Reviewed: June 5, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Rockstar Games

Developer
Rockstar San Diego

Released: May 3, 2004
Genre: Action
Players: 4
ESRB: Mature

9
8
8
8
8.9

Supported Features:

In 2003 it seemed the “Western” was about to be reborn. Atari announced a new FPS game called Dead Mans Hand and Capcom was hyping their upcoming title, Red Dead Revolver. Atari’s game released while Red mysteriously vanished, only to be re-announced under the Rockstar label about a year later. With Rockstar’s proven track record of hit release after hit release (okay – we’ll pretend State of Emergency never happened) I was understandably excited about this development.

I’m not quite sure how far Capcom had taken the project before handing it off to Rockstar. I only saw a trailer that was running at the 2003 show, and while there are some obvious telltale Capcom “moments” in the game, it appears that Rockstar has managed to combine their own unique style of action and storytelling to create a totally original gameplay experience.

The biggest thing Red Dead Revolver has going for it is style; the game just oozes with it from the opening menu, to the animated load screens, to the grainy cutscene footage, to the slightly out-of-focus game graphics that are either trying to depict heat, dust, or both. Imagine every Western stereotype, whether it be the corrupt governor, the knockdown drag out bar fights, exciting train robberies, stagecoach heists, or the quick draw shootout at high noon and Rockstar has managed to fit it into this game.

We are introduced to Red, the product of a “mixed” marriage; his mother is Native American. His father is a prospector who just struck it rich. He shows off his new Scorpion six-shooter to his son before handing him is “old” gun and sending him off to the river to learn how to shoot. During this interactive training level a group of men attack mom and pop and Red must try to save them, but the story dictates that they must die, but not before Red shoots one guy’s arm clean off. The gun he uses had been lying in a patch of fire, scalding Red’s hand and turning it bright red, thus the nickname.

Fortunately, the game is so much fun to play you really don’t care that you lose track of the story. When you eventually reach the final missions the designers manage to have several of the story arcs converge and you’ll be saying, “Oh yeah” when you remember why you are playing. Given the often-repetitive nature of the gameplay, I would rather have multiple characters than a linear story.

The game is comprised of numerous missions, most of them linear or built around action set pieces such as a train robbery that starts with a duel in the passenger car then evolves into an almost-platform arcade segment where you run along the top of the train jumping or ducking under wooden beams while shooting bandits. You’ll also ride atop a wagon full of TNT defending it from angry Indians, defend your farm from cattle rustlers, and even participate in a Battle Royale shootout contest in town.

Speaking of town, there is a central hub to the missions in the form of a traditional Wild West town complete with general store, saloon, gun shop, sheriff’s office, train station, and even a boy on the street corner selling papers declaring your exploits as front page news. The indoor sections of the town are where you can really see Capcom’s influence. These areas are shown from fixed camera angles and have you walking around looking for a hotspot to interact with.

Outside, the streets are littered with people whom you can talk to but most have nothing useful to say. More important to your quest is to visit both the stores and load up on weapons and unlockable bonus content before heading to the sheriff’s office to continue your adventure.

There are dozens of cool things to buy throughout the game and they all fit with the genre. You can buy a lamp, a stove, a shovel, a picture frame, etc. You aren’t really buying them for the object itself but rather the secret it unlocks, like a multiplayer Showdown character or a new level. Some items like the bottle of booze you can buy in the saloon actually increases your maximum health.

The other way to unlock special rewards is to earn an Excellent rating on each mission. You are ranked on your accuracy, damage sustained, etc. and that data is used to calculate your rank for the mission. There are two unlockable prizes per mission, one for Good and one for Excellent. These prizes range from new characters and levels to an extension of your Dead Eye meter.

Red Dead Revolver is a game of “bounty hunting” played from the third-person view. You are quickly thrust into the action during the second phase of the tutorial that takes place several years after the death of Red’s family. Here you are taught the highly responsive command system that makes this game the joy that it is to play.

