One of the big surprises of last year for me was Red Dead Redemption. Many people had been downloading preview videos and reading articles about it for months before release, but I had had my head in the sand on this one. Loving GTA as I do, the thought of GTA: Cowboys sounded interesting at first, until I realised that the things I like most about GTA were fairly unlikely to appear in Red Dead Redemption:
- The feel of a living, breathing city.
- Driving cars. Very fast. Into and over people and scenery.
- Flying helicopters. (Again, mostly into other things)
In the end, I mainly bought it because I was aware that the large majority of the Ready Up team (and most of the forum members) were getting it, and I wanted to play the multiplayer modes with them. As it happened, I ended up playing very little of the multiplayer, as I got stuck into the fantastic campaign. Red Dead Redemption was often a sort of eery, dreamlike adventure, with long periods of simply riding across the beautiful game world, spiked with moments of high action and excitement. Many people got bored of all the riding from place to place, but for me it enhanced the game somehow, by really making it feel like it was you and your horse against the vast, empty world. It also helped you connect to the character, in the same way that doing mundane things like setting up for a children’s birthday party in Heavy Rain did.
And the story, well, I loved it. John Marston’s character was fantastically well realised, so it was of no surprise to me that his character won Ready Up’s Best Character of the Year award. The ending was magnificent, and I put down my controller in awe. What a game.
So, when Rockstar announced the extra DLC for the game, I should have been there like a flash, with money (or Microsoft points) burning a hole in my wallet, ready to invest. But this wasn’t just any old DLC, consisting of more missions, characters and locations to explore, no, this was Undead Nightmare, combining the beautiful world of Red Dead Redemption… with zombies and mythical beasts. It sounds like a lot of silly fun. I follow Rockstar on Twitter (@rockstargames) and they frequently reply and retweet comments from people regarding flaming horses, slaughtering zombies and just having a good old fashioned, zombie slayin’, rip-roaringly good time. I’m quite sure it’s brilliant. I’m also quite sure that I don’t want to play it.
I’ve got nothing against zombies or any of that. I’m not some sort of po-faced arse who only plays “serious” or “realistic” games and tuts at anything less highbrow. It’s just that playing John Marston versus zombies would, to me, singlehandedly wipe out all of the majesty and grace of the main story and I wouldn’t be able to look back on it in the same way. I’m sure the Mona Lisa would be much more fun if you were to stick a pair of funny glasses and a clown wig on it, but I’d rather think of the original masterpiece.
Rockstar has been a victim of its own success here — if the main game had been less engrossing, if the story had been a bit weaker or the characters more one-dimensional, then I’d probably be riding around on a flaming horse beheading zombies as we speak. But it wasn’t and I’m not going back.
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