red dead redemption

Formats: Xbox 360 (version tested) and PS3
Developer: Rockstar San Diego
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Released: 21 May 2010
Score: 10/10

It's hard to gauge the popularity of the Western, but for a genre that once dominated the entertainment world, it's seen better days. After its heyday in the 50s and 60s, the Wild West fell on hard times and then disappeared into a chorus of flatulence in The Blazing Saddles. For a while, the superb TV series Deadwood was a worthy standard bearer, but sadly it was cancelled after three seasons. These days, cowboy films are usually greeted with a muted response, even if they are critically acclaimed. Video games set in the Wild West are extremely thin on the ground, which seems odd when one considers how many elements of the genre (such as guns, anti-heroes and the odd damsel in distress) would translate well into the medium. Bearing all this mind, it would seem that Red Dead Redemption, the latest sandbox adventure from Rockstar Games, is riding into pretty uncertain territory. It's impossible to predict how successful it will be. But it certainly deserves to be an unqualified hit.

Red Dead Redemption starts to weave its magic from the moment the player is dropped into its note-perfect Wild West environment. This really shouldn't come as much of a surprise. After all, Rockstar is in a class of its own when it comes to open-world games, and even if the developer can't lay claim to the invention of the genre, it can certainly boast a certain mastery of it. But the achievements of Rockstar San Diego in regards to Red Dead Redemption are all the more impressive given that the world of the Wild West doesn't naturally lend itself to easy coding. It looks and feels like the genuine article in every detail, from the ramshackle, imperfect wooden structures, to the unpredictable movements of a stagecoach as it travels over uneven ground, to the irregular progression of a tumbleweed as it is blown across a street. It may sound strange to remark upon how convincingly real a lasso looks in a video game, but consider what goes into accomplishing this. Then consider how easy it would be to shatter the perceived authenticity of this world, if just one aspect felt out of place.

Not only does the world of Red Dead Redemption look the part, but Rockstar have also filled their Wild West with an entire ecosystem (which includes bears, pumas, snakes, deer and buffalo), a huge array of random encounters – such as stagecoach robbers and escaped convicts – and an immense amount of off-mission content. Red Dead Redemption is practically bursting at the seams with extra activities. Players can hunt animals, skin them and sell their pelts and meat in towns for services and goods. They can choose to ride shotgun on a stagecoach, fending off would-be robbers. They can lasso and break horses for ranchers and take part in cattle drives. They can engage in a spot of bounty hunting or raid forts held by bandits and steal their treasure. If they're feeling lucky, they can sit down for a game of blackjack, liars' dice, Texas hold 'em or five-finger-fillet. The Wild West environment of Red Dead Redemption is an immense technical achievement. The visuals, soundtrack and organic physics combine to suck the player in completely. It's easy to get lost in Red Dead Redemption – and this is true of it before you even start playing through the campaign.

The single-player story is a gritty tale set during the dying days of the Wild West. Players pull on the cowboy boots of John Marston, a former bandit whose attempts at leaving his criminal past behind him have been derailed by the authorities. The newly formed Bureau want to hunt down and capture Marston's former gang, and since their efforts have been unsuccessful, they've asked Marston to do the job for them. Marston is understandably hesitant to do this; while his old compatriots may be homicidal outlaws, there once was a time he considered them family and old loyalties die hard. However, the Bureau aren't really offering Marston a choice – if he refuses or fails to bring his former partners in crime to justice, they will murder his wife and son. In John Marston, Rockstar have created one of their strongest and most compelling characters to date; a relic of the last lawless days of the old west, Marston is an individual who has traded in his ruthless nihilism for grim-faced pragmatism. His face is a mess of unshaven hair and scars, his eyes convey a bleak acceptance of his plight and his dust-choked voice, provided by Rob Wiethoff, is equal parts stoic resignation and barely restrained menace. Marston heads up a colourful cast of drunks, con-men, revolutionaries, villains and long-suffering citizens; the law of the land seems skewed against anyone trying to make and honest living, and only those with total disregard for it seem to have a chance at prosperity – and this includes the Bureau's lawmen.