You move Red or whichever character you are playing with the left stick. Clicking the stick has them crouch or walk in stealth mode. The right stick moves the camera and clicking it enters “Dead Eye” mode (more on that in a moment). The A button jumps, the B button punches, the Y button reloads and the X button is a context-sensitive action button that lets you take cover behind objects, grapple an enemy, or interact with the environment.

Regardless of which character you are playing you will always be terribly outnumbered. You have a few remedies for this. The first is to take cover. By using the X button you can hide behind just about any object in the environment. You can stick to walls, hide behind a crate or barrel, then peak out and pick at your enemies one by one. If you are using a rifle you can tap the black button to slowly zoom in on your enemy.

The left trigger draws your weapon and the right trigger fires it. Damage is not only location sensitive, so is your reward money. Headshots will take down most enemies with one or two shots and they also pay $8 per hit versus the $6 arm shot, $4 leg shot or $2 chest shot. Your reward money counts up in the lower corner like an old-style cash register. Best of all, no matter which character you are playing, all bounty is pooled together, so while Red sits in a jail cell listening to the story of General Diego – a story you get to play, you earn all the bounty Diego racks up.

Now it’s time to talk about “Dead Eye”, the primary feature of Red Dead Revolver that works much like Max Payne’s bullet time only with a small twist. As you kill off the enemy you slowly fill your Dead Eye meter located below your health bar. The meter has several bars and you can increase this by unlocking bonuses later in the game. When you have filled up enough bars you can click the right stick to enter Dead Eye mode and then the fun really begins.

During Dead Eye mode the screen goes black and white and time slows down for you as well as the enemy so you have no real speed advantage. What you can do is immediately start locking onto the enemy, multiple targets if you will, and multiple locations on each target like the head, arm, body, leg, etc. You can lock on as many times as you have bullets in your gun so you definitely want to reload before entering Dead Eye mode. When you have locked on to all of your targets you will rapidly fire and hit those target locations. While Dead Eye is relatively ineffective on bosses and sub-bosses, it’s a great way to clear out a group of gunslingers.

With the exception of Jack Swift who shares Red’s Dead Eye skill, the other characters all have their own special attacks when you fill up their bar and click the right stick. These are more secondary fire modes than personal skills but no less effective. A flaming arrow from Shadow Wolf’s bow can easily torch multiple targets if they are close enough, and Diego’s flare shot can summon artillery fire for maximum damage.

Red starts off each mission by choosing a pistol, rifle, and an “other” weapon. Initially, the selection is small, but as you earn more money and buy new weapons your selection grows larger and more powerful. In addition to the weapons you start off with, you can also pick-up new weapons during the level, so while you only start with three weapons you can often have multiple weapons to cycle through in each of the categories.

Weapons include the traditional six-shooter, revolvers, dual revolvers, shotguns, rifles, knives, flaming whiskey bottles, and such. Certain types of weapons share similar ammo and each weapon has specific range and damage attributes making it crucial to pick the right weapon for each mission. Weapons will also take damage or wear down with use, so you will need to repair them between missions.

When it comes time to play as one of the supporting characters you will have access to their own special weapons. Jack Swift wields twin handguns that are capable of locking onto more than a dozen targets. General Diego has a powerful rifle that can fire flares, Buffalo Soldier has an explosive secondary round, and Shadow Wolf has his trusty bow that can shoot flaming arrows. These are all great fun for as long as you get to use them.

And what Western game would be complete without an old-fashioned pistol duel. Easy to learn, difficult to master, dueling is a four-phase process in Red Dead Revolver. First, you grab the gun with a quick down and up motion on the right stick. Timing is critical here as the dual begins when the screen exits letterbox mode. Now that the gun is drawn the target appears and slowly moves up the body of the target. As it moves the crosshairs will cycle from yellow to red and also change in size. The smallest red target does the most damage while the large yellow targets are much less effective.

Your goal is to click the right trigger when the target is small and red and in a good hit location like the head. Busting five caps into their knee or crotch isn’t as effective as 2-3 headshots. You can click and lock as many targets as you have bullets in the gun. The gun will fire either when all possible bullets have been locked, the timer expires, or you end the sequence by clicking the right stick. Then just sit back and watch the blood splatter – hopefully it won’t be yours.

