The Old West made new again.

I rarely buy games until I’ve heard plenty of good buzz about them (namely from Chris Pranger). Not only did I buy Red Dead Redemption blindly, I picked it up on opening day. The word “juggernaut” is appropriate, as apparently 550,000 other folks put their cash down that same day. But this game has a high level of detractors; the first game in the series was mediocre, the mechanics of this one look a lot like Grand Theft Auto IV, and certainly nothing could drag game fanatics away from Modern Warfare 2, right?

You guessed wrong, friend. This here is a dandy game, and I’ll bet my spurs that 9 out of 10 adult gamers would agree.

Story- 9 out of 10

I must separate my standards for a good plot and good characters. There’s a mighty big difference between a fantastic plot (period) and a fantastic plot for a game. Red Dead Redemption’s plot and characters are quite garden variety for any Western adventure, and essentially it boils down to this: badass goes looking for jerk-wads, finds lots of odd jobs along the way.

Sounds like the usual Rockstar sandbox game, correct? Well, yeah. It pretty much is. But the praise I have for this game is less about the events depicted…and more about the mind-blowing story structure. Usually in a game, you start with easy jobs, learning the controls and features through ham-fisted tutorials (some annoying sidekick character can always be found screeching irate advice at you). Then you get the usual, medium-difficulty stuff that makes up the bulk of the game. Then you get the big, multi-tiered battle royale finale that sees you mowing down an impossible amount of baddies, expertly wielding the controls and collecting every item available.

And hey look at that, you have gun duels. Good on ya for that.

Red Dead Redemption tells this structure to go hang itself. I won’t ruin anything, but I’ll say this: You feel like a Western hero immediately, and there isn’t really a “work-your-way-up” structure. This is absolute gold for the experienced gamer, who is undoubtedly sick of being told what to do by some pixilated yahoo. Oh, and the last act of the game is genius storytelling, but DO NOT LET ANYONE RUIN IT FOR YOU.

The characters are pretty paper-thin Western tripe, including John Marston, who you play as. Marston is an ex-outlaw who wants a peaceful farming life with his family, but first he has to tie up some loose ends from his sordid past. Sound familiar? Along the way, he meets the quintessential strong female rancher, the maniac treasure hunters, drunken thieves, and burnt-out old heroes with no one left to save. They have plenty of good stories and quips to share, but we’ve heard most of it before.

The dialogue is predictable throughout most of the game, but it never gets cartoonish with the Old West vibe. You may tire of Marston calling everyone (including dead animals) “friend” or “mister.” The real gold in writing comes from reactions. Many times during play, I growled something at the screen, annoyed by my rotten luck. Then, Marston agreed with me by grunting, “To hell with this.” When Marston gets double-crossed (a frequent occurrence), he reacts the same way that the frustrated gamer would: He’s incredibly cheesed off, and ready to shoot something. Such double-crosses and traps are so painfully predictable that they belong on the Schrodinger’s Cat list of video game moments. Also, when Marston discovers something horrifying out on the lone prairie, he becomes unnerved, and a little suspicious of his surroundings. You do feel for this protagonist more than most video game characters, because he (like you) hates certain characters and likes others.

Gameplay- 9 out of 10

Here’s some hyperbole for you: in this game, you can do anything. Play the main storyline missions, those are engaging. But do everything and anything else; you can help strangers with their small tasks, attack gang hideouts singlehandedly, break wild horses, go hunting for any species, and gamble on card/dice/knife games. You can even herd cattle or hunt bounties. The possibilities seem endless.

While the options are stunning and fun, there are mechanical problems with some things. For instance, the cover system during gunfights is a little jumpy. One wrong twitch of the left stick and you get stuck (with your head exposed, for added frustration). On top of that, the horse controls are slightly inconsistent or hard to control, depending on the class of horse.

But hey, horses are tough to control in the real world, too, so consider that.

As far as the minigames, some are beyond addictive. If there was a portable version of the poker minigame, I’d buy it for thirty bucks…especially after finding the Elegant Suit, which allows you to cheat (don’t worry, boyscouts, I’m pretty sure those lily-livered punks are cheating too). Liar’s Dice is fun and easy, horseshoes takes some getting used to, and arm-wrestling is flawed. The game tells you to pay attention to your opponent’s face to see when you should strike. This is useless. The real frustration comes with Five Finger Fillet. Anyone who has seen the movie “Aliens” knows this one. You stab a combat knife in between your fingers to a specified pattern, like a bloody DDR between greasy cowboys.

