Red Dead Redemption 2

Oooh atmospheric

I've set up camp on a rocky outcrop overlooking a plain teeming with bison and smaller game. The blue sky looms immensely overhead and it's dotted with little cotton wool clouds that are lazily making their way to nowhere. I'm weak and tired so I sit down to cook myself up a slice of wild turkey that I've just shot down on the llano. My energy comes back just as I hear the first shots. The Pinkertons have found me. My horse rears up in fear as I reach for my repeater rifle. The bastards are getting closer. Crawling towards the edge of the cliff I can hear them planning. Looking down I see 3 approaching while 4 more move into flanking positions. 2 to my left and 2 to my right. I sight down my gun at the closest one. Numerous movies come to mind. The end of The Naked Spur. Humphrey Bogart's last stand in High Sierra and Ben Foster's similar scene in 2016's Hell Or High Water. The tension is palpable. If I don't make my move now I'm a goner. The trigger is squeezed and a scream fills the air.

Anytime a new Rockstar game is released the hype around it is deafening. Best game ever. Mindblowing. A game changer. All that jazz. The thing is though, it's nearly always right. Their games do tend to live up to the hype around them. Red Dead Redemption 2 does in spades. It's amazing. It's beautiful. It's filled with a mind boggling array of things to do. It's dangerous. You could lose evenings and entire weekends to it. It's quite possibly the best computer game I've ever played. No word of a lie.

Ansel Adams couldn't do better

The year is 1899. Red Dead Redemption 2 tells the story of Arthur Morgan, known thief and murderer. Forced to do a legger with his gang after a failed robbery, him and his buddies hightail it to the mountains to regroup. They're broke, wounded and tired. To get some much needed funds Arthur along with gang leader Dutch and their young charge John Marston rob a train. A train that's owned by oil magnate Leviticus Cornwall. Cornwall is not a man to be trifled with and soon enough he has sent the Pinkerton agency to hunt down the gang. Arthur and his men must now try to keep one step ahead of the law while making money the only way they know how, robberies, heists, hijacking and general mayhem. Along the way they pick up stragglers here and there and soon there's enough of them to fill a village. But large groups of people are harder to hide as the era of Manifest Destiny is in full flow and more and more people are arriving in pursuit of the American Dream.

This just blew me away. In a year that's seen the release of both God Of War and Marvel's Spiderman I never expected this to become my favourite game. It's that good and for fans of the western genre it's an even bigger treat. It's a sandbox for adults. The entire map is open to us to discover within a few hours of starting the game and it's up to you to do what you want to do. A fan of exploring? Grab a horse and go for a ride. The game map is so big it will take you 2 -3 hours just to ride around the border. Like a bit of virtual hunting? Arm yourself and head off. Poker fan? Dominoes?? The notorious game of five finger fillet (Made famous in Aliens). Fill your boots. The sky is the limit. Best of all, everything you do improves your in-game experience. Exploring will build your health and your stamina. Hunting will increase your dead eye gun skills. Winning games will make you money allowing you to buy better horses, better guns and better food for yourself to keep you going. Nothing you do here is a waste of time.

My Wild Bunch moment scored to a suspiciously Morricone sounding piece of music

Of course you can also jump into the missions too. This isn't a bad idea tbh as it doesn't take long before the game provides you with a good horse and solid weapons. The missions are a fine mix of shoot 'em up moments, chases, stealthy sneaking around and ..... well there's far too much to go into. Let's just say you'll never ever get bored. One minute you're chasing a thieving street urchin around the alleyways of a Cajun town and the next you're sneaking around a tobacco plantation dousing it with moonshine to start the mother of all fires. 30 minutes later you're driving a carriage full of women to a protest for equal voting rights and next you're lobbing dynamite at a Ku Klux Klan meeting. Then there's the old western staples of bank robberies and carriage hold ups and more fire fights than you can shake a stick at. It's just so much fun. There's a bucket load of side missions too. House robberies, bounty hunting, loan retrievals. All skippable but all a handy revenue source too.

Of course it being the Wild west everything and anything is done on horseback. Your trusty steed is always by your side and its a good idea to keep him or her sweet. The nicer you are to your horse the better your riding (fnarr) experience will be. If you feed it, pat it, groom it well you'll reap the benefits in the form of increased strength, speed and stamina and in no time you'll be yee-hawing your head off as you drift across the high plains. The same goes for the people you meet on your travels. If you're sound to them they'll generally be sound to you and things will go your way. Sort of. Looking after your gang means looking after your campsite in the form of upgrades which will save you money in the long run as you can stock up there instead of making a potentially life threatening trip to the shops. Everything you'll ever need is in the shops if you do go. Tins of peaches (no unauthorised cinnamon though), hair pomade, hay, cocaine, tobacco, fancy gin and all the bullets in the world. And after a shopping spree you can always go for a haircut and then pick up some dandy clothes to impress all and sundry when you go to the theater for a show. See, you can do literally everything.

Walk with your horse every now and then to let it build back up it's strength

Triple A game releases are always well made but this game just oozes quality. The graphics are stunning and it's recreation of the American frontier will drop your jaw. From the high snowy, bear filled mountains of the North to the mesa's surrounded on all sides by plains to the bayou's and marshlands of the South. There's enough variety here for the most jaded of gamers and in all honestly its the type of game that will entice people who've never played a game in their life. The voice acting as well is spot on. Each character is distinct from the next and in no time you'll find yourself actually caring about them and being horribly pissed off when you witness them getting shot in the face during a high street shoot out. Being set in the Wild West it's no surprise to hear a variety of accents and it was a pleasure to hear genuine Irish accents in the mix too. One character, Sean Maguire, will fast become your favourite. The character we control, Arthur, is an ornery old son of a bitch but soon enough you'll come to love his drawl and his dry wit. 

Some people, especially those who have played a lot of open world games will moan about the lack of a fast travel feature. I saw this as a massive plus because it forces you to actually travel around the in-game world. After a while it becomes second nature and just riding through the picturesque countryside is something you'll be thinking about in your dreams. The slower pace takes a while to get used to as well but soon you'll be craving it. It's just fantastic fun. Even the smaller moments too. How many games let you have a bath and give you the option of which limb to scrub first. A donation of a dollar to an amputee civil war veteran that leads to a conversation about masculinity. Watching a bunny rabbit scurrying through the grass as you pelt by. Walking through a cornfield when the sun is setting and the breeze is causing the field around you to sway gently as you stand there feeling like the only person in existence. Honestly, its a rare game that gets you in the feels but this does and then some.

If you've any interest in gaming at all it's worth trying this. It's an amazing experience getting to jump into a world that will never exist again.