I was going to do a review on Fallout: New Vegas but let me give you an idea of my emotions as I leveled up in this game…

It isn’t the glitches, the game just fucking cheats!  Damn moth bee things.  And why do I need to be attacked by five deathclaws at once.  I was just taking a stroll in the wastes.

I’ll get back on it in a few days.

Instead, let me talk to you about westerns and video games. 

Quick, think of as many video games set in the wild west as you can.  Immediately to my mind is Gun, Red Dead Revolver and to some extent Custard’s Revenge.  You may be able to name more.  I suggest you stop banging your Avatar fleshlight and go outside for after you get done reading this review because damn you are a nerd.

RDR puts you in the saddle with a grizzled, scarred man who’s wife and kids have been kidnapped or killed or whatever clichéd excuse they are giving you to bomb around Texas and shoot people.  The issue I run into is that no one seems to truly understand how the Old West was.  There weren’t a bunch of random shootouts with bodies littering the ground.  The bodies that were there were the result of Cholera or starvation or dysentery.  Yes, I learned everything I know about the 1800s from playing Oregon Trail

This time around though, you are given a bit more of a sandbox to run around.  You get a horse, some guns and people with symbols over their heads who give you missions.  I mean, I understand that you don’t want to fix something that isn’t broken, but you are pretty much just playing Gun (which was a fantastic game for the time) which has been slapped over a clone of GTA: They will buy it because they can kill hookers

Even better is that in RDR, you can kill hookers by tying them up and putting them on a train track.  So it has that going for it, I guess.

It’s hard for me to write about this game because nothing truly stands out about it.  Imagine what kind of missions you would have in a game set in the Old West.  Find someone, kill or capture them, investigate something, then get a bit of plot that advances you.  That’s it, that is the game.

But holy crap is it a fantastic game.  There is something about running around the mountains gunning people down and looting their bodies.  It makes me, as a soldier, worry about what would happen if ever I was in a situation where I had to kill someone.  Standing outside of the hummer taking cover, the enemy comes into my targeting reticle.  I check my HUD, see that I am good on ammo and shield and take my shot.  The enemy falls to his knees, then stands up and runs and guns as though he hasn’t been hurt at all.  I switch to full auto, curse myself for going out with such a low level weapon, unload my clip and then run over to steal his money and hope he has Iguana bits on him.

Yes, I just threw in Fallout 3, Modern Warfare and Medal of Honor references into one paragraph.

Look, you can pick this game up used, and if you are into westerns, you might enjoy yourself.  I got a good twenty hours or so of game play out of it, and don’t regret it.  I suggest you go to Gamestop, preorder the new Modern Warfare, buy Red Dead Redemption, watch Tombstone and Young Guns and then play while staying as far away from any actual historical information on western America as you can.  This is one of those times that Wikipedia is not your friend.