A real delight for me comes with collectables. I squealed like a little girl every time I got a new, cool outfit like the Mexican Poncho, Brown Leather Duster Coat, or the U.S. Army Uniform. Collecting animal pelts, exotic flowers, and buried treasure is enough for a full-length game in itself.

Graphics/Sound- 10 out of 10

The landscape is jaw-dropping. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in a game. An HDTV really makes a difference. The characters are about on-par with any other modern game in terms of voice-acting and modeling. So far, there have been many visual bugs in Red Dead, including ghosting of character models in cut-scenes. Boy, it does ruin the mood when a character is implored to escape on horseback (and they obey) and at the same time they stand in the background repeating a minute movement.

A beautiful, if gruesome touch, is that you can shoot animals and people, and they fall in logical, anatomically correct ways. Then they crawl or limp away. This is the fabled Euphoria engine that was created for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, but here it actually makes a difference.

Just take it all in for a moment or two. Then get back to outlawin'.

As for sound effects, every firearm discharge sounded powerful and accurate, which was welcome. The animals each make different noises, most of which are appropriate for the species (some exceptions do apply here). Nothing is more unnerving than a long gunfight, followed by the tell-tale hiss of a hidden rattlesnake. The sound is a huge aspect of the game, and without a good ear for danger, you’re a dead man.

Some Frequently Muttered Judgments

Is it Grand Theft Auto in the Old West? Meh, not exactly. That’s an over-simplified view of this game. It borrows from GTA IV heavily, including the Havoc engine’s brand of third-person shooting. While I had trouble with GTA IV’s aiming system, Rockstar found a decent fix with Dead Eye. The cover system from GTA IV was very underdeveloped, and unfortunately the same problems found their way to RDR. And as far as the choices you can make as the protagonist, in both games it seems like a moot feature, as your choices do not affect much.

The great step forward from GTA IV is that RDR demonstrates a truly unforgiving landscape that you can play in. GTA IV, despite being so alive with activity, seems claustrophobic and unnaturally safe for a crime-rampant city of psychos. The renderings of the American Southwest and Mexican border towns in RDR contain hundreds of characters and thousands of animals, and they don’t value your life. You do have to rely on your wits and your tools to survive some encounters, but like any frontiersman, you learn from your pitfalls.

Conclusion

All in all, I had so much fun with this game, and it goes down as my favorite of the year so far. I give it 9.5 out of 10, because it isn’t perfect but it is raising the bar. It is rated M for Mature, so don’t buy this for kids. Buy it for yourself. Instead of following me on Twitter, find me on Xbox Live in a Free Roam session. Gamertag: KR Martinak. I’ll be the idiot riding a donkey, asking politely that you not kill me.

I wish I'd been the one to think up this image first, but I'm not.

Happy Saturday everyone! February is ending in the next day or so and that means the beginning of the newest feature here at Toy-TMA: The Too Much Awesome Podcast!

It had been my hope to someday start doing a podcast here. The plan was for last month to be the first episode, but issues with cars (my car specifically) delayed production for a week. After some technical difficulties with the mic, the podcast was recorded and uploaded without any futher troubles (save for a cat scratching in the background).

The link for the podcast can be found here. Once you click the link, you’ll be taken to Mega Upload, a site for files too large to post anywhere else. Type in the code shown to download the file and then wait for it to be cued up for download. Once it’s ready, download the file and listen when and where ever you’d like!

The goal is to have at least one new episode a month, usually falling on the last weekend of the month. It ended up being over 90 minutes, but we’ve got a lot to talk about, so it works. We’ll do our best to improve the sound quality as right now you have to turn the sound up fairly high to hear us clearly, but for now, please enjoy the premiere episode of the Too Much Awesome Podcast!

Most guys still consider "Professional Assassin" as a possible career choice someday, and this is why.

I love me some No More Heroes. I mentioned it was one of the 5 games you should own for the Wii. I was reluctant after playing the first game, but it got under my skin and decided to stay with me. I’m gearing up to replay the first game once more. Why is all this? Because No More Heroes 2 just came out and boy does it progress the franchise.

