Because Red Dead Redemption 2 seems to offer to let you stop and smell the roses, but there are a thousand roses with five buttons to hit every time, and it won’t tell you that you were only supposed to smell the yellow roses until you’re finished with the task. It’s a game that constantly tries to explain a complicated approach to things that are simple in every other game I’ve played. Rockstar spent a surreal number of man-hours to get the light to glisten just so as it hits a realistically rendered horse scrotum, but it couldn’t figure out how to create equipment menus that I could understand after dozens of hours of practice. It’s a game that requires the self-punishing dedication of a hardcore gamer without actually being a hard game or giving me any sense of accomplishment.
It’s a story. One whose writers ultimately knew what they wanted to say, but who also piled on so many of these same ideas over and over that it begins to feel meaningless. In short, it’s a game that wants to pull itself out of the tar pit with its face.
This is probably one of the best – if not the best – reviews of a video game, or any other product for that matter, I’ve ever read. It is incredibly long, detailed, and manages to ask – and answer – a ton of very pertinent questions about not just Red Dead Redemption 2 itself, but the gaming industry as a whole.
I’ve played Red Dead Redemption 2, and I consider it to be a bad game. The controls are a convoluted mess, the story lacks pacing and is all over the place, and the game forces so much pointless, meaningless, and repetitive busywork on the player I just got frustrated and bored. Parts of this particular review go into great detail regarding these matters, and it’s refreshing to see someone pay so much attention to these things other reviewers and players just ignore because shiny visuals.
It’s a long read, and I’m sure many RDR2 fans and players will disagree, but don’t let that stop you from reading this.
This reminds me a lot of the controls in GTA V. I feel like it’s just a problem rockstar has in general, they don’t make controls very consistent or intuitive. In GTA it’s even more annoying since in some circumstances they allow zero overlapping controls, even in modes which could never overlap. For instance, you CANNOT bind steering with air control in your car to a single button, even though that would be the natural thing to do, and is how it works on PS3.
You description of the game is spot on, i loved the first red dead and was counting down the hours to the release of this game and was massively disappointed.
Like you say it’s boring, the controls are all over the place and it felt like actual ‘work’ playing the game there was no fun to be had. I dont know how they messed it up as i love the assassins creed series of games and they manage to map out the controls in a very intuitive way, especially in the latest game odyssey.
Such a shame as i had such high hopes for the game, in the end i traded it in at the end of the week so i was able to get some value back out of it as it was a new desirable game.
I do see the shortcomings of the game mechanics and the story. But I have to say that I like the game because to me it’s just relaxing. I can sit back, have a couple of beers, and rack up hours hunting or robbing the occasional camper or stagecoach. I’m thinking it’s because I’m just getting old. 🙂
I read about 30% of that review before gleaning through the rest to get to the conclusion – all I can say is he basically covered the same points I made (without having played it) and I still maintain my vigil on never wanting to play it.
https://stephenherfst.blogspot.com/2018/11/hardy-har-har.html
… for those who don’t have 8 hours to read his breakdown 🙂