand Theft Auto IV, developers introduced a functioning taxi system that allowed gamers to travel to any selected area within reason. That idea transferred over to Red Dead Redemption in the form of stagecoaches. They do not allow you to travel to any point on the game map, but they cut ten-minute journeys into 3-second hops between towns. Red Dead Redemption employs a slow-motion gunslinging ability called the Dead-Eye. This allows the player to successfully fend off an insane slew of enemies ranging from the garden-variety coyote, the coyote’s cousin – the wolf, to Mexican rebels and fugitive American outlaws. Within a few hours of playing, you will pick up on the importance of the shotgun to stagecoach drivers and their passengers “riding shotgun.” The game being set in early 1900s America; there is a wide array of weaponry available. There are at least three or four variants in each type of gun (pistol/revolver, shotgun, repeater rifle, sniper rifle, thrown, explosive, and lasso/whip). Carriages can become difficult to maneuver because they have a different default button scheme than what the average gamer has been accustomed to with other vehicles in videogames. The setting in Red Dead Redemption is mostly based on the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. The graphics are gorgeous. Leaves in the trees and wild fields move in the breeze. In two years, Rockstar considerably updated their graphics. That’s a comparison between Red Dead Redemption (2010) and Grand Theft Auto IV (2008). It’s easy to forget your goal and simply ride off into the sunset on a wild mustang you just broke in (entirely possible, by the way). Erik Brudvig at IGN (2010) said, “The setting of Red Dead Redemption, leaving out the interactive elements, is an achievement in itself.” When I purchase videogames, I ask myself why should I purchase them. In regards to Red Dead Redemption in particular, this game has a huge factor to figure. If you love Western genre entertainment then you will love this game. If you hate Western flicks then this game is going to lose about sixty percent appeal. Western movie fans will appreciate the subtle nods to popular movies like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, Tombstone, and True Grit. If you happen to enjoy the open-endedness of open-world games then you will most likely enjoy Red Dead Redemption. Maybe you prefer the freedom to embrace good or evil. If you have ever wanted to act out your favorite Western – this is your chance! So why should you purchase Red Dead Redemption? Well for one, this award-winning game currently holds a 95 and a 9/10 on Metacritic. IGN gives it a 9.7. It currently holds 4.6 out of 5 stars on Amazon. The Official Xbox Magazine (2010) said, “Red Dead Redemption is a truly epic resuscitation of the Western theme in games. It's also easily the best gunslinging game we've ever played.” Critics and fellow gamers aren’t wrong about the game. It’s a masterpiece – complete with a compelling story that is deserving of your time and money.

This is it, the original, the OG. This game will go down in history, at least, my own personal historical memory. It is rather embarrassing how many hours I put into this game. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time alone because of my mom’s work schedule. As a result, much of my time was spent fantasizing about lives I couldn’t live at the time. At first it was books like enabled that and then once the Xbox 360 came out, it was video games. This game basically allowed me to live an alternate, impossible life, in a century I could see myself living in. Some may say western games are cliché, boring, too drawn out. Being drawn out is certainly an attribute Red Dead Redemption is worthy of, but for me, that was a good thing. The plot is summed up nicely in the product description that says “Experience Marston’s journey across the sprawling expanses of the American West and Mexico as he fights to bury his blood-stained past and seek a new future for himself and his family”. It is anything but boring and cliché. The slow pace allowed for an experience of realism and proper plot development. Anything faster would feel too plastic and artificial. After coming home from the horror that was high school, I would immerse myself in a fantastic world of gunslingers, gangs, and turmoil. Nothing ever seems routine here. At school, everything was predictable. Everything followed an orderly schedule and you always knew what was going to come next. In the world of Red Dead, however, this was just the opposite. Every time I would gallop into the town of Armadillo, for instance, something new happened. Whether it’s encountering a gang of miscreants shooting up the town, a criminal fleeing from a robbery, or some smart-mouthed stranger targeting my massive ego to a duel, it all seemed real. My real life at the time was robotic, and this game fulfilled my desire for a life of danger, adventure, and heroism. I chose to write this review because of how much this game meant to me in the past. The reality is, however, that I bought this game mainly to prepare myself for the sequel coming out in October (which I pre-ordered the day it was announced). I’d be lying if my nostalgia didn’t also secretly hope that playing would also give me the same effect as before. In case you’re wondering, it did. No matter how many playthroughs I go through, I am never bored, and I’m always in awe. I discover something new every time. I didn’t want to waste my review blabbing about how the gameplay plays out, what the plot is, how many guns there are, etc. You can read the other reviews if you want that. Just another sheep sums up the stuff you can do pretty well and I’ll just quote it here: If you like skinning animals, riding horses, pissing off locals, being a gentlemen, shooting birds from a moving train, outrunning lawmen, becoming a lawman, betraying the lawmen, outrunning the lawmen, shooting bad guys, shooting good guys, saving women, deciding not to save women, collecting herbs, wearing badass clothes, owning a lot of badass guns, winning money from strangers, hunting outlaws, killing cougars with a knife, silencing witnesses, abusing dynamite, buy the game already.”. All of that pales in comparison to what really makes a game good. I believe that how a game makes you feel is really the reason why we enjoy a game. If you want to live a life you never can and be swept away in a brilliant storyline in a beautiful world, this in the game for you. Even though it is old by video game standards, Red Dead Redemption is hands-down the best game I have ever played.

