Review: 'Red Dead Redemption 2' (PS4).

Yesterday, I finally managed to finish Rockstar Games' highly anticipated game 'Red Dead Redemption 2' on my PlayStation 4.  I managed to finish the game after spending almost two months playing it (60 gaming hours or so in total) on my console.  

So below are some thoughts about the game that received universal praise from the critics. Even though I'm not saying that 'Red Dead Redemption 2' was bad, it's pretty obvious that it could have been a better game than it turned out to be. 

The Good:

🔼 Might be the best looking game ever.

Probably the best thing about 'Red Dead Redemption 2' is that it might be the best looking game that I've played (massive open world map). It manages to be even better than 'Uncharted 4', a game that took interactive graphics (terrain, objects etc.) to a whole new level.

In practice, during the gameplay, it was simply a joy to look at the environment and the attention to detail. Especially when it came to the 'Caribbean island map', I absolutely loved how warm and vibrant everything in the game looked. 

🔼 Tons of things to discover in the game.

There are a lot of things to do in 'Red Dead Redemption 2' besides the story-mode. Things like side quests and activities (hunting, fishing, bounties, crafting, gathering, gambling etc.) increase the replay value rather substantially.

In my case, now that I've finished the story-mode I'm going to try some of those activities that I didn't try the first time around. Among other things,  I'm going to hunt down the big bear, catch some of those 'wanted' guys and help the photographer guy in the forest too. 

🔼 Excellent voice acting, sound effects & music.

When it comes to the voice acting in the game, I genuinely enjoyed pretty much every moment that included the characters talking. The characters felt real and it was obvious that those behind the voices really gave their best to make everything sound authentic.

This attention to detail was also apparent when it came to music and sound effects. The soundtrack in the game is wonderful and the sound effects (guns, horses, trains, animals, environment, rain, wind etc.) are also first rate. 

The Bad:

🔽 The game is simply too slow.

Someone estimated that of the 60 hours that it takes to finish the story mode, at least 25+ hours of the gameplay consists of riding your horse from place A to B. This is just too much and makes playing the game seem too much like work.

In retrospect, had the game provided things like a good 'fast travel' option, the flow would have been at least a little bit better. In that case playing the story would have been a more entertaining and a more enjoyable experience.   

🔽Shooting & moving mechanics leave a lot to be desired.

Controlling your character - as unfortunate as it is - turned out to be pretty difficult. The way your character moves, runs or jumps at least in my opinion isn't very intuitive and doesn't feel particularly natural for some reason.

What's worse, targeting and shooting tends to be even more difficult (in many cases bugged). Especially when you get to the final phase in the story, there are enemy mobs that you won't be able to hit no matter how accurately you target them.

The Ugly:

🔽 A passive main character hurts the story.

One of the weakest aspects of the story is that your main character Arthur Morgan is incredibly passive from start to finish. He doesn't know what he wants and more or less always does what the other 'villain' characters tell him to do.

As a result, the only thing that supposedly pushes the story forward is the quest to get more money for the gang (so that they could supposedly escape). This doesn't really work that well and gets old pretty fast as the quests keep repeating themselves.

🔽 Story structure in the game is pretty bad.

Finally, even though the main story wasn't completely bad, it's pretty unfortunate how the story was structured. It made no sense that you had to switch from one protagonist to another during the game's story-mode (your protagonist dies at 70%).

In the end, all this cheap shot (every person I know hated it) did was that it turned off players from liking the game. It made you think that the writers didn't know what they were doing and that they just took the easiest way out to 'wrap' the story.