It's tempting to chalk Red Dead Redemption up as simply the Wild West entry in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. There's the vast environment, the well-drawn characters, the plethora of side-quests, the extra activities, the well-written dialogue and above all, the near-limitless potential for exploration and mayhem once the main story has been completed. However, while the GTA: Wild West tag is useful in explaining Red Dead Redemption as a concept, it does Rockstar's latest offering a disservice. Like every title that rattles off the Rockstar production line, Red Dead Redemption is clearly an ambitious and unique offering. It may share certain gameplay mechanics and environment structure with its GTA stablemates but its overall tone, incredible sense of place and time, and its focus on morality mark it out as a very different animal altogether. This last feature can't be overstated; while the GTA games always tempered the player's capacity for chaos by hurling ever increasing numbers of heavily armed police at them, Red Dead Redemption's moral compass subtly informs nearly every aspect of the single player mode.
As Marston travels across the massive Wild West expanse in search of his former comrades, he is faced with a large array of moral dilemmas – some occur in story missions, some on side-quests and some happen on the fly while the player roams the environment. In each instance, the player has a choice and their fame and reputation will be affected depending on how they decide. Many of the in-game activities grow Marston's reputation, regardless of how the player acts. However, the player's morality is reflected in the game's fame meter which fills towards honour or notoriety depending on how they play. This in turn affects how the NPCs in Marston's environment react to him. Players with positive renown receive perks such as the ability to commandeer NPCs' horses or discounts in the general stores. Those determined to play as desperados shouldn't be surprised when 'wanted' posters of Marston start circulating in every town and every second gunslinger seems to fancy their chances in a quick-draw shoot-out. This sense of moral accountability permeates the game's plot too. Marston's insidious past is an obvious starting point for the entire story, but he's not the only character whose behaviour leads them down a dark road. Morality isn't just a nifty gameplay aspect – it's hard-wired into the single player campaign. In the world of Red Dead Redemption, it seems, no action is without its consequence, and no one gets away clean.
Naturally, Marston's quest calls for a lot of gunplay and Rockstar have provided a brutally satisfying combat system combining the cover-and-fire gameplay from GTA IV, and the Dead-Eye mechanic from Red Dead Revolver. In Dead-Eye, time slows down and allows the player to paint their target with a series of crosses. They then hit the right trigger and Marston fires off a rapid volley which peppers his target with bullets. Perhaps to prevent it from feeling overpowered, the Dead-Eye mechanic needs to be filled with regular kills during shoot-outs. As players progress through the game they will gain access to bigger and better weapons which are available for sale at gunsmiths dotted around the map. As is fitting for an epic Western, Red Dead Redemption contains several impressive action set pieces, involving cannons, Gatling guns and quick draw shoot-outs.
For the most part players will travel on horseback to explore the vast in-game map. The horses are extremely well animated, easy to use and able to pass swiftly over most types of terrain. They behave intuitively, rearing up at the sound of gunfire or the crash of thunder and they resist any attempts to ride them off a sheer drop. Marston can call his horse by whistling; players just press the D-pad and their steed will come running. There are a variety of horses an each offer different advantages, but the longer Marston keeps a horse, the more it will gain in terms of stamina and speed. In keeping with Rockstar's other open-world adventures, Red Dead Redemption offers players a multitude of side-quests and activities to keep them occupied. The side-quests, for the most part, are activated by encounters that are highlighted on the in-game map by a purple question mark. They're mostly optional filler to the main story and pretty familiar fare to anyone who's played a sandbox game from Rockstar before. Red Dead Redemption's main story mode will take players around 15 or so hours to complete if they zoom straight through it, while players who are Achievement (or Trophy) hounds will find it contains upwards of 40 hours of gaming time. And then, of course, there's the multiplayer.
The multiplayer is split into two main modes: free roam and map-based matches. Up to 16 players can take part in map-based games and in free roam mode. There are 5 match types altogether: Free For All Shootout (Deathmatch), Gang Shootout (Team Deathmatch), Hold Your Own (a team-based capture-the-flag match), Grab The Bag (which requires players to fight for a single bag of gold) and Goldrush, an every-man-for-himself match in which all players try to grab saddlebags and drop them at respawning chests. Each match starts with a shoot-out with players employing snapshots and side-rolls to make sure their team wins the contest, or that they're the last person standing. In free-roam mode players can form a posse of up to 8 members. Then the posse leader sets a goal and the newly formed gang can then tackle a variety of targets including bandit-held forts, bounties and hunting wildlife. In keeping with the trend set by Modern Warfare, players earn XP which they can use to unlock new weapons, horses and clothes for their cowboy.
Red Dead Redemption is an awe-inspiring game. The gameplay and structure may be beginning to show their age a little, but the storytelling, characters and world-building are on a par with the best the medium has to offer. It's a sprawling and engrossing experience, epic in scope and size and offering a gigantic amount of playing time. With their latest open-world game, Rockstar have produced nothing less than the finest recreation of the Wild West on a console, and one of the best video games of this year.

