Leave it to Rockstar to come in and try their hand at the genre, which they did with Red Dead Revolver in 2004. While Revolver was a fine game, its spiritual successor would arrive and become the greatest Western game ever made, and #7 on my list of favorite games of all time.
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#7 - Red Dead Redemption - First released May 18th, 2010 (PS3, Xbox 360)
When you live in Iowa and happen to have had a Grandfather whose idol was John Wayne, you get exposed to a lot of western movies. It helped that these movies still hold up today. While I may never have owned a 10-gallon hat, or owned a pair of snakeskin boots, and the fact that my favorite "Western" movie is Blazing Saddles, I always found the Wild West a fascinating landscape for storytelling. I always wondered what it was like to be like Billy the Kid, or "Wild Bill" Hickok.
Rockstar set out to make Redemption larger and more ambitious than their previous release, Grand Theft Auto IV. While many people feared that Redemption would end up being "Grand Theft Horsey", they ended up creating a game that stood on its own, while pushing the open-world genre forward.
You are John Marston, an outlaw who is separated from his family by the Bureau of Investigation. He will get his family back if he cooperates and turns in the members of his former gang. This already gives us a reason to like John and gives us a good reason to understand why he's out here doing all these (mostly illegal) activities; A man who would do anything to see his family again.
The main story starts in 1911, near the end of the "Frontier" Era, and takes place in 2 fictitious American counties: New Austin, West Elizabeth, and the fictitious Nuevo Paraiso, Mexico. All of these locales feel like they were ripped out of Hollywood and really immerse you in the world. The opening mission has John confronting his old gang at Fort Mercer, after a bit of dialogue and failed convincing, John is shot by his former gangmate and current gang leader, Bill Williamson. As John is left for dead, he is found by Bonnie MacFarlane, a local rancher, and and healed with the help of a $15 doctor's bill, which she loves to remind him about. The first few missions in the game involve Marston doing some odd jobs around the ranch to pay back the $15, or basically how the game decides to introduce all the mechanics.
While the main story is amazing, what sets Red Dead apart from GTA is the random events. Since the game doesn't take place in a sprawling metropolis like Liberty City or San Andreas, Rockstar needed to make the wide open areas still exciting and interesting. You may randomly get ambushed, you may see a robbery take place, you may have to hijack a stagecoach, or prevent a hanging. All this kept you on your toes even if you were nowhere near "civilization".
Of course there are side missions/activities to take part in, just because this isn't Liberty City doesn't mean there aren't a lot of things to do. You could to some bounty hunting and bring criminals to justice, take part in iconic duels and show who is the fastest trigger, play poker (naturally), gather herbs, or hunt and collect hides from fallen wildlife.
Along the way, your actions factor into the game's morality system, doing heroic deeds, like saving a woman from kidnapping, will raise your honor and raise your fame, which will cause NPCs to feel safer around you and cause stores to give you a discount, while doing criminal acts will reverse these effects.
Red Dead Redemption also features multiplayer for up to 16 players. Every game began with both teams in a Mexican standoff, waiting for the round to begin, opening fire on each other, then taking up positions for the respawning members. I always thought that was a nice touch, appropriate for the time period and generates a lot of tension before the match even begins. The typical modes are here: deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, etc. You also could team up to do some free roaming as well as attacking another posse, or taking down computer-occupied strongholds. The DLC from Undead Nightmare added zombies and a "horde" mode. I loved the multiplayer here and I imagine people are still playing it, so I may have to jump back on.
Rockstar put out a series of videos in preparation for Red Dead Redemption's release, here is one that goes more into "Life in the West", and shows a little bit of everything, really.
We have all thought about what Grand Theft Auto would be like in different cities, but Rockstar showed that it can take several of the GTA mechanics, put it in a different historical era, and still put enough content in it to make it stand out and not just be "GTA: Wild West". Red Dead Redemption stands alone in the street, waiting for any future game to try their luck and outgun it, which will be a tough and almost impossible endeavor, partner.
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