I had been waiting for so many years wishing for a decent western game. This goes beyond anything I could have imagined. When I first started playing I was amazed every 5 minutes. I can't believe how much there is to do and how well it was executed. Beautiful graphically. Deep story. Endless activities. Addictive multiplayer.

This has passed Fallout 3 as my favorite game ever made. I am a lifelong gamer so my time with RDR has been a love affair. Thank you Rockstar.

Don't even think about not buying this game. Buy it. Enjoy it.

one of my friends introduced me to the game and i was hooked after about an hour. the single player is an amazing experience with a great story and great characters. you play as John Marston a former gang member who has been forced to track down his other former gang members. while he embarks on this journey he meets a great cast of characters one of the things i love about this game.during and after the single player there is still lots to do: hunting,bounty hunter,side missions,challenges ,gambling and of course pissing off the police. multiplayer is also an awesome addition even if the game would have been fantastic without it. there's lots to do in multiplayer but the bulk of it is free roam in this game mode you and your friends can explore the world,have shootouts clear gang hideouts and rack up bounty's.there is also death match and team deathmatch and hardcore variants of this. all of these things earn you experience which goes to your level as you gain levels you unlock more guns mounts titles and challenges. overall this is one of the best games i have ever played with its fantastic singleplayer and multiplayer it will keep you busy for a very long time.

Grand Theft Auto in the wild west. That's Red Dead Redemption in a nutshell. If you played the old Rock Star formula and enjoyed it you know what you're getting with this one. Horses instead of cars, six-shooters instead of glocks.

For those unfamiliar with the Grand Theft Auto/Rock Star game expect a sand box world divided into three geographically distinct areas. In between story missions you are free to explore and interact with your surroundings, mostly with your gun. There are mini-games, some of which you might enjoy some you will not and side missions which do not tax your abilities but often your patience.

Overall a good game, though if I had to find a minor fault it would be the pre-mission ride to the story missions. You and the associated mission character will get on horses and race to where the mission takes place. The game provides dialog to listen to which can be entertaining but ultimately for me it could be tedious to run all around the west every time I advanced the plot, especially if it was with a character I had no interest in. Here the wide open game world works against the game without a quick travel feature. Note L.A. Noire, Rock Star's newest game, fixed this allowing you to travel instantly to missions.

Red Dead Redemption deserves all the accolades its received and is one helluva trip to take. I'm pretty late to the next gen console gaming era, but I am quite impressed by what they have done here. Some of my notes:

Gameplay is superb and fluid. You ride horses, shoot things, lasso things, blow things ups, save people, kill people, have a choice to be honorable or dishonorable. It's your choice. One of my favorite moments in the game is lassoing a target up for bounty putting him on your horse and getting the hell back to town to collect the reward.... then all of a sudden you get assaulted by other bandits, in which you slow down time, mark your head shots, and bang. So awesome.

The production of this game is phenomenal.... with some experience photographing the southwest landscape... they've done a stupendous job reproducing a believable southwestern world. There really isn't any other game where you can jump on a horse and ride out into the sunset or sunrise and see the world wonderfully transform in its range of colors reminds me of seeing a sunrise/sunset in the Grand Canyon IRL. True Magic.

The soundtrack is fits the ambience and beautifully done. When free roaming through the world, the tunes are sparse, melancholy, folky. Really helps cement the mood when traveling a place so desolate with areas littered with hope, sadness, and corruption. When the action kicks up... so does the music... tense, fast. Throwing some trumpets here... a dirty electric guitar there... it's quite organic and does great breathing life to this digital world.

Story/backstory is also shines. Rockstar has really done their homework in painting a believable old wild west life with a touch of hollywood with the people, the history, the lifestyle. It's also intriguing how one can study some of the themes of some of the characters and relate to how life is nowadays. Themes of hardship, freedom, racism, drug usage, love, justice, injustice permeate in and out of the game's stories. The game reminds me of life's issues today and a reminder that some issues just take new shapes and sizes. Can't really say that of many games I've played.

