I know I'm late to this party, but I'd like to talk about Red Dead Redemption for a bit. Specifically, I'd like to talk about its shortcomings, because I've been pretty disappointed with the game so far. Now, I will say that it has a few things going for it. Namely, it's a beautiful game with a pretty decent story. Apart from those things, though, well, here are my biggest complaints.

1) Horses

Thus far, I've probably spent more than 75% of my gametime riding a horse, and it is...well, it's simply not fun. The entire horse-riding experience is irritating.

Firstly, because the controls are too "realistic." Your horse turns slowly, won't back up, takes a while to start and stop, etc. It is incredibly frustrating to accidentally hit something (a small rock, for example, that is half the height of fences that your horse will happily jump over), and spend five or six seconds slowly wheeling your beast about, and spurring him up to speed again. This is even more annoying when it makes you fail your mission.

Secondly, because different breeds of horses are made out to be a fairly big deal, yet the game refuses to identify the animals in any way. There are probably dozens of different kinds of horses in the game, with varying speeds (fast, normal, slow). Other than reading a vague description in a deed, though (which are only in stores, and you usually won't have with you), there's no way to tell which horse is which. Furthermore, the speed difference isn't noticeable enough to be immediately obvious without direct one-after-another comparison. Seriously R*, would it have killed you to tell the player what breed he's got?

Lastly, another controls complaint: stamina management. Each horse has stamina. You can spur your horse to go faster by pushing "A," which will momentarily speed him up for a second or two. This reduces your horse's stamina. Reduce the stamina too far and your horse will buck you off. Stamina will start to recover after a second or two of spurlessness (yep, I'm going with that word). Multiple spurrings, however, do not appear to make your horse go faster. What this all means is that, in order to ride fast, you have to tap A once or twice a second. You want to keep yourself in the speed-boosted state, yet not spur fast enough to lose much stamina. This could have been an interesting mechanic if you could manage your speed (if multiple spurrings would go faster, letting you decide between consistent travel and bursts-of-speed), but as it is it just makes you tap "A" constantly in order to ride your horse. Very annoying.

2) Gameplay

The gameplay is extremely repetitive. Examples:

- Shooting is always the same. There's never any strategy to the gun battles, and the guns themselves behave in nearly identical fashion.

- Riding a horse is always the same. Unlike in, say, GTAIV, there is virtually no skill in getting from one place to another, and there's nothing cool to do on the way. No crazy jumps, no motorcycles/helicopters/alternative vehicles, no high speed crashes, etc. You just tap "A" and do slow, sweeping, "my horse is too realistic to do anything fun" turns.

I know those are only two examples, but shooting and riding together encompass the vast majority of what you'll be doing. Also, don't get me wrong, the motivations for what you're doing (story) are good, it's just that actually doing stuff is always the same, whether you're rescuing a kid from random bandits or assaulting a stronghold.

3) John Marston

I like John Marston, but he can also be very annoying. In the first part of the game (New Austin) I did long questlines for three different lunatics. Each one of them used and betrayed me at every turn, approximately 5-6 times in a row (each!) before finally giving me what I wanted. EVERY TIME, I, John Marston, pushed them and threatened to "put a bullet in their head and move on" if they didn't stop conning me. However, I, John Marston, never elevated it any further. Ever. Flat out betrayals that almost got me killed were treated to a, "I'm tired of this run-around! Now if you don't help me, I'm going to put a bullet in your head and move on with my day! *light shove*"

Ugh.

4) Sidequests

The true "sidequests" (the ones given by strangers) are fairly good. Some of them are even quite funny. The minor ones, though, are just terrible.

All of the minigames such as horseshoes, liar's dice, five finger fillet, horsebreaking, etc, are awful. I quit most of them without even finishing a single round.

The miscellaneous encounters are bad too. Riding around the wilderness, see two guys shooting at other guy, shoot two guys, the end. Or, if you're in a town, see guy attempting to murder a prostitute, shoot guy, prostitute runs away screaming because you have your gun out. And if you don't shoot the guy at the right time, you'll get dishonor points.

Oh, and the challenges. Let's not forget about them. Survivalist challenge: collect six flowers. Rank 2! Collect four flowers from this other spot. Rank 3! Collect seven flowers from this other spot. Sharpshooter challenge: shoot three birds. Rank 2! shoot five rabbits. etc, etc, etcetcetcetcetcetcetc.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

5) Inconsistencies

RDR is absolutely chock-full of frustrating inconsistencies. Examples:

- I was in Thieves Landing once, jumped over a fence into some water, went off to do a mission and died. Started again, jumped over the fence into the water in a slightly different spot, and was insta-killed. There's nothing indicating that you should die there. It looks like a small, calm, lazy creek.

- My horse will not go over ledges/cliffs that would do damage to him/me. Except when he will! Most of the time I have to ride aaaaaall the way around a six foot ledge. Occasionally, though, my horse will jump right off a 100+ foot cliff, leaving me with a dead horse and a 30 second "no whistling for a new horse yet" period of slow cowboy-running. On the plus side, John Marston is remarkably resistant to fall damage.

- Whenever I'm on a mission, the tiniest social infraction will fail me. I can be at the very end of a mission, but if I so much as nudge a townsperson aside with my horse (even if they just jumped out from around a corner) I will fail the mission. "You harassed the townspeople." This despite the fact that, while not on missions, the very same action has absolutely no negative effect. Seriously, I climbed into a burning barn, navigated my way through ladders and windows, opened the doors, slapped the horses to get them out, rode the last one triumphantly through the door, was about to finish the mission, and a random ranch-hand jumps into my path. Not killed, just knocked aside. TRY AGAIN, says the game.

Conclusion

Sorry for the ranting nature of this post, but I was really looking forward to playing RDR, and, while I will probably finish it eventually, it's been a big disappointment. There are a lot more frustrations to this game than I can easily tolerate, and the repetitive gameplay and lackluster side activities haven't helped. I wouldn't ordinarily care so much, except that I'm surprised to find this kind of thing in a game rated so highly by virtually every media outlet out there (and, to be fair, gamers that I've talked to as well). It's as if everyone is so completely blinded by the joy of being able to ride off into a beautiful sunset that they overlook the fact that the game just isn't much fun to play.

/sigh.