 




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call of duty black opps review

It's right about the time you're shooting a well-known communist leader in the head that it all clicks into place. Here we are in Call of Duty land again, where insane Boy's Own battle action and precise historical detail weirdly conjoin. This long-running series of million-selling military shooters is essentially the Inglourious Basterds of the gaming world – a strange, ridiculous, entertaining, fanciful and bloody celebration of man's interest in violence. And it still works. By some considerable margin, Black Ops works.

 

For the campaign mode, you play almost exclusively as Alex Mason – a special operations veteran caught up in the Bay of Pigs invasion and then cast into a covert war that quickly descends into a fraught psychological odyssey. As the action ping-pongs between Cuba, Vietnam and Russia, an interesting tale plays out concerning dodgy CIA dealings, Nazi experiments and communist expansionism, all bubbling beneath the accepted "facts" of the era. It's similar to the Modern Warfare titles in that it actually boils down to a classic manhunt in the end, but while some elements get lost in the rush, this is easily the most cogent and well-constructed story we've seen from this franchise in a number of years. Although it's not quite the time-travelling psychedelic drug orgy some were expecting, there are several well-handled plot twists that make Modern Warfare's narrative battering ram look even more brutish and incoherent.

Splattered across the game's expansive Cold War canvas is a very familiar Call of Duty experience. Once again, we're shooting our way along linear paths, more often than not following a lone indestructible character as he barks out orders. Navigational options are kept to an absolute minimum, a straitjacket that feels almost suffocating at times, especially when we're shown astoundingly rich and detailed environments like Vietnamese jungles and the inner chambers of the Pentagon only to be told we can't go anywhere.
But this is the CoD way, and operating within the constraints of the series, Black Ops is a master work. Whether you're busting out of a hellish Russian prison camp or creeping through Viet Cong tunnels with just a flashlight and a revolver, Treyarch knows how to grapple the drama and spectacle out of every choreographed encounter. What this game is, in fact, is a ceaseless barrage of brain-pulverising set-pieces. There is Hue City on fire, with US choppers strafing overhead like monstrous dragon flies; there is the raid on the Russian launch site, its towering rocket looming beneath a sickly orange sky; and there is the shootout on the rooftops of Kowloon city, with jumbo jets scorching close overhead as bullets fly. Black Ops doesn't so much capture your attention as bludgeon it into bruised acquiescence.
Within the cacophony of each mission, you will find the usual buffet table of interesting weapons. There are the faithful regulars of course, including the M16, the FAMAS, AK47 and Skorpion machine pistol, but Treyarch has also trawled the archives to find some fascinating contemporary rarities, including the box-like G11 and the powerful but slow H510 shotgun. Enemy AI is decent, too, especially the Russian spec-ops forces who roll and leap around the screen like circus athletes – but circus athletes with semi-automatic rifles. If they get close enough, they'll rush at you with savage speed and purpose, a rare behaviour for computer-controlled fighters and a welcome respite from the usual peeking-out-from-behind-cover behaviours.
Part of the success of the game, though, has nothing to do with its relentless action: the comparatively authentic characterisation is vital. None of the people in Black Ops are as interesting as Modern Warfare's astoundingly moustached Captain John Price, but at least the lines are punchily delivered and sometimes even move beyond gritty military doublespeak. Treyarch has also made agenda-setting use of full performance capture (when an actor provides motion capture, facial capture and dialogue simultaneously), to provide genuinely expressive virtual thesps capable of glowering with anger or cowering in fear with something approaching humanity. We're not out of the uncanny valley yet, but we can at least occasionally glimpse the upper slopes on the other side.
At the same time, this game is chock full of cinematic references – which, as Rockstar discovered via GTA's endless pop culture recycling, adds bags of credibility to the script. Our first experience of Vietnam is so fecund with clichés – from the topless soldiers laying out body bags in the sun to the trippy southern rock soundtrack – it's like mainlining every 'Nam movie ever made in one three-minute mega-fix. And then we get more precise allusions to the likes of Apocalypse Now, Platoon and The Deer Hunter, the latter skilfully pastiched in a nightmarish Russian roulette sequence. There are also references to Lost, 24 and countless other conspiracy dramas. Most importantly, the writers have learned from TV structure, constantly reminding players where they are and what they're doing in this savage globetrotting adventure; and that's what Infinity Ward failed to do with its at times incomprehensible Modern Warfare sequel.
Largely, apart from an overly simplistic Lockheed Blackbird sequence, the title's forays into alternative game mechanics are successful. There's a brief air combat sequence in which you pilot a Huey as it blasts ground forces before taking on a couple of Russian copters; there's also a decent enough boat section, where you whiz down a jungle river, shooting stuff up. The controls are pretty cumbersome and the effect rather shallow and inconsequential, but these asides add a little variety and certainly don't outstay their welcome. Indeed, with the whole campaign coming in at around six to eight hours of gameplay, nothing outstays its welcome – though Black Ops does at least put up more of a fight than the spectacularly brief Medal of Honor.
The multiplayer component is, as you would expect from this series, skilfully constructed and breathtakingly expansive. There are 14 maps, designed to explore and support a range of playing styles. The standouts, at least in terms of visual style, are "Jungle", with its winding paths, tree houses and hanging vines, and the brilliant, "Nuketown", designed to resemble one of those simulated neighbourhoods constructed in remote locations by the US military to test the effects of nuclear weapons. There are eerily authentic fifties houses and vehicles, and the streets are lined with spooky shop window dummies. The level was apparently inspired by the nuclear explosion scene in Indiana Jones 4 – though it also feels a lot like the scary test zone featured in Alexandre Aja's Hills Have Eyes remake.

