The western genre has been a hard time period for game developers to tackle, but Rockstar proved with Red Dead Redemption that it was possible to make the definitive cowboy game. A spiritual sequel to Red Dead Revolver, this story centered on a hero named John Marsden, a man who used to run with a pack of bandits, but now lives a quiet life on a farm with his wife and son. When they get kidnapped, it's up to John to do some dirty deeds against his former crew in order to get his family back from the government who once chased him as a fugitive. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19N75TL1dHU Rich characters, great gunplay mechanics and the best horse riding in any game ever made gave Rockstar a real winner. In fact, the game was so good that they opted to make a DLC that took the same characters and map, but added a zombie element to it that turned it into a horror story instead of a classic shoot 'em up western. The story and side activities almost matches the scale of the original game, giving gamers a sequel without having to wait years to see it. The large map was split into portions of the United States and Mexico. Fast travel points were very useful as riding from one end of the map to the other would take quite awhile. The game is mostly a desert locale, but the northern portion of the map includes large fields and a forested area that leads up to snowy mountains and frozen lakes. The animals you hunted varied depending on which area of the map you were in and prices for the meat and pelts you gathered were higher in areas where the animal was less common. A cycling weather and night to day system added to the realism and exploring the whole map included many hidden rewards. You could easily call this a GTA set in the west, but it's so much more than that. The hunting and trading system added a level of reality to the game and the large cast of memorable characters made you enjoy the dozens of hours it took to do everything there was to do throughout the entire world.
I have been a writer for Bleacher Report for several years, and am now happy to also be a writer at What Culture! I do my best to contribute anywhere I can in a positive way, and that includes in my writing. Some people call me The Doctor, but Chris is fine.
