Opening words:
Oh boy, a wild wild west version of Grand Theft Auto with horses instead of cars, oh boy. WTF were they thinking?

Presentation: 9.5
They really do a great job at presenting the game to you in the old west style, Rockstar never fails at this. The acting is good, the graphics are good, the menu system is easy to figure out.

Single Player: 9.5
So, if you have played grand theft auto, this will seem kind of familiar. Aiming, auto aim, button configs are the same. Riding the horses takes some getting used to and believe it or not, I really loved it. You have to get the timing of hitting the button in a good rhythm to get the best out of your horse, to much and he will buck you off, you have to watch the blue bar on the lower left indicator. They are a little stiff to control, but its kind of fun. This game progresses just like the Grand Theft Auto games. This has a big huge open world you can explore, ignore the story, and do petty side missions like, break and capture horses, you can gamble in every town(Texas hold em, and all kinds of games), Random missions will find you by strangers in peril, they don’t vary unless you travel far. The story is pretty good, it surprised me. Some of the missions you have to herd cattle, lol. This game turned me into a red neck. Kind of fun, a lot more fun than I thought. You can be good or evil. You can help people or hurt them. If you are bad guy, you get bounties on your head all the time, and will be under attack randomly all the time. I really liked when you go to Mexico, the story gets even more interesting in Mexico. I loved the ending, It made me go WTF, I played as a hero. I wont ruin it so.

Visuals: 8.9
This is the GTA engine, they made it look nice, the deserts, the mountains, the red rocks, the sunsets, the open world, the towns, the people, the details, the characters, everything is better here than in gta I think. More refined and more convincing. Some slow down happens when a lot of stuff is going on. Over all I am very impressed.

Audio: 9.2
There is not the massive sound track that is found in the GTA games, but what is here fits right. The voice acting is amazing in this game, better than so many other games on the market.

Game mechanics: 9.7
It’s the same as GTA4 exactly for the most part. What really kicks ass is red eye, when you build up your red eye gauge, in the lower left corner, the red bar, you hold aim and hit r3, everything gets red and goes into slow motion, then you aim on what you want to shoot hit r1 to tag it, and x will appear, then move to the next target, you can get head shots if you want, when you are done or if the red eye runs out, hit the r2 to set it off, and man it does this rapid fire shooting that just rips people up. In single player its slow motion, in multi-player its just rapid fire., red eye works in both modes even though they are slightly different. Red eye really is what makes this game so damn cool to me. Riding the horses is cool as well, they did a good job making you hit x for spurs. The duels are really fun as well, when you get challenged to a duel, its a mini game, you have to draw, then the cursor pulses, you have to aim it on the part of of the body you want to hit, then hit the fire button right when the cursor pulses white, who ever gets the most shots on time, wins the duel. This can be really hard. Not as bad once you get used to it. I love putting on the cheaters clothing, then get caught cheating at cards, lol, then its duel time. Another good this is the carriages, they are like cabs, you can find these in the major cities and allow you to fast travel at a price, I used these a lot so I didn’t have to ride my horse every where. This really helps. People complain about the auto aim, you can play in online games hardcore with no auto aim, but honestly, when riding on a horse or a car, I like auto aim and can see why this is here, not to mention, to make the game more mainstream and easy for the unskilled. I like the auto aim. I am skilled as well, so..

Online: 8.0
This is where the game really shines, I could not stop laughing the first time I got on, I was a dirty bum and all I could ride was an obnoxious donkey that was slow as fuck, lol. You have to run around and do missions in the free roam to get xp points, which allows you to select different characters and horses and guns for the free roam world, then you can make posses, and join up with friends, and do do all the missions in the free roam, or have the leader of the posse select free for all modes, gang modes, and then you can play as a team. In the vote lobby, once you vote you can run around an assault people in the world, this is so awesome. Even better is the shootout at the beginning of the rounds, team shoot outs or free for all, has a count down, then a sudden randomly timed draw, then who every shoots the fastest wins. This is amazing, another thing that really adds to the fun of the game.

Replay:10
Being able to play as a good guy, or a bandit really makes this worth playing twice. The online modes are better than any gta modes, I find this is more like the old old socoms in some ways, fun to just run around and shoot. The online mode makes this something to keep, not to mention there will be co-op dlc coming out soon, free too, not to mention the other dlc rock star always plans. This is a keeper. I can see myself playing this for ages. It is so different.

Total score: 10
This game is amazing, it totally surprised me, I was not expecting to like a red neck game at all. I have to say this is probably the most fun I have had in a game for a long time. I liked the story, the characters, the open world, the graphics, the side missions, all the mini games, and they way the executed it all. This is now my favorite game of all time, I never would of thought this could beat out my other old favorites. I have had more fun with this game than any other game in the last 20 years. I love the GTA games so this is why, if you don’t like the gta games, stay far away from this.

Click here to buy Red Dead Redemption on ps3 blueray.