Elsewhere, there are military industrial complexes such as "Launch" and "Radiation", and dense urban settings such as "Villa" and "Havana". All offer decent combinations of cubby-holes, sniper vantage points and open assault arenas – though there's a greater emphasis on claustrophobic, close-quarters choke points than previous games. Add in some interesting new equipment like the camera spike (which lets you plant a spy cam anywhere on the map so enemies can't sneak up on you), decoy bomb and motion detector and you get a game that's really exploring the strategic depth of the multiplayer experience.

Amid the usual collection of deathmatch and capture-the-flag variants, the new "wager" modes, which let you use a virtual currency to bet on the outcome of themed bouts, are the stars of the show. "Gun Game" and "Sharp Shooter" are both gripping variations on an entertaining theme: getting players to use as many different weapons as possible within a single match. In the former, you're given a better gun after each kill, and the action ends when one player succeeds with all 20; in the latter, each player is given the same weapon type, and this is swapped randomly every 45 seconds. With both, your whole tactical approach has to remain fluid as you constantly switch between, say, inaccurate machine pistols and unwieldy sniper rifles. The result, especially when a bunch of players find themselves in an enclosed space just as the weapon type changes to rocket launcher, can be much hilarity. These are just great party modes.
The other two are more demanding. "One in the Chamber" gives you just a single bullet per kill, plus melee attacks, and each player has three lives in which to fight it out. Matches are tense and guarded, with lots of creeping around interspersed with sudden explosions of impulsive action. "Sticks and Stones" could well be the cult favourite, giving players just crossbows, tomahawks and ballistic knives with which to do battle.
Again, this one's all about technique and accuracy as players learn to squeeze the absolute most out of the unique properties these weapons offer. The crossbow could well be the most inspired addition to the FPS armoury since the sniper rifle. If you hit someone with an explosive bolt, there's a five second delay before it explodes, so your victim has to suffer the indignity of waiting for their messy demise. However, they also get the chance to leg it toward an enemy and take them out too – a guiltily satisfying achievement. Together with the tomahawk, which can be bounced off the ceiling to take out enemies hiding behind cover, it's going to figure heavily in the game's amusing Theatre mode, which lets you replay, edit and share favourite gaming moments.
And then you have zombies. Treyarch has taken the unlikely co-op "horde" mode it bolted on to World at War and made it even more of a compelling laugh-fest with new weapons, enemies and traps for your undead prey.

POSSIBLE SPOILER: But the piece de resistance is the unlikely cast of playable characters: you're not fighting as anonymous soldiers, you're controlling ex-presidents and politicos like John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Fidel Castro, all of whom spout familiar sound bites as they hack down staggering Nazi aggressors. It's a neat, knowing inversion of the campaign's serious Cold War setting, and it nicely recalls Patrick Swayze's bank robbing gang in Point Break with their over-sized president masks. There's also an extra mode named Dead Ops, a dual-stick top-down shooter in the style of Robotron: 2084 or Smash TV in which you fight through a series of single-screen locations, competing for cool power-ups like flame-throwers and rocket launchers. Awesome fun.

