The Long Game

Developer Rockstar Studios Publisher Rockstar Games Format PC, PS4, Xbox One Release 2018

Battling varmints, rival gangs and graphics settings in the wondrous PC version of Red Redemption 2

With perfect timing, Rockstar announced the PC version of its western masterpiece as we were mulling over building a new PC, and the thought of making the best-looking games ever made even prettier is all the incentive we need to get our wallets out, and our anti-static wristbands on.

Yet Rockstar’s games are a curse on PC. Built not just for today but for the future, and with a sprawling settings menu letting us tinker with everything from water physics to tree fidelity, shadow resolution and three different types of anti-aliasing, this is either a tinkerer’s wet dream or a perfectionist’s nightmare. We lock the framerate to 30, slide almost everything up to the highest setting, and try to forget about it.

This hasn’t been the smoothest of launches, however, and at the time of writing Rockstar is still patching out stability and performance issues. We have a running battle with HDR on Windows 10, and things aren’t helped by our video settings being reset to the defaults whenever Rockstar issues a patch. But once it’s up and running, this is clearly the definitive version of one of the games of the generation. On an ultrawide monitor, its already-stunning vistas become simply breathtaking. And while we never really struggled with the controls, moving to mouse and keyboard, with the option of higher framerates if we’re prepared to sacrifice fidelity, means Arthur Morgan feels a good deal snappier in the hands.

Well, eventually. Getting out of the snowbound prologue is a pain for anyone replaying the game – and this is our fourth time through it. One of the first products of a burgeoning mod community is a save file that lets you skip ahead to after the gang’s first move east, and we devour it. It’s hard to perfect your HDR settings beneath a blanket of cloud, after all.

And with all that finally done, we find that the game has lost none of its lustre. We’ve still yet to be taken in by the online component – while Rockstar has regularly updated the mode since launch, that old west setting simply doesn’t afford the same sort of excitement that GTA Online’s inherent consumer-capitalism does with each new update.

But no matter. Specialist PC media have struggled with their RDR2 coverage; after all, it’s not easy to run the critical rule over a game that’s been subjected to every hot take under the baking New Austin sun. Not us. As we ride out across a sun-dappled plain, resplendent in a ludicrous 32:9 aspect ratio, we feel at home, at peace, even as the sound of distant gunfire grows slowly louder. It’s great to be back.