Last week saw the release of the latest game from Rockstar Games. I had really high hopes for Red Dead Redemption. Firstly, it's a Rockstar game. I don't think there has been a game they've made I've not liked. And, secondly because it looked to be the sequel to Gun I've been waiting for. What did I make of it? Well keep reading and you'll soon know.

Holy crap this game is awesome! I told you'd know soon. Red Dead Redemption is one of the finest games I've ever played. It has absolutely everything a game needs. Plenty to do in single player, decent story line, multiplayer with healthy life expectancy, detail and stunning visuals.

Single Player and Story

It's coming to the end of the Wild West. With the advances in technology America is changing. Telephones and railways are shortening the distance between two places. Once isolated area see trains passing through daily. Everyone is trying to make a quick buck and often not caring what's in the way. Railways want to expand and burn down farms to do so, rustlers are killing farmers for their livestock, and gangs are after anything they can get. Sheriffs are trying to bring order while being paid to turn a blind eye to the crimes of their paymasters. The Federal Government is growing and after the country too. An honest man is becoming harder to find. That's just America. Across the border in Mexico a revolution is starting. A grass roots movement to over throw the dictator who are fighting the Mexican army to win their freedom.

You play the character of John Marston, an ex-gang member trying to settle down and stay out of trouble. You've found a ranch for you, your wife and child where you want to live out the rest of your life in peace. Unfortunately, you cannot go back to your family just yet. You've some unfinished business forced upon you that you must complete first. You've got to capture or kill three of your ex-gang members on behalf of some federal officials in order to go back to your life. Killings these men isn't the problem, they left you for dead, it's finding them that'll be hard. This leads you on an epic journey through America, over to Mexico and back.

To be honest the story line isn't the most original. The "bad guy turning good but has to fight one last fight" story has been done before. And the way you go about it is almost identical to every Grand Theft Auto game. Simply put it's involved meeting people, telling them who your looking for, helping them, then they help or betray you, and repeat. It's not that bad. The only thing negative about the story is it's quite predictable. But it is well thought out and the dialog it nothing but quality. It might be predictable but it's entertaining all the way through and executed with the high production values that Rockstar are know for.

As with all free roaming games there is a lot of travelling to do. In some free roaming games (True Crime: Streets of LA comes of mind) it can be such a bore. Red Dead Redemption has solved this with attention to detail and having a real living environment. While riding you'll come across people being held up at gun point, hunters wanting to challenge you, men wanting to duel with you, people hunting and being attacked by animals, and more. You always have a choice. You can just ride on or you can get involved. Getting involved is a great way to break up that long journey and can earn you money, frame and honour. You can even lose some honour if that's the way you want to play it. If you do bad things you lose honour and will increase the bounty on your head. The higher the bounty the more often gangs and the law will come after you. This can happen at any time outside of a mission and is yet another thing to keep you entertained.

The Wild West

The world in Red Dead Redemption is pretty big. It includes great plains, snow covered mountains, forests, endless desserts and everything in between. Through out the would there are places that vary from the modern town to make shift camp sites and large ranches to abandoned villages. The best parts are outside of the populated areas. All of the areas look, sound and feel completely different. The forests are full of deer, bears, hogs, wolves, foxes and more, and all types of birds while the plains have very little vegetation and only herds of buffalo. Animals play a big part in the game. They are everywhere and there's over 30 different species. You can hunt them, skin them and sell what you get. Animals will even attack you so you have to be on your guard. It's yet another part of the Red Dead Redemption world that keeps you busy.

The whole in game world is stunning. The graphic effects are realistic in every way. Everything looks perfect. You can see for miles around. You can actually see places in Mexico from the northern most point in America. The weather in America is normally sunny with clouds and in Mexico the clouds are no where to be seen. Storms roll in every once in a while and provide my favourite effect in the game. Lightening. I've not seen lightening in a game that has been do so right. When lightening strikes the whole world changes. Everything lights ups, everything casts a shadow and puddles reflect the light. It's perfectly done. Before the lightening comes you get rain. Rain causes puddles to form. These form slowly and realistically. You even get rain filling up the tracks you leave behind. There is, of course, a day/night cycle. Morning and evenings are colourful with the sun's pinky, orangey rays shinning from behind the clouds and scenery. The nights are cold. Well they feel cold. Thousands of stars shine in the sky, each one different to the last. Just perfect when you're sitting by the camp fire of a fellow traveller, listening to their stories (yes, another thing you can do in Red Dead Redemption).