There's so much more to express about this game... but that'd be dull.

A must play for the X-Box/PS3.

(Single player review... As Always, I don't care about multi-player)

NOTE TO VIDEOGAME DEVELOPERS: If you want to lessen piracy, and make more money, then make more games like this one.

I just finished playing this game on the XBOX 360 system, and I have to say.... WOW! Now if only it would be released on PC for better graphics to make the immersion even better.

This is a long game, and worth every penny! I do NOT feel ripped off in any way like a lot of single-player games have done recently with short 4 or 5 hour campaigns put in just to sell to people that don't like the multi-player aspect, and scam them out of their hard earned money (or in the case of a large amount of console players, mom and dads money)... There were at least 5 parts in this game that I thought it was the end of the game, only to be surprised that it kept on going. This game is a great escape from reality and I love that!

The scenery is beautiful, and on a nice big HD TV, it is quite engrossing. There were many times I would stop playing just to look at a sunset, or a thunder storm off in the distance. It really felt like a proper western game. Taking place in 1911, I could "feel" the changes coming about in that particular time. It gave this great feeling of the end of an era; Rockstar clearly did their research with this game.

This game did NOT get boring for me, as there are tons of things to do besides just missions. I am a huge fan of non-linear games and this one delivers in nearly every way. From bounty missions, to hunting, to playing all manner of gambling and old west games, to stranger quests and challenges, to riding around and exploring for treasure or new places, just to name a few. If there is something you saw in a western movie, there is a good chance you can do it in this game... From robbing a train to a stage coach or protecting them... Getting into quick draw shootouts. Jumping from a balcony right onto your horse saddle and riding off... Jumping from your horse to a moving train... Climbing up a mountain pass overlooking a camp full of bad guys and then taking pot shots from above... And many more things. The game gives you a choice between being a good guy or bad guy and a few RPG like choices in the game that will affect other parts later on. so the REPLAY value is downright awesome.

This is NOT a game that I will play just once and forget about it. This is definitely a keeper! It even has some awesome single player cheat codes that can make it quite silly and fun and even less annoying in some situations. Nothing like a good old invincibility, and infinite ammo code to make for some interesting times in any game. ^_^ Though using cheat codes disables achievements for that particular save, but achievements on XBOX 360 aren't good for anything anyway so it's no big loss. The most recent patch now allows you to save and progress the story even with cheats enabled, so that is why I waited so long to buy it, even though I played through the first time without cheats.

The controls took a little getting used to. This is where one of my only gripes comes up... Aiming is a pain and the vehicle/horse controls needed some work. There were plenty of times where I would try to aim at one target and end up locking onto a totally different one, sometimes accidentally shooting some random guy off in the distance instead of the skunk or coyote I was trying to hunt... Next thing I know is the coyote got away and now I have a bounty on my head and a posse trying to kill me for the guy I accidentally shot. Or many times I would want to free-aim at some object and instead lock onto a random person instead and end up getting a bounty or shot for pointing a gun at someone. To get a horse going you have to constantly hit the A button, but to stop you have to hold the RB shoulder button, and aiming while trying to follow a road while on a horse is nearly impossible, even though during the tutorial it said while aiming that the horse would follow the road, I found that to be a bit far from the truth. But that is all I can really complain about in this game. Oh! There needed to be BAR FIGHTS! That was the one western movie staple I haven't seen yet.

I had to post a review for Red Dead Redemption because, recently, very few games released truly make my jaw drop and get me to play the game in awe. It is a long game with hundreds, if not thousands, of things to do and a 100% replay value, at least for me. The atmosphere, graphics, physics, and effects are wonderfully done even if it is on an outdated console system (by PC standards). The characters are VERY memorable and well done. The writing and voice acting were spot on! This did not feel like a rushed game. I would have to say that Red Dead Redemption will go on as one of the greats in the videogame world.

Because of this game, I am now on a Western Movie kick. Ah Nostalgia.