We as gamers have a lot to thank Rockstar games for. If it hasn’t yet occurred to you, Rockstar is the company that single handedly broke the barriers of what was acceptable for a mature rated game. While credit should be given to such titles as Night Trap (Sega CD) and Mortal Kombat, it was Grand Theft Auto III that brought the freedom of game expression to its height. It has garnered protests, lawsuits and of course praise. Gamers aren’t celebrating over Grand Theft Auto because you can run around beating grannies to a pulp, they are rejoicing over the fact that games have taken another giant leap forward to become more relevant to a much broader crowd. In essence, the ability to display more violence will lend in hand for future generations of games so that they can provide a more realistic depiction of its setting than was ever possible before. Violence is everywhere and without the ability to show it, we are painting a picture that is far too perfect for its own good. Violence is never a good thing, but in a form of art, it is used to express the many feelings going through the minds of various people. From Grand Theft Auto III to Manhunt and now Red Dead Revolved, you are presented with a company that has no regrets for the gritty nature of its games.

 

You might wonder how Rockstar has gone from a free roaming city adventure to a fairly linear spaghetti western game. Frankly, I doubt anyone has an answer to that except them. The only thing that really matters is if the game is any good. To be very honest, Red Dead Revolver is a game treated with the signature Rockstar flair, but it doesn’t seem as if the polish reached both ends of the train tracks. Red Dead Revolved was originally another game made by a different developer, so Rockstar had the duty of finishing it when they acquired the product. So much of the game relies on its western style to draw its appeal, that when the game lacks in areas, it becomes very noticeable. 

The story of Red Dead Revolver is pretty straight forward, and unfortunately so. You start the game out as Red, a bounty hunter cowboy who completes missions for hefty price tags. Red’s family was murdered when he was younger and the experience has left an indelible mark on his attitude. The main story arc follows Red through his various missions and along the way you will meet new playable characters. Each of these people has background stories, but none of them are given enough time to flesh out. The story concentrates so much on Red, that most of the time you will feel that the other characters missions’ are pointless. Not to mention that the game switches between these characters as if they were teddy bears on an assembly line. This is a flaw of balance that severely affects the game later on, and it is something it never recovers from. Aside from the constant switching around, you will find that most of Red’s missions have little to no connection with one another. First you will run around some no name town shooting up some bandits and the next moment you will be picking off bandits from horses as you protect a train conductor. The lack of any glue allows the story to fall apart well before it begins to pull you in, which is exactly what it does later on.

 

Controlling Red and his other acquaintances is fairly easy and in typical 3 person fashion, you can do all of those moves the genre has become famous for. Strafing, dodging, rolling, blowing off cover fire, and even hand to hand combat. If you want to compare it to any recent game, then you might as well look at the latest Bond game Everything or Nothing, because it oddly plays very similarly to this game. All of the above features are pulled off fairly well except the hand to hand combat. It’s clunky, unresponsive and pretty boring. There is a bar fight level towards the middle of the game that goes on forever. All you can do is punch a bandit, or be thrown into a table by one. Luckily, this makes up little of the game, as most of it is spent blowing brains out with six shooters. Yes, in true cowboy fashion you will come up to many familiar period weaponry like six shooters, primitive sniper rifles, the early gattling gun and the Looney Tunes favorite, TNT. Each of these weapons can be purchased before of after each level and can be repaired over time to make sure that each one is as effective as it was when you first picked it up. The levels are very linear in that you have restrictive environments that let you roam one place, but not the other, and it comes off feeling like an on-rails shooter, but not. You are basically given a mission and you have to complete it within the proper parameters. Early missions are basically shoot em ups where you use your weapons to mow down hordes of bandits and psychopaths. The most touted feature in the game is to be able to slow down time and target up to six spots at once to unleash a fury of fire. This is essential for later levels but is never really needed early on. The other characters have special moves put in place of this, but since most of the game is centered on Red, you will see this move the most. Later levels have you doing such tasks as saving your cattle from a burning barn or making sure the ladies in a bar aren’t pummeled. It breaks up the action when it becomes too repetitive, but these diverting levels aren’t much better. The bosses you will face in the game are quite challenging and represent a bulk of the game’s difficulty level. Most bosses will be very confusing at first, so it is important to take your time and pinpoint a weakness before proceeding.