Everything is animated so smooth and realistically. From the rabbits hopping through the grass to the carts bouncing on the uneven roads. Sound is also really well done. In the towns you can hear the hustle and bustle of people going about with their lives. In the wild you can hear animals, the wind, water flowing and everything else you'd expect. All accompanied by a fitting sound track including a cool baseline when you start fighting and an original song  by Jose Gonzalez called Far Away as you make your way over the border to Mexico for the first time.

Multiplayer

This takes the single player world online. There are the standard free for all and team based games but also multiplayer free roam. The whole world is made available for you to run around in doing what you want. You can join posses and work together or go it alone. All my time online in Red Dead Redemption has been spent fighting the other players in free roam but you can work together and do some missions. By entering certain areas you can trigger gang hide outs or animal attacks. You'll need to attack gang hideouts, take them over and then defend them. With animal attacks you just have to defend yourself from waves of animals. After triggering these events you may work with others to win or do it alone. Another option is piss off people trying to complete it by killing them which is great fun (but not fun for the French guys I was annoying, hehe). Another part is the bounty hunters. Just like in single player if you shoot civilians you'll get a bounty on your head. Not only will you get the law coming for you but other players might what to take you down. And even members of your posse will take you down (I learnt this the hard way). Free roam in multiplayer is really a do-it-yourself game mode where you make your own fun. If you love roaming the single player game then just jump in an do it online.

It's the detail in Red Dead Redemption that makes this game more than just another free roamer. This is truly the most beautiful game I've ever played.

It's taken many attempts, over the last 3 hours to finally start downloading the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Stimulus Pack. For some reason Sony Computer Entertainment Europe cannot seem to get things right. 

As soon as I got home today I tried to download the stimulus pack from the Playstation Store like many people must have tried to do. At first I was getting the error code 80023103. People on forums had suggested updating card details when this error occurs. So I had a go at that. About 20 attempts this took and the 19 times before it worked I got "Your credit card details are incorrect", or something along those lines. 

Then when my card finally got saved I still couldn't download it. I must have press [Confirm Order] about 100 times today.

I finally got through and I was shown the stimulus pack 7 times!!! I haven't checked my card yet, but many others on twitter reporting being charged too many times. If I do I'm going to be pissed off.

Update: Download finished... I installed... I loaded up the game... THEY ARE NOT THERE! ARGGHHH! I cannot access the maps in online multiplayer playlists or create a local match with the maps. Very disappointed. 

Update: I managed to get playing by downloading and trying another download (one of the seven). It's working fine. I got canned response from SCEE UK saying they are looking into it. Actually, I got 4 email! It's now 3 days later and no real response. 

Modern Warfare 2. The game I've been waiting for for far too long and I've not written a post about it? Fancy that. Well the main reason is because it was messed around by Play.com big style. See my Play.com complain. In the end I went for the Prestige Edition (with the night vision goggles).

Well I've had it a few weeks now and I've racked up almost 2 days playing it (single player, spec ops and multi-player) mainly on multi-player. I have to say, and it won't be supprising, that it's fantastic! I love it! Online is much faster paced than the last Modern Warfare, singleplayer is more action packed and varied, and spec ops... well there wasn't spec ops in the first one.

Modern Warfare 2

Single Player Campaign

I've completed the single player campaign and enjoyed it a lot. The story is really a possible future cold war between American and Russia. Infinity Ward didn't really hold back on the way Russia started a full on war with the US on US soil. They way IF did it was good. They made it so the cause of the war was a rouge individual and not either the US or Russia and both sides actions were understandable. The end, well it was pretty much the same as MW but slightly more tense as you watch Price almost die at the hands of Shepherd.

