Metareview: Red Dead Redemption

As you'd imagine, Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption ain't the depiction of the west your daddy used to see on Bonanza every week. It's a violent, immoral west and, if the reviews below are to be believed, it actually makes for a pretty darn good game. And here we thought Mad Dog McCree was the most dastardly dude the high plains had to offer.

• 1UP (A): "This is simply a beautiful game, and it's provided more than a few moments where I completely forgot where the hell I was supposed to be going while riding over golden hills at sunset or through the desert in the middle of a nighttime lightning storm. It doesn't quite convey the loneliness of the real empty spaces, but does compress the essence of all the varieties of land and weather native to those parts into a few hundred miles ride."

• GamePro (5/5): "Although this is said of almost every single new Rockstar product, Red Dead Redemption is arguably their best effort to date, if only because it distills all of the lessons they've learned from their previous titles into an engaging, expansive, and enthralling world. But the best part of Rockstar's open-world oater is its honest and open appreciation for the iconic Western genre."

• Game Informer (97.5/100): "To succeed where other Western games have failed, Red Dead Redemption deftly recreates a sandbox playground of a tumultuous historical period swept away by technological progress. The game perfectly captures the expansiveness of frontier life and the gritty gunplay of spaghetti westerns, rightfully earning its place alongside the great Western films and the best Rockstar games."

• IGN (97/100): "Red Dead Redemption is a must-play game. Rockstar has taken the Western to new heights and created one of the deepest, most fun, and most gorgeous games around. You can expect the occasional bug or visual hiccup, but you can also expect a fantastic game that offers the Western experience we've all been waiting for. Red Dead Redemption is a complete game in every sense -- both the single player and multiplayer modes are excellent -- and still manages to offer an attention to detail you rarely see from a game of this scope."

• Edge (90/100): "If the story leads us through well-trodden territory – blending The Good, The Bad And The Ugly's adventurous sweep with Unforgiven's morality, as played by Deadwood's perverts and bigots – the greater game is more digitised Westworld: an impeccable example of world building begging to be interrupted with a bullet. As one character notes: "I dreamt of documenting the last days of the old west. The romance, the honour, the nobility! But it turns out it's just people killing each other." There's no shame in that."

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Source - Metacritic (Xbox 360)
Source - Metacritic (PS3)