Call of Duty: Black Ops quite probably represents the pinnacle of the linear military shooter experience – and you wonder where the sub-genre can go from here. Treyarch's game is exhilarating and beautifully orchestrated, but it feels like a full-stop, it needs to be a full-stop, because toward the end of the campaign, bombardment fatigue begins to set in. As CoD players we have travelled the world, killing people, following orders, hunting down madmen … many of us have had enough. Call of Duty should go out on a high, or at least come back totally re-invented. Perhaps that's what we'll get with Modern Warfare 3. But for now, and for the next two-years of multiplayer engagement, revel in this game's mastery of its well-trodden domain.

granturismo 5

When Gran Turismo 4 came out in 2004, smoking was still legal in pubs in Britain and George W Bush had just won a second term as American president.

Gran Turismo 5 has been in production for that whole time. Six years. The Need for Speed series may have sold more overall, but GT is the grand dame of racing franchises. Developer Polyphony Digital and CEO Kazunori Yamauchi, himself a professional racing driver, have cultivated a reputation for pathological attention to detail.

Anticipation has therefore been running very high for their first full-sized excursion on the current generation of consoles. 2008's GT5: Prologue was basically just a large demo, and it says a lot about the pull of the franchise that nearly five million people paid for it.
Arcade mode is as good a place as any to start, dropping straight into the action, with a two-player split-screen mode, time trials and races, and also the interesting – if difficult to master – drift mode. Driving feels immediately weighty and communicative through even a standard controller, though the experience is considerably improved with a full force feedback wheel.
The bulk of gameplay – and what a bulk it is – is in GT mode. You start your career journey with 20,000 credits, and have a choice between going for new vehicles (a predictably vast range of options lies before you, most of it for the moment unaffordable) or browsing the more eclectic second-hand collection. Your 20k isn't much to play with, and the cars you really want cost millions, but there's always the arcade mode if you want immediate access to the good stuff.

GT mode is a bit of a slog, actually, especially if you're impatient to "own" something impressive and take it online, but there's a huge number of things to be getting on with. There's the A-spec races, some open series, some requiring specific types of car, which will be familiar to players of the previous GT games. There's the License Tests section, which teaches you slipstreaming, cornering techniques and so on, which is exhaustive and no doubt very useful for budding professional racing drivers, but can be tedious.

Much, much more fun are the Special Events. Each event provides you with a car and drops you straight into the action. It's astonishing how flexible Polyphony's engine is: NASCAR feels just as right-on as dirt rallying or go-karting, or mucking about on the Top Gear test track.
Astonishingly, this feast is hidden behind a much smaller and more modest button than the one that offers "B-spec" – an eccentric mode in which you pick an AI driver to race for you, in your car, and then watch and attempt to issue instructions. I found it odd that such weight was given to part of a driving game where you to opt out of driving, but I'm sure many will find the tactical considerations rewarding.
Online play is being given a real hard-sell, which is surprising because it lacks almost all of the charm and innovation of the single-player game. That's not to say that it isn't accomplished; there are a couple of interesting modes, such as one that randomly selects a set of cars, and you can bring your lovingly customised baby from the GT campaign – but there's no way I could find to match your car to ones of similar power or drivetrain. As if that wasn't irritating enough, the lobby system is clunky and race modes are comparatively limited.

Another gripe: while the headline figure promises a thousand-plus vehicles, only the few hundred fully modelled premium cars do justice to the PS3's graphical capabilities; the rest have been imported from the PS2 and given a cursory brush-up. The premium cars are so exquisite, however, that you can understand why the new collision damage mechanics – a first in a Gran Turismo game – feel half-hearted.

But it has a sheer appreciation, and love, for cars and driving that is difficult to resist. At times it feels less like playing a game and more like indulging in a hobby. Clearly it's no longer the sole pretender to the title of Best Racing Game; competitors snap at its heels in terms of graphical pyrotechnics, driving feel and immersion, and there are certainly better multiplayer experiences out there. But there's nothing with this much charm. If you want simply to bask in a deep love for cars, then there is still no better franchise.