Red Dead Redemption

started to get bored with this. The novelty, nice graphics, good soundtrack etc. fooled me for a while, but i'm starting to feel a bit disillusioned with it. The combat in GTA was never the best part, the auto-aim, move your cursor up slightly to get a headshot, shoot, repeat action gets old pretty quickly.

I tried shooting the Mexican Army dudes instead of the rebels but the rebels didn't back me up! Anybody know if that works if you play as a bad guy? Kind of hate that I have to go along with these assholes.. I thought that the decision to be a bad guy or not might make a difference in how some of these plot points played out.

(In this case "bad guy" equals good guy)

Jim, you should switch off casual targeting. I only noticed recently that I had mine on normal, tried switching it down to casual and it kind of breaks the game, it makes everything way too easy.

Went a bit nuts and slaughtered everyone at the McFarlane ranch last night. Now getting regularly chased by a big posse, which is fun but might get annoying pretty quickly.

so the default targeting is the one that makes the game too easy? that's a bit daft.

i am firmly in the "this is a great game but somehow kinda boring" camp

really not found this boring even tho riding a horse is less crazy fun than driving a car and the landscape is less varied than gta. i just think there's more going on gameplay-wise than gta, the missions are more varied and the stranger missions seem less incidental. although most of them end up pretty o_O - people convinced their dead partners are alive, people dying in the desert, people in love with animals...

but also it's just cool chilling out and riding around in the wild west!

i am firmly in the "this is a great game but somehow kinda boring" camp

― Roberto Spiralli

despite being english iirc this guy is great and correct 99% of the time.

otm

I just beat this and I have to say it took some interesting turns at the end... HOWEVER i did hit the boredom threshold and raced past the "at home with the Marstons" and "REVENGE" segments.
Great game, it just doesn't hold up after like thirty hours or so.

but hey, that's like two bucks an hour for great entertainment; gold star from me and probably my fave game of the year thus far.

Argh, I must be cursed when it comes to honor! Another "rescue my wagon!" mission, and this time as I'm driving the wagon back to its owner, he is killed by wolves, and I'm docked 50 honor points because he died. wtf.

was on normal targeting. Game was far too easy. Switched to expert, now it's fairly difficult at times and you have to actually use the bullet-time. Maybe this will make things interesting.

opened up the fourth area now.

CANNONS!

Dangit, I need to get my priorities in order and get back into this. Several days ago I finally stopped goofing around and went on the long raft ride into Mexico, and somehow ended up dying. And then went to bed and had a busy week at work, and haven't played it since.

I recommend that if you get bored, try playing the game without the map. I played without it for awhile last night and it felt much more immersive to me. I tracked some guys down by following the river up to their location. Whenever I stopped to kill a bear or etc. I really had to stop and get my bearings.

Killed my horse last night when it got caught in the crossfire when I was bounty hunting. Was genuinely sad. Also had epic winning poker session then realised I was on my brother-in-laws save game. D'oh!

I would be sadder about ma hoss dying if I couldn't whistle another one up almost immediately. makes horse buying and horse breaking kinda pointless. also kinda lol at how i can hitch him to a post, get a stagecoach all the way across the map, then whistle for him and he's just round the corner.

Having a new horse available at the call of a whistle is unrealistic, but I'd take that over having to run on foot until I found a new horse (in the case of my horse dying out in the boonies) or having to wait 8 minutes while the horse ran across the map (in the case of long distance stagecoach travel)

Or you could reload the last save which is what I was doing until I didn't bother once and decided to buy a horse and it turned out one horse deed meant unlimited horses

Yeah true, tho I didn't know I could just whistle up another hoss! I shot one of the varmints chasing me for killing his boss, lassoed his mount & hightailed it outta there, so no drama. Good times...

Would be nice to have some extra incentive for buying or breaking hosses, like races which you can't actually win with the default mount.

Yeah.

I've finally just gotten into a good groove with shooting/covering. I feel confident going into any battle that if I'm patient I can pretty much just kill everybody. (Though close quarters can get dicey.)

My major niggle is that your decisions (to be good or bad; who to shoot) don't have any effect on the plot. It seems like such a golden opportunity lost. For instance, you realize you're actually helping a bunch of oppressive rapist assholes in Mexico; why can't you turn around and shoot the fuck out of them? Why is there no reward for that? I've tried it so many times. On the second guarding the train mission, for instance, I turned the Gatling gun on the captain then wiped out the army camp. For my troubles I got a bounty on my head and negative honor? Negative honor?? These guys are oppressive murdering rapists who are bleeding the country dry!

I want to join the fucking rebels NOW, not when the game tells me to. It just seems fucked that in an "open world" game I'm not allowed to.

Yeah ... I guess trying to figure out your affiliation based on whoever you're arbitrarily killing at the time could get tricky, but even a simple 'firebomb/don't firebomb' choice during that first mission at the rebel village would have been welcome.

