Let me immediately make the disclaimer that the game has come out yesterday and I’ve only played it for a few hours. That being said, I have some opinions.

Super Powers of the Plains.

The number of bugs and problems with the multi-player aspect of the game is beyond reasonable and borderline unplayable. Often times players, horses, guns are completely invisible on the screen and 4 out of 5 times you receive an error message stating network connection has been lost when you attempt to join a friend’s game. The potential for a great experience is there. Myself and multiple friends raiding a gang hangout has been something we’ve been dreaming about for… about two days since we decided to get the game, but the dream burns strong. There has already been a patch released and we obviously anticipate more from a high quality developer such as RockStar, but we’re impatient until then.

The Extinction of the Wild in the Wild West.

A great aspect of the single player experience are challenges to kill, skin, find different animals out in the vast, open wilderness. So many challenges that it seems silly to ever let a living creature pass you without trying to shoot it’s head off and skin it for goods to sell back at town. While tiptoeing the line of being an environmentalist nutjob, there are times where I wish I could just appreciate the beauty of a running pack of deer rather then knowing I need to kill 5 of them to get Rank 2 – Master Hunter. If there was a skill such as “Tracker” where it benefited the player to just follow animals or watch them from time to time, it could be a nice balance. In the meantime, if it moves, it dies.

If We Want To Do Anything, Let Us Do Anything.

Last night my housemate spent a half hour riding around on the top of a train and eventually decided to hijack it. By “hijack” it means shooting the four people who were on the train and collecting around $20. This unscripted, totally user driven experience could’ve been much more rewarding by allowing the player to obtain more rewards from successfully getting on the train and holding up its occupants. A simple selection box, while pointing a gun at an NPC, should give a list of options including “Demand Money” or something of that sort. The NPC would then decide if they fork over the dough or refuse and force the player to make the tough honorable decisions the game is based on. There were also several completely empty rail cars that COULD’VE been filled with locked crates that you would have to force a conductor to open with his key, or kill the conductor and take his key for yourself. These adjustments could’ve taken the game to the next level by truly letting you live an outlaw lifestyle outside of the constraints of questing.

Grand Theft Horse.

While old GTA games have you stealing a different car every few minutes, I like the emphasis on maintaining your same horse as long as you can. The longer you have your companion, you “bond” with the animal and it gains benefits to increased stamina which allows it to sprint longer. I’ve named my horse “Friday” and greet it with “TGIF” every time it arrives.

Additionally, little things from the west could be included: You can’t buy cigarettes (although there is chewing tobacco), you can’t appear to “hold up” anyone by pointing a gun at them or store clerks, and I wish there was more interaction with random NPCs around town. A couple lines here and there where they could simply direct the player on progress, “I hear Bonnie is looking for you.” when she has a quest available or “I wish these bandits would leave us alone.” when there is a bounty waiting for you to take advantage of. That would give the world a more lively feel to it then a bunch of zombies walking around ignoring everything else.

The game continues to have potential, and like I said I’ve only scratched the surface, but I already see areas that could’ve taken this game from great to legendary. As of now, I give it 7 rolling tumbleweeds out of 10 and once the multi-player is fixed, it will definitely be higher.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 11:12 am and is filed under multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.