RDR

You’re taking a beating here. Just wanted to say for me personally, I’m finding it boring as well. This is a simulator RPG sold as an action game.

I’m ten hours in and I just find the whole game a chore. It’s wonderful if you want to get into the depressing life of an outlaw but I think if they’d taken some liberties and aimed for slightly more fun it would’ve done wonders for the game. Everything is slow, everything is clunky, everything must be monitored, it’s a chore. A beautiful, staggering, landmark chore. I’d review it as a 9/10 but it’s not for me. I hope people have a wonderful time with this game and it scratches their cowboy itch. Some people will love this and for a few weeks at launch be vocally angry at others who don’t. In the long run I suspect it will find its audience and they’ll learn that others simply don’t have the same taste as them, this is not a game as definable and easy to push as Mario Odyssey, this is something different and it won’t sit well with some people, ‘go back to fortnite idiot!’ Well sure, I mean I’ve never played that game and I’m not sure why my opinion hurts your enjoyment of your game but sure.

For context my favourite games of all time are Breath of the Wild, FFVII, Bloodborne, Tomb Raider PS1, Chrono Trigger and Forza 3.

I’m a lifelong gamer and a former print magazine reviewer. I love games and I’m proud of the gamer community and I’m not finding Read Dead Redemption 2 particularly gripping. I’m sorry.

"I didn't like it" is enough, no need to try and attach a numerical score to something you clearly don't get. It would be like me reviewing a fashion show at Paris Fashion Week. It's clearly not for me and I don't know what I'm talking about, so why would the fashion world give any credence to me going 2/10, D-? If I see a 1/10 review for The Godfather I know enough to know I never need to speak to this person again, personally, and it's not because I have some kind of personal attachment to the movie. It's one of those "my feelings > your facts" sort of opinions that are super prevalent in 2018.

Feel free to take whatever you want as seriously as you want, but personally I'd totally discount a review that is purely based on personal preference. Even a bad movie review doesn't go "the characters were amazingly well written and realized, the acting was engaging and emotional, the direction was tight and stirring, but I don't like movies about the dark ages, 1/10". There are objective markers of quality, PARTICULARLY in a video game even over a movie, that stop a polished, bleeding edge game like Red Dead that pushes the boundaries in a million areas, to simply be a 0 or a 1, like so many garbage user reviews on Metacritic.

Exactly, everything...here’s the kicker, even some of the all time games listed there, I find boring. So if you’re ten hours in and bored? No way...no way am I wasting more time trying to get to the enjoyment phase. Sooooo beautiful and life like. So sloooow and clunky. Gun is the best cowboy game ever. Red dead has never lived up to that to me. In gun you jumped on your horse and could rip. It started my love of horse riding per video games. I keep hitting x to go faster and can’t. I’m pretty sure in real life horses can go faster. If not, who cares, speed it up. I want to like this so much! I love the slow aspects of western life. But this is just so slow! And monotonous. Too much extraneous dialogue. I keep thinking like okay you’ve made your point with the dialogue now cut the segment, cut the jibber jabber, and bring on the action. But nooo, more silence and more holding X, while you so slowly and painfully get to a destination to do one thing. Help me lord. Double tap, single tap, I don’t know I never like the controls. I could be playing the game right now but I’d rather join this discussion. There are a lot of considerate criticisms here and it’s making me feel a lot better. I don’t hate the concept or slow western life. But it’s too convoluted. I keep thinking of the last of us while playing. Its a game with heart and story. It crawls along in an empty wasteland. But at no point do I feel so unbelievably bored and restricted. I’m playing two more missions and if...no, I don’t know...it sounds like I should just play spider man. I was really in the mood for this cowboy stuff though...

The initial intro was mega boring. So I keep playing and hoping maybe it will get better but nope, still mega boring 20 hours in. I get there is always a formula with rockstar games start game, go here, cutscene, start mission, go here, cutscene, shoot some guys , mission complete. But this seems extra boring. All these little "attention to details" things are annoying AF. Pick up your hat everytime if gets knocked SUPER ANNOYING, track down your stupid horse annoying. Only have a limited amount of weapons and change constantly them. Annoying. Eat, sleep, groom everything but wipe your ass. How do people think this level of "realism" is fun? I didn't pay 90$ for a simulator of my own boring life with occasional gunfights. I shoot my own real firearms more often and it's more fun. I'll admit the visuals are absolutely gorgeous but that doesn't justify this snore-fest. Again today I tried really hard to get into this game to get my money's worth and again had to shut it down. Sad because I loved the first RDR, but this game bores me to tears. I also hate how game-reviewers put it so lightly "not for people with short attention spans" "slower paced action". I think the word your trying to find is BORING.

there are two things I found really annoying in this game

1st is the Horse riding, anytime I bump into another npc by accident, all the sudden a firefight begins and ends up with me being wanted. An example was, it took me like 5 minutes to get from camp to the quest npc in town but as I was coming into the town I accidentally hit a group of NPCs, i fell off my horse, everyone started shooting at me, killed me. I had to start from camp all over again.

Also regarding that, since it takes awhile from getting from 1 town to another, I'm often riding at a fast speed and can accidentally hit an object like a rock or tree (which there are plenty of) and it has killed me a couple times causing me to restart from the last checkpoint which can be annoying af. (i use r1 to slow down but the horse isn't like a car, so it takes a couple sec to slow down and I can still hit things by accident during that time)

the 2nd thing is the escort quests... if your escorts die, you just fail the quest and have to start all over from the previous checkpoint which can be quite far. So I was doing this one escort quest and how the npc kept dying was REALLY random. The first time he was right beside me and as soon as the enemies came out, he died instantly to a headshot or something. I had to restart that entire sequence from the beginning 3 or 4 times before I got lucky and he wasn't dying instantly to the enemies (seems really RNG). It wasn't game breaking but it was really frustrating.

There is a minor 3rd thing I find annoying but mainly due to my own controls. It's that is super easy to accidentally hit R2 and shoot someone while you're talking to them with hip fire. It's happened to me a couple times.

Also, has anyone killed the legendary bear after failing to do it the first time after the NPC left? I stayed and camped, hunted the bear.. he 1 shotted me and I came back to do the same thing the next day (with the predator lure) and he was nowhere to be found. I tried to do it 2-3 days in a row and the bear wouldn't spawn so I'm really confused as how the system works.