Duels normally result in the death of either yourself or the enemy but in some instances, either with multiple targets or particularly tough enemies, you might survive a duel and have to finish the fight in normal attack mode. Regardless of the results, dueling is one of the coolest features of Red Dead Revolver and the core of the multiplayer experience.

Red Dead Revolver has no online support but there is a fun multiplayer component provide for those of you who want to test your gun slinging skills with up to three of your friends. Bounty Hunter has you racing toward a certain dollar amount while Sundown has you competing for the most bounty dollars within a certain time limit. High Noon recreates the thrill and tension of the single-player dueling mode only this time you are facing off against the guy sitting next to you.

There is even a pair of card games thrown in. Stud and Texas Hold ’Em are interesting diversions, especially when you are running around shooting the cards for various bonuses and power-ups.

The game saves itself after each level and there is a generous checkpoint system in place so you seldom have to replay too much of any level if you die. There were a few instances where the system failed such as the duel after the bar fight followed by another boss battle. If you lost that battle you had to replay the duel and skip through several cutscenes.

The movies all have an intentional graininess with aging film artifacts, pops, streaks, etc. to make you feel that you are watching an old film print recently discovered in John Wayne’s basement. Part of this “fuzziness” carries over into the gameplay, not so much as a limitation of the engine but just a subtle way to give the game its own distinctive look. When the sand starts billowing around the streets of Widow’s Patch, or the heat starts shimmering off the desert you can almost feel it.

The characters all have an angular and unique style about them. They are wonderfully animated whether you are running, sneaking, tumbling, leaping onto a horse, riding a bull, or getting the drop on your arch villain in a duel. There is nothing more satisfying than getting that fatal headshot and watching the geyser of blood send their cowboy hat shooting into the air.

Each and every level is so unique they are almost a game unto themselves. Each one is designed around an original setting whether it be a farm, train, canyon, ghost town, old fort, abandoned mine, or even a battle for a bridge at the Mexican-US border. All the levels are detailed with unique textures and authentic architecture to make for a very convincing Western motif.

The Xbox surpasses the PS2 version with support for HDTV progressive scan and widescreen support at a fluid 60fps that manages to hold up even during multiplayer. The dynamic lighting, shadows, fire, and particle effects are all extremely well done and show off the power of the Xbox.

The in-game sound effects are just as perfect with crisp reports from all weapons, each with their own distinctive sounds. Then you have the clacking of the train on the tracks, the rattling of the stage coach, the galloping of horses or bulls, the mechanical whine of a chain gun, and even the subtle sounds of trickling water, crackle of a campfire, or the hoot of an owl or snores of sleeping enemies are all perfectly mixed to create a living world.

The music is worthy of a film score with plenty of Western themes, both in the movies and during the game. The music changes with each level and adjusts according to the action to drive the emotional impact. Not only is the music authentic but so are the instruments that are used to create it, even drawing on some simple tunes that are whistled.

The voice acting is oddly a bit lacking in what is otherwise a flawless presentation. The character of Red is intentional silent offering only a few dry remarks the entire game. He desperately tries to pull off the gravely Clint Eastwood personae but fails in the end. His best dialogue is the final spoken line of the game. The rest of the cast delivers a more convincing performance with a proper English accent for Jack, a strong yet feminine voice for Annie, and suitably evil characterizations for the numerous villains in the game.

With dozens of items and weapons to buy, there is more here than you can possibly afford in one trip through the story mode. The great thing here is that unlockable items purchased in one profile are carried over into future profiles and replays. This meant that when we played through the game a second time we had a lot more money available to buy more powerful weapons near the end of the game.

And we can’t overlook the multiplayer game modes that will certainly add plenty of additional hours of fun and challenging gameplay. The only thing missing here is Live support.

If you love Westerns, action games, or just want an authentic taste of the Old West you won’t find a better experience on your Xbox than Red Dead Revolver. So grab your cowboy hat and saddle up for the hottest shooter this spring.