The credits were actually really cool. A camera panned around a museum exhibit with all scenes from the game. Something I found later on is you can actually run around the museum by using chapter selection. At the two information desk are red buttons that say do not touch. Of course you have to and what it does is bring to life ALL the characters in the exhibits and they are ALL after you! Don't worry because you have your pick of every weapon from the game.

Multi-Player

This is the main selling point of Call of Duty. Modern Warfare was so popular because of the addictive multi-player.  Modern Warfare 2 has built on what the first did and has improve it. There's plenty of game modes - free for all, team death match, domination, HQ, capture the flag, search and destroy, and others. There's even 3rd person!

Pictures

Right - Accuracy Leaderboard: As you can see I'm rocking the accuracy. It's going up all the time! My target is 25%.

Below - Kills Leaderboard: Kills don't really mean much to me as the more you play the more you should kill. Ratio is what I care about. Mine isn't as high as it should be because I was messing arond a lot with riot shield but it is increasing every game now

The biggest change is with the leveling up, perks and killstreaks. Everything is worth more points, generally about 10times what they were before. When you kill you can also earn extra points for saving a team mate, avenging a team mate, taking revenge on someone who has killed you, head shots, one shot kills and long range kills. I tend to get a lot of long range kills. Perks have been changed with some add and removed. Killsteaks have been completely change. They are now customisable. You still have 3 rewards but you can choose from about 10 different rewards ranging from UAV to a Tactical Nuke! To get a Tactical Nuke you need a 25 kill streak but by doing that you kill EVERYONE and make your team win. Other rewards include sentry guns, helicopters, air strikes, predator missiles and you can actually control some of them. 

As a little edition you earn titles and emblems. Titles are little banners that go behind your name and emblems are little badges. There are 100s titles and emblems to play with.

Spec Ops

The new addition to Modern Warfare 2 is Spec Ops. It's a series of missions that you can do alone or with a friend (much more fun with a friend). They range from sleathly sniper missions to all out gun battles again juggernauts. There are 5 levels Alpha to Echo and in each are 5 missions. Each mission has upto 3 stars you can be awarded for completing. It's cracking fun and so much better co-operative.

Call of Duty Classic

Call of Duty Classic came as a free download with the Prestiege and Hardened Editions. It is the original game rendered in HD, still the original textures, animated and sounds. It is exactly as I remembered it. It has multi-player as well but unfortunately only upto 8 players which is a shame as I remember playing some amazing 32+ player rifles only on Pavlov's House. Other than the 8 player limit to multi-player the only other bad thing is that shot is R2 not R1 and aim down the sights is L2 nor L1! It's Xbox style :(.

Just to show how much I rock, here's a screen of the 2nd game I played online.

Having got my PlayStation 3 back after 2 months being without I was geared up for a mega gaming session this weekend and that's what I did. I had ordered Red Faction Guerilla and it came on Saturday morning. I started playing it early afternoon on Saturday and I didn't stop until the early hours of Sunday. This game is so much fun! I love it!

It's a free-roaming/action/shooter game and all three areas have been executed awesomely. The map size is pretty big, although some areas of the map look like you can go there but can't, it's still big. The two main things I love about this game are the sledgehammer and the destruction. The sledgehammer is your basic tool/weapon and it can be use to kill or destroy. Running up to EDF troops and whacking them with the sledgehammer is priceless. Destruction: all the buildings and structures in Red Faction Guerilla can be leveled. I've never actually seen destruction in a game like this, it's beautiful. You can level a massive building within minutes or even seconds using any combination of vehicles, walkers, guns, explosives and your trusty sledgehammer. After charging through a building with a walker, my favourite method of destruction is setting a few remote charges and trying to destroy the building in one push of a button.

The single player has been so addictive that I've only been online with it for a couple of rounds. In those rounds I can see multiplayer is going to keep me entertained long after the single player game is over. I'll probably post more about the multiplayer mode when I've had a good play on it.