Everyone knows everything about this game and there are countless quality reviews that highlight everything good about it. So I'll just cut to why I chose the 360 version over the PS3 version. First is resolution. The 360 runs this at 720p with 2xMSAA. Real hardware MSAA is wonderful for games of this generation. Like all 360 games it's also being upscaled to 1080p by the system's internal scaler chip, and has very crisp visuals for a 360 game. The PS3 runs this game at 640p with PS3's built in Quincunx AA. Quincunx usually isn't so bad if a game is running at full 720p or higher, but at 640p it's just awful. The edges are all blurry and messy, and the overall image is just muddy. Like everything has a fringe of blurriness. Almost visually claustrophobic. It's very hard to make out fine details that are easy to see on the 360. You don't even need to see the comparison to know something is wrong with the PS3 version. I have a HUGE PS3 collection and I think it's the worst looking game outright for pure image quality. No AA at all, or maybe FXAA would have been vastly better than Quincunx in this situation. It's just awful. 360 version wins here hands down. Second is graphics quality. The 360 version straight up has higher draw distances for everything, higher objects rendering count, and noticeably better textures. The lighting and shadowing is totally different from the PS3 version and sunlight is much more colorful and visually spectacular. It's almost like the PS3 version has no lighting at all in comparison. Shadows are more detailed and render more accurately to sun position and shadow count is higher. Shadow draw distance is higher. Particle counts are higher. There's more grass and higher draw distance for the grass and vegetation. Add all this together with the 360s advantage in resolution and image quality and it's vastly better visually. Absolutely no contest. It's a great looking and playing 360 game but the PS3 has much better. Assassins Creed(excepting the first game) is a great series on PS3 for comparison. As well as all the Call of Duty games up to MW3 got a solid if flawed optimization treatment. They're all just much better than this. Red Dead Redemption was a terrible effort for the PS3. Third is framerate. The PS3 version has a 30fps lock that it can sometimes struggle to maintain. It's usually hovering in the mid 20s and can really fall short sometimes. The 360 version pretty much locks to 30fps, though it does definitely stutter and dip from time to time. The 360 just runs the game outright better than PS3 though and is much smoother to play. This actually helps the gameplay as the PS3 version can sometimes feel slow and unresponsive due to its framerate. Fourth is Xbox One compatibility. This game is backward compatible with Xbox One/S and is Xbox One X Enhanced. It runs with a totally locked framerate on my Xbox One S. It never stutters or slows down unlike the 360 version which can dip a lot in really intense scenes. On an Xbox One X you gain the advantage of 4K resolution or 1080p with 4x supersampling on a 1080p TV, with an unlocked framerate, as well as improved 16x Anisotropic texture filtering. The PS3 version isn't really backwards compatible with the PS4. You can only play it with Sony online service which doesn't actually run on your hardware and just emulates the PS3 version. It just sucks. This disc copy of Red Dead comes in an Xbox One case but the discs are for the 360 and will readily run on both consoles. This makes the 360 version a better long term investment as current consoles support it fully.