The plot to No More Heroes 2 is- wait, first, no kids for this game. It’s on the Wii but in no way does it act kid-friendly. There is Tarantino-levels of blood and violence here, an abundance of strong language, and an added emphasis on naughty things that kids shouldn’t know about. There’s your warning, parents. Keep the kids at bay.

No More Heroes, But Plenty of Style

So the plot has Travis Touchdown climbing his way to the top of the assassin ladder once more, this time starting at number 51, a nice reference to Suda 51, the game’s awesome creator. The fact that they took the number of assassins from 10 to 50 already has me excited since it means more fun to be had. I approve of that. Further add to my excitement the omission of the overworld area in place of an easy to navigate menu screen and instantly the game has taken the first’s great concept and perfected it. Kudos Suda 51. Kudos indeed.

What's good? Beam katanas. What's better? Two beam katanas. Simple.

No More Heroes 2 exudes style. This isn’t like most games you play and that’s a very good thing. Characters are quite original and dialogue is constantly fun. All of the streamlining works great to get you playing the actual game more and not slogging through mini games and random missions to accrue money just to continue with the game. There are no fees to play story missions now, so you have more time to slash away. Brilliant.

There is still plenty of variety to be found here, much like the first. There are a ton of mini games to keep you busy, though they are done in a retro 8-bit style with 8-bit music, making for a nice change of pace from the usual swath of destruction you’re cutting with your beam katana. Some of these games even play fun by themselves. Can I give more praise? Probably not.

I’m going to go ahead and tell you that this is one of the best Wii games out at the moment. Go play the first No More Heroes, but if you can’t find it or don’t have the money you don’t have to worry as much since the sequel doesn’t exactly require you to be familiar with the story. It does require you to be a fan of Otaku style references and games completely different from mainstream things. No More Heroes didn’t sell as well as it should have, but No More Heroes 2 makes sure to correct any problems the first had, meaning you have no reason not to be playing this game. Unless you’re not 18.

Sequels are just getting better and better these days.

Mass Effect 2 is now out. Do I have much to say about it? Not really. It’s too big of a game, and worse, there’s nothing interesting to talk about. Why? Because the game is top-notch excellent, and reviews about great games all tend to be on the dull side. I have few gripes, but I can at least tell you the main selling points. Should I do that? Probably. Let’s continue.

The game’s biggest selling point is also the biggest drawback for me when it comes to the scope that Mass Effect is attempting to create. Mass Effect 2 is a game that branches off in different directions based on choices you make in the game, but there’s more to it. Did you play the first Mass Effect? If so, your save file will be read by Mass Effect 2 and change the game accordingly, meaning that if you want a true Mass Effect experience you should be expected to play not only the first game but the second game in the series all the way through, creating two alternate play-throughs. What makes this even bigger is the fact that the third game in the series will have this feature as well. Choose carefully unless you have a lot of time to kill.

Man, isn't the future gonna be sweet?

And that’s my only hesitation for the franchise. Mass Effect 2 is well-made and enjoyable what with the combat being improved over the first game and the characters remaining engaging and likeable, but it will take upwards of 40 hours of gameplay to get near some semblance of completion for just the second game alone. If I want to replay the game I have to set aside enough time to play for 40 hours total, plus however long it takes for me to get through the first game. That’s a hefty request, though at least the experience is a good one.

Adult situations Are For Adults Only, Obviously

Parents, you may remember the first Mass Effect getting flack for containing an adult scene with nudity. Yes, there was the option to engage in “certain acts” with some of the female characters, but the acts were neither gratuitous, nor were they tastelessly done. However, they did exist and they exist again in Mass Effect 2. Just be warned that if kids are playing Mass Effect 2 they will be exposed to adult situations, though not before going through a lot of heavy gun-inclusive violence. Take your pick which is worse and parent accordingly.

Overall, as I’ve said, I don’t have very much to say about Mass Effect 2. The consensus between reviewers is that it’s a great game and I’ve been hearing the usual buzz about “Game of the Year” that’s inevitable when a game is universally reviewed positively. Certainly pick up Mass Effect 2 if it sounds like it interests you, though don’t worry about needing the first game in the series as the sequel does allow you to choose what choices you’d prefer were made before you begin. So choose wisely.