RELIVING RED DEAD
A history of how Rockstar won the West
RED DEAD REVOLVER
There’s a reason Revolver feels like the least Rockstar game the developer has ever made: the screwball Western started life as a Capcom title. When the original team, Angel Studios, was bought by Take Two, it quickly became Rockstar San Diego; the project in turn morphing from a spin on Capcom’s Gun Smoke to a playful ode to Spaghetti Westerns. If the game feels like a salvage job – a patchwork quilt of conflicting, thrown together ideas – it’s because that’s exactly what Revolver is. Which isn’t to say it’s not a stylish salvage job. Once again Rockstar’s reverence for great movies is plain to see, with Revolver frequently riffing on the likes of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly or The Wild Bunch – watch the explosive action in the latter and then play General Diego’s bridge-blowing mission. That Rockstar didn’t create Revolver is likely why it plays out as a hodgepodge series of linear shooting missions, not a sweeping sandbox.
Still, the eclectic cast, spanning cover star Red, badass Bonnie McFarlane precursor Annie Stokes, and the stealthy Native American Shadow Wolf, leads to plenty of varied frontier blasting. And, if nothing else, the game’s slowmo Dead Eye shootouts would at least go on to invigorate Rockstar’s real Western, Redemption.
RED DEAD REDEMPTION
Don’t let anyone tell you gamers don’t dig cowboys. Following the seismic success of Grand Theft Auto IV, it would have been easy for Rockstar to roll on with another carjacking classic. Yet instead of firing straight into a GTA follow-up, the developer gave its San Diego branch the chance to shine with a sequel to the quirky Red Dead Revolver. What followed was, for many, PS3’s best game. Red Dead Redemption crafts a hugely evocative sense of time and place unlike any other game. Its majestic sandbox depicts the dying days of the Old West; an impossibly vast, yet altogether “ROCKSTAR CREATED PERHAPS THE ONLY GREAT OPEN-WORLD STORY.” lonely wilderness. Not only did Rockstar San Diego hone and improve on GTA’s shooting, it managed to create perhaps the only great open-world story. That’s mainly thanks to John Marston, Redemption’s truly terrific lead; a decent yet flawed man chasing penance for a past he can never quite outrun.
The campaign may be stuffed full of superb shootouts, but Rockstar wasn’t done there. Somehow, it also found time to make a brilliant multiplayer, where teams of eight-player posses could freely roam the wilderness, holding up stagecoaches and causing all kinds of online mischief. Six years on, Redemption remains a peerless Western wonderland.
RDR: UNDEAD NIGHTMARE
Talk about jumping the decomposing shark. If GTA IV’s DLC episodes played things a little safe, the same certainly couldn’t be said of Redemption’s zombified expansion. Taking place in a non-canon, alternate timeline, Undead Nightmare sees John Marston ride again, as he roams the Wild West looking for the cure to a zombie plague that has transformed his family into hideous brain-biters. A darkly delicious piece of throwaway zombie action, this DLC allows Rockstar to let its hair down like never before. Hunting Sasquatch! Breaking in the Four Horses of the Apocalypse! Shooting endless waves of old timey, undead cattle ranchers! Undead Nightmare isn’t just absurd, it’s the ultimate Halloween add-on. Brazenly bizarre and unashamedly daft, the expansion ditches Redemption’s quickdraw contests in favour of a flavour of crowd control combat that owes much to Resident Evil 4. As Marston rids Western towns of their undead problem, it becomes apparent Rockstar could make one hell of a horror game if it ever put its mind to it. With GTA V’s DLC going AWOL, and LA Noire’s expansions not feeling very Rockstar-y (it was a Team Bondi game, after all), Undead Nightmare stands as the last truly worthwhile single-player add-on from the studio.