Didn't MGS4 have some kind of system where you could blend in with various factions? I was thinking something like that, I guess. It would just be so awesome to turn around and murder every last one of those firebombing rapist motherfuckers, just wipe em all out, get on your horse and hightail it, and have somebody ride up beside you and say "we want to talk to you.. follow me" and suddenly you're doing rebel missions instead of army ones. I mean yes eventually you do hook up with Reyes and start killing army dudes but it's something that just happens to you instead of you making a decision. I guess that's what seems weird, for all the "free will" of an open world game there's a surprising lack of consequential decisions you get to make.

With the firebombing mission one of the soldiers sticks around to examine the wreckage after the mission, so I just shot him and ran off and got away with it. If you try that with the later one where you get a sniper rifle you get swarmed by about 300 pissed off army guys and get a massive bounty and die.

DEAD

sucks after you've just spent all morning killing wolves

Huge lolz last night - I wandered up to that little cave where West Dickens lives, and found him stood there rambling away to himself while pissing onto his own bed. Went a bit closer to try and get a better look (yes, I was looking for his winkie), but accidentally bumped into him, which caused him to fall face first into his own pissy matress and lie there shouting about what a bastard I was.

While still pissing, btw.

lol

While galloping down the open road, I quite enjoy running up the back of small wagons. Sometimes they fall over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsLqBLhRbBg

took me like 10 minutes to catch this guy and then he tumbled off the cliff. i had him like a marionette but sadly couldn't do anything.

With the firebombing mission one of the soldiers sticks around to examine the wreckage after the mission, so I just shot him and ran off and got away with it. If you try that with the later one where you get a sniper rifle you get swarmed by about 300 pissed off army guys and get a massive bounty and die.

― MPx4A, Monday, June 14, 2010 6:22 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark

I firebombed that guy, it felt so right.

i just handed escuela over to the mysterious bowler-hatted city boys who, it is intimated, have me over a barrel.

blew quite a bit of dough on a couple of better guns, only to have two guns even better than those show up in my inventory mysteriously. i have no idea how i got them.

i tried getting my money back from the opium dealer but fucked it up.

i helped the "judicial" clear out the town, then we both went upstairs to confront the gang leader and the stupid fucking "judicial" steps right in front of my sawed-off and gets two shells full in the face. "the judicial has died". i guess i'm not getting 100%!

i just knew they were going to make reyes a dick somehow. ah look, he's actually an elitist aristocrat! just like all those fuckin lefties amirite? love all his troops holding their guns aloft and shouting "may hee COE!!! may hee COE!! may hee COE!!" like they're at a wrestling match.

it was kind of weird that reyes stops fucking his girl immediately when marston walks in the room. i don't know but if that was me i'd be like uh, can you get lost for a while, marston? i guess everybody's got a boner for john marston. including the obviously gay/bi de santo, who you get to brutally beat (ostensibly to get information about escuela, even though reyes has promised you the information anyway) and then even get the opportunity to plug between the fucking eyes, as he squirms helplessly beneath you! fucking weird. i walked away. did anyone here blow his big gay brains out?

re: opium dealer i guess it wasn't "my" money exactly, heh heh

still haven't robbed a bank, am i missing anything?

i finally decided to check out the "stats" page.. it certainly seems that one could have some box-ticking fun with how many crimes one could commit...

another question - i've got a few bounties put on my head, rode like wildfire to evade the cops, never paid them off.. and they appear to have just sort of disappeared? i thought bounties were forever. if not, why does anyone bother to pay them off?

they will come back for sure. I find they usually come @ twilight and usually around a town. Then it's 20 minutes of riding to escape. I actually paid off a 120$ bounty and it actually felt like a good decision

I'm up to about $900 of wantedness, I find it's quicker and easier to just kill any police who decide to start chasing me, rather than outrunning them. They don't seem to respawn that regularly anyway.

ahh i'm not playin that way though. honor is my badge.

Ah, I used to be like you...

Honor has its benefits! I can loot armoires and nobody gives a shit!

I can loot armoires and if anyone complains I FUCKING SHOOT THEM.

qft

what's all this about armoires anyway, btw? Are we actually talking about armories?

You've started convincing me, it must be said.

They're like French wardrobes - very popular in wild Western times.

finally got to play this last night, good stuff. how are you supposed to subdue people (at least before getting a lasso)? i would try using my fists and either die or accidentally beat them to death anyway, or them shooting in the legs. a couple times it gave me the "mission complete" flag while they were still alive (but injured), and i would start walking away only to have them shoot me in the back.

the horseshoes game is strangely addictive.

i have never played horseshoes or arm wrestling.

don't understand liar's dice

the knife/fingers game is just stupid

J0rdan i don't think you really can do much subduing without the lasso TBH. sometimes drawing your gun and firing it can be enough to break up fights.