Hardy Har Har

The latest Magnum Opus from Rockstar: Red Dead Redemption 2 (The redemptioning) has just been released ... and I'm not impressed. Yes, it's large; yes, it's pretty; but from all I've seen it looks to be just one giant slog.

I had that same experience with Shadow of Mordor and, coincidentally, the initial RDR. At the point where we've played the full range of mini-games is the point where the game should end - except they do not. Nothing is gained by drawing out your game time by a factor of 2,3 ... or even 10 in RDR2's case. The reason I no longer play Assassin's Creed games is simply because I don't enjoy the grind. I enjoyed the first game ... but subsequent sequels just doubled down on bloat and collect-a-thons and a completely nonsensical story-line.

For all the reverie directed toward RDR2's polish, I can still say that the gameplay remains steadfastly last-gen. Let me say that again: the fundamental game remains exactly the same. There are exactly zero advancements to this new sequel and exactly zero challenge to the dumb-as-something-really-quite-dumb adversaries. The way Rockstar ramps up the difficulty is simply to throw a bunch more goons in your direction. You don't even need to take cover as you have insta-heal items and insta-fill dead-eye meter potions. For those of you unfamiliar, Dead-eye is a cheat-mode built into the game. When initiated it puts everything in slow-motion while you paint multiple targets with red crosses before you mow them down with zero challenge.

But the fans of this series would say that 'It's about the story' and, apparently, this may be its only saving grace. In the classic world of sequels this one unsurprisingly turns out to be a prequel, with the main story arc focussing on the origin for one of the core characters from the first RDR. But that isn't a good enough reason to play through. The problem lies in the need to have an open world but also have a tightly-governed story. I think Shadow of Mordor did a far better job of building an organic story with its Nemesis system which chronicled the rise-and-fall of your adversaries as you either killed their leaders or were killed in the process. The problem with RDR2 is that for its story missions there is only one way it can play out. You will end in a 'try again' screen if you deviate even slightly from what the story scripted. It reminds me of those canned FMV games where there is only one path through it. Yes, you may have a little more freedom now but it does still boil down to the same thing.

And that's, really, the problem I have with Rockstar games. Here are the fundamentals of what they prioritise (e.g. GTA 4/5, RDR1/2):

• Realistic reproduction of world locales
• Realistic depiction of characters
• Strongly curated story path
• Realistic side missions
• Realistic/accurate music
• Realistic voice acting 
• Realistic excuses for collecting various items (collect-a-thons)
• Overly-long game time
• Overly-repetitive missions
• Overly-serious tone
• Bringing the movie feel to a game

Note that fun is not on that list. They are more focussed on realism and film-making (yes, really) than actually providing a good experience. In my opinion, the last fun game was Grand Theft Auto Vice City which had the best soundtrack, played up the 80's era and had a bunch of fun lampooning classic movie scenes from that era. There was still a story (with some great actors) but it was overshadowed first-and-foremost by an overall sense of fun. Somewhere along the line the game producers lost sight of why we play games in the first place. At this point Rockstar should just rip the band-aid off and start creating movies because they sure as heck aren't creating games anymore.