by:	July 21, 2004

The Western movie genre was always a popular in the industry up until 90’s. Only sparsely have movies based on the Western themes have been released over the last decade. The 90’s is when the video game industry finally really began to take off in the right direction. By then the Western movie genre was almost extinct and 90’s was filled with trials and errors on the right video games that would make money for the publishers. Now that there is room once again in the video game industry for some experimenting, leave it to Rockstar to continue to jump right into the Western video games with the step in the right direction. Not counting the pitiful Dead Man’s Hand, Red Dead Revolver is the only solution for the right fix for those looking to steer away from the usual action video games.

The story of Red Dead Revolver is kind of typical though they do put some thought into the rest of the storyline with some twist of events. Throughout the story you will find out who’s working for whom and why they are of course, thus leading you to dwell deeper into the storyline wanting to know more. It kept me interested though there might be a few too many twists as you might be able to predict when the next one will turn up in the story.

The character you control will switch during the story as you will take control of Annie Stokes, Jack Swift, Shadow Wolf, General Diego, a Buffalo Soldier and of course Red Hallow (the main character that you play often). What Rockstar does well is that they present other views of the other characters and make them feel a little more then regular NPCs. Though spoiling the story is not part of my objective, I found that when I ventured off into the other perspectives and being able to play characters like General Diego, I was revealed what was currently happened and how everything ties in.

It is a 3rd person action title so there are some usual problems such as awkward aiming, gun shots off camera and a feature they really tried hard on but failed to make it remarkable. It’s called Showdown and it takes awhile to master. It is the dueling mode when you face off against one or more opponents for the fastest hands in the West. Mastering it is very difficult and to control it you have to pull back on the right thumbstick and push forward on the thumbstick hopefully to be the first to fire away. To win this dueling you have to aim the crosshairs on the enemy and then hopefully get the best shots that are represented with turning to red. Yellow crosshairs are not the best shot but still can be accurate enough to maybe win the battle. The Showdown mode never stuck out to me to be more then an obstacle in the way to getting back to the storyline.

Other features include covering and concealing, and the Dead Eye option. Covering and concealing usually are included in lists of the things that go awry for video games as they are barely implemented right. In RDR, covering and concealment is put in the game as a nice addition. You can take full advantage of hiding behind walls to jump out and take a quick shot at the enemy, and jump back behind the wall easily without any harm done. The Dead Eye is the now often used slow motion mode in almost every 3rd person action game. While slowing down time, the graphics change to give off the effect of a Western movie perfectly, and it really does give you the effect of the hectic gunfire that usually goes down between nemeses. When you do slow down time another neat trick RDR has is that you can shoot certain particular areas of the body that would give you critical hits on the opposition.

The whole time playing through RDR, you can upgrade your weapons, buy new ones, fix ones that are broken, and unlock secret items to use in the multiplayer. These items include a whole turn cast of characters that you can add to the roster to use in the multiplayer mode, journal pages that reveal the story that you are playing through that can be viewed through the main menu, and also the levels on which you can play. The levels range from small to quite big but Rockstar does deliver a nice range of different levels to play against your friends. The cast of characters are diversified. You can play as the clowns, the Indians, the bosses, the friends you meet and there are over thirty selectable characters that you can unlock. The number of characters in the multiplayer give off an RPG effect that seemed the most appealing to keep on playing the single player mode to unlock the whole cast and levels to play on.

The multiplayer modes include the standard deathmatch that allows four players to either team up with another or just go all out and have it a battle royale between all. The other mode includes the Showdown mode to duel to the victor is decided against your friends. It lacks the whole Xbox Live feature that is almost a must for any action title these days. It does have Xbox Live Aware but with a game like this, you must go all out to give the gamers what they want and that is multiplayer options through Xbox Live being available. I believe Rockstar wussed out with the lack of Xbox Live multiplayer and this was something evident that hurt the overall replay ability of this game. They didn’t give me the full immersion into the Western genre and it’s something people won’t forgive them for. (Wait, have they even created a game strictly using the Xbox Live capabilities for any of their action games? Nope only Midnight Club 2 has the options.) Also missing is the Co-op mode to allow you to have a chance to bring a friend into the mayhem and show him the ropes of how being a bounty hunter is more difficult then it looks.

View page two to find out my opinions on the Graphics & Audio ---->