A classic western game with all the extra. Worth the price. If you like westerns, this is a must have.

This is not going to be some long review, others have already posted that, this will be short and to the point. Played for four hours last night made 8% progress in the game because I was doing "Missions" instead of free roaming, bounties, hunting, poker, or stranger requests. I expect it to last around 40-50 hours if I keep playing like that. What I care more about is the overall feel and look of the game, the mechanics take a bit to get use to and feel awkward at times, especially on horseback. I was a little disappointed there was no character customization, even Dragon Age II (which shied away from a traditional RPG unlike the first game) where you play as Hawk allows to customization. Oh well. The thing that really bugs me is you have to "unlock" or find outfits, just cant buy them and I really would like to pick up random objects to sell or use but again oh well. The sandbox feel is very nice, for example I cant walk over to a pick axe leaning against a wall and basically kick it and it will fall over! The story is also very engaging as are the NPCS. One more thing about the mechanics/game play, it has a decent authentic feel. I live on a working ranch/farm, and have for most of my life. We heard cattle the same way John does in the beginning with Bonnie, get behind them keep a gentle pace, go right to steer them left, left to steer them right etc. Although I admit the lasso is pretty goofy, but that is an important feature to bounties, and that is one hard thing to program into a game; so good job devs. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys history, a grain of authenticity in their game, and fans of the shooter or adventure genres. PS: I laughed my ass off when I found a Jackalope and blew it away with my .45!

I've always thought Rockstar was one-step from making GTA into a perfect game but they always had to get too cute with GTA. Not with RDR, even the Undead DLC is a ton of fun. What's more fun than jumping on an automatic mounted chain-machine gun and mowing down hordes of zombies? I think a big part of the fun with RDR is the main character John. Unlike GTA, especially V, you don't feel a polarizing feeling towards John. The story and his backstory draws you in. You could be just like him .. you know, if you lived in the old west. You're going to get attached to the character, his family and you'll even enjoy the parts that normally would feel repetitive. I will say Skyrim and Fallout are also good at doing this. All video games, in my 30+ years of gaming, become boring. They drag. It's going to happen but if the developer can make you feel like you're accomplishing something for your character, you don't notice it as much. RDR does that. I'll give an example with GTA. I really like the GTA games but I eventually get tired of "playing by the rules". Like when GTA San Andreas had you destroying the comic book guy's remote helicopter toys and you had to use a remote helicopter toy to do it. In RDR, there's no real restrictions, if you can kill those legendary animals with a knife, have at it. Want to throw dynamite at them? You can. Or you find them from a distance, get your Carcano Rifle out and try to snipe the elusive beast. My teenage son said it best, "Everything in it feels epic". I think that's what makes this game so great. From the side challenges like trying to skin X amount of a certain wild animal to trying to poke a knife between your fingers in a QTE game to my personal favorite moment of the game. You've just realized you have a bunch of animal skins to sell but haven't saved. Then you hear it. The sound of a cougar attacking. Those will kill you before you can get your gun pulled, kill your horse too. It's such a fun, intense moment in a usually mid-paced game. The characters throughout the game are either crazy or hilarious or both. Just wait until you have to run behind the bank and hunt the critters. It's a relatively violent, harsh game that doesn't use gore or shock to make it violent. It's almost like an old west simulator. I've had Red Dead Redemption 2 preordered since last summer. Even worse, I decided to switch from the XB1 to PS4, so now I'm going to have to cancel my XB1 preorder and preorder it on PS4. I would rate it as one of the greatest games ever made. The game that comes the closest in old west style is Gun. Nowhere near as challenging as RDR but similar gameplay and setting. By the way, it works great on BC. I've played it all the way through twice on 360, once on XB1 BC and wouldn't be surprised if I try it on PS Now.

