So I’m about 20 hours into Red Dead Redemption 2 and so far I’m enjoying my time in the wild, wild west RDR2. However, they’re some underlining issues with the game that robs it from what could be otherwise argued to be one of the great ones of this year.
Don’t worry, I won’t be spoiling anything for you, I’ll just be giving you guys my brief thoughts on the game and what I thought about it. First of, the visuals are clean as hell. Yeah, I’m playing it on the base PS4 and not the Pro but even I can tell just how much detail is packed into the game. From the shivering cold mountain to the lush wildlands, to the towns of the old, everything was springing with life. I could get lost for hours and still would see everything this game has to offer.
There’s a good deal of things to do in RDR2 that it can get a little overwhelming. From shaving and cleaning up Arthur, taking care of your horse, building up the camp, helping out townfolks to robbing people and playing cards, there’s something for everyone.
The story so far is great, I’m still trying to piece together the narrative and what happened in Blackwaters and the future of the outlaws but that’s all going to be revealed soon enough. The game has an honour system which affects how the world of RDR2 will treat you. If you act lawfully, the people will shower you with love and affection and you can even get some discounts at stores. If you act like an outlaw, the town will respond negatively towards you and sheriffs may even attack you on sight. There’s even a level in which you can be feared and no one will mess with you, of course then that means you’ll have a bounty on you. This will all affect your story and the ending so play wisely.
It’s the gameplay were I feel indifferent. The controls for start has some horrible input lag. I’m surprised that not many reviewers have brought this up in their reviews. Even if you have a monitor with less than 2 ms, you will still encounter this problem. It can really hinder the game experience. Speaking of hindering game experience, I don’t like how the game forces you to slow down your character’s movement in certain instances where slow down is not required. This is frustrating as hell.
The movement is also insanely stiff and bothersome to deal with as well. Simple acts such as picking up an item can be a chore. The aim is crazy bad and slow to boot. I remember trying my hardest to aim at this dudes head and I just couldn’t line my shot. Yeah, there’s aim assist but that shouldn’t be a solution for a flawed game design. Have you tried aiming at wolves or a fast moving enemy in RDR2? These guys will run cycles around you and all the while your aim trails around extremely slow, making it impossible to catch them in your sights. I really hope that they’ll fix this with patches in the future.
Aside from that, everything else in this game is fantastic. The music, voice acting, huge world, it’s all fun to explore and consume. The game’s great but not perfect and I personally don’t feel like it deserves a 10/10 when other games would have lost points for having bad controls like this.