I had never played a Western style video game and was really curious to see how it would be done. Realizing that this was made by the people who make the Grand Theft Auto series only raised my curiosity and sealed the deal. GAMEPLAY (10/10): Having played the GTA games, I was pleased to find that the gameplay in Red Dead quite familiar, yet not without a few clever innovations. Players of GTA will likely appreciate the easy to use navigation via the minimap/GPS. The third person perspective will also feel quite familiar. While this may turn some players off, I've always thought that Rockstar Games have pulled off the 3rd person shooters remarkably well. Get used to it and you'll be glad you did. STORYLINE (8/10): The storyline, while perhaps a bit too simple (ex-criminal is required to hunt down his former gang members in order to be reunited with his family), is perfectly justified by its length, amount of fun and unique quests, and most of all by the characters. CHARACTERS(11/10): Honestly, the characters in this game alone make it worth your time. I've always felt that the characters in the GTA games were always interesting and 3-Dimensional except, ironically, for the main character, who has always seemed a bit too neutral about everything in an attempt to give the player more control over the character's decisions. In RDR, however, they seemed to have managed to give your character (John Marston) plenty of personality to keep him interesting while still giving the player control over most of his choices. And while the story may force you into some less than ideal decisions, your sympathy for John Marston remains intact. Virtually every other character in the game is memorable and they all keep the cinematic cut-scenes more interesting than in any game I've ever played. No exaggeration. I cannot overemphasize the quality of this game's characters. I honestly became so attached to a couple of them that I replayed parts of the game just so that I could interact with them some more and re-watch their cut-scenes. If you're like me, when the game is finished, you will literally miss some of these characters as if you actually knew them. I know that sounds pretty lame and nerdy, but I'm just sayin'. GOTY EDITION (10/10): Being the Game of the Year Edition, you get 2 discs: the main storyline on one and the zombie Expansion Pack "Undead Nightmare" and multiplayer on the second. To my surprise, Undead Nightmare was not just a zombie attack game mode, but a fully loaded bonus storyline involving practically all of the main characters from the original! It merits a review of its own, but sufficed to say, its awesome.

With Red Dead 2 recently released, I was reminded that I had never gotten a chance to play the highly acclaimed original. I was pleased to find it here for such a great price, delivered to my door in just 2 days! After the game arrived, I fired it up and was immediately impressed with how well this older title has made the transition over to the XBOX One. Loading times are quite reasonable on the newer console and the graphics are seamless. For being a last-gen game, the visuals are still very much top rate and look great on a larger screen TV! Now many hours into the game, I can see what all the hype was about. Red Dead Redemption combines everything I loved about Grand Theft Auto series with the simplicity and more endearing feel of a classic western movie. The game takes place at the turn of the 20th century, as the "Old West" was steadily becoming more populated and developed, but provides the player with plenty of insights into what life in the "Wild West" was really like. It's a great setting for the rather immersive story line and I could see playing this game over again just to try new challenges and alter key choices that affect the "good" vs "bad" orientation of the main character, which changes how people respond to him and the overall game plays out. Even if you've played Red Dead 2, the story of the original stands on its own and is sure to bring you hours of additional enjoyment. For anyone thinking about this game, I highly recommend it!

Je ne connaissais pas ce jeu et l'ai acheté avant la sortie du 2 ayant vu l'éloge des critiques. Et bien je n'ai pas regretté mon achat et ai adoré ce jeu. Je recommande si vous ne connaissez pas. A noter l'amélioration des graphiques qui le rend très beau, malgré son âge. Un must have

Awesome game for lower price than PS3 version second hand

Non sto a raccontare il gioco perche tutti conoscono RED DEAD REDEMPTION. Me lo hanno comprato per regalo mia moglie e mio figlio, quindi per me è gia al TOP! Lo avevo sulla Xbox 360, ma il disco si era rovinato. Ora posso utilizzarlo in questa nuova versione anche sulla mia attuale Xbox X.

Can be played on Xbox 360/Xbox One/Xbox Series S and X. Great award game just like GTA game style but in Western Era.

This is a great game, I'm really happy I got this having played RDR2 first. It's quite pricy, considering how old this game is, but it's worth it to complete John's story. I used this one my Xbox Series X and it works great.