It’s pretty obvious what game we’ve been playing this week, but just in case you weren’t sure…
Red Dead Redemption II
Finally, after watching the game-play trailers over and over, the day arrived and Rockstars latest shining achievement in gaming has launched. A friend of mine picked up a copy for me from Tesco while I was at work on Friday. Once my day long developers session at work finished I drove to his and picked the game up. When home I started the install of the game. Sadly though I wouldn’t be playing it Friday night due to being booked and partaking in socialising. But Saturday was my time.
I started at 8am on Saturday morning, barely just awake, I said good morning to my wife, then turned the PS4 to start the game much to her disapproval, “It’s only 8am?”. Like that’s a reason to not play.
Good news, my launch PlayStation 4 doesn’t sound like it’s about to take off while playing which is a genuine surprise, given how loud it’s been when playing Horizon and Detroit. Secondly the screenshot button is actually responsive and takes screens of the moment you want, something that I’ve found hit and miss with some games.
What happened next was a marathon session which saw me not leave my spot from 8am right up to 5pm when I decided that’d be a good time to get hygienic. Once that chore was done I quickly got food sorted, scoffed that down, then returned back to RDR. In my combined first session which was a play time of 11 hours, I had just about hit 20% total completion, which I think from trying to remember back was about 14% story completed.
I really love when chapter 2 kicks off and the environment and location changes. Not that I didn’t like the area and what was happening in chapter 1, but the commute from the snowy mountains to the lush forests and green scenery with lakes and mountainous backdrops, it was jaw dropping. This is also when the fun really begins as you start your journey into providing for the camp. I felt compelled to be a stern provider, so I’ve been hunting lots. I’m however a tad confused on the best practice at donating to the camp. Is it best to skin the animals you hunt and donate the items from skinning them (the meat, pelts and objects you get from them like horns and feathers) or best to just hand the whole carcass over untouched? Currently I’m doing both, skinning the animals and handing over the good and also handing over the skinned carcass too. I’m not sure if this helps, but it’s the approach I’ve been taking.
The missions have been varied enough thus far and there don’t appear to be any repetitive fetch missions as of yet. My favourite mission so far has come from a trip to the saloon in Valentine, I’ll say no more though for spoilers purposes.
So currently what I know is that this game is huge, and I also know I’m going to lose a heck of a lot of time into it. I can’t wait to keep exploring the incredible lush world that has been created.
Sky Scrappers
During the week I was fortunate enough to be offered the chance to review an upcoming Nintendo eShop game for Switch that’s due to release today! Sky Scrappers.
I won’t go into loads of details here as you can find the review that was published yesterday here. But I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by the game. Not the deepest of single player campaigns, but a very simple to learn and pick up arcade style game in which you win by either beating your opponent in a fight or by ascending a collapsing sky scraper before your opposition. The real fun to this game can be found in the multiplayer though where if you can get 4 of you locally to play, could produce some chaotic moments with plenty of laughs, especially should you throw in beer.
– Murr
Well Howdy fellers, bet you can’t guess what I’ve been playing too.
Red Dead Redemption II
Like Murr, I spent quite a lot of Saturday playing RDR2 and I would say that I’m probably around 15% through the story at this point.
I know everyone is saying it, but damn this game is something special, the level of detail throughout it is unbelievable. I was honestly a little worried how well it would look and run on my Xbox One, but I’m pleasantly surprised. It looks good and the performance is actually pretty stable. One feature I’ve missed a lot from playing on Xbox One is the instant resume, I don’t have to load anything back up when I turn my Xbox back on I can just start playing again, its great.
There hasn’t been a moment in the game that I haven’t enjoyed as of yet, even travelling across the map for what feels like forever has been nice just taking in the views and admiring everything around me.
I don’t really want to go in to details on a lot of things because I don’t want to spoil anything. But here are a few stand out moments that I’ve had so far – no spoilers. I attempted to rob a train on my own, I jumped on it, started killing people, then fell off the top of it on to the ground. At this point the Law were bearing down on me so I jumped on my horse to make a quick getaway. I ran across open plains and muddy tracks, I ran up the side of a mountain hoping to finally lose them only to find myself with nowhere to go, they were closing in on me so I made a leap of faith off the side of the mountain – still on my horse. Just before I hit the ground where death inevitably awaited me I quit the game. I knew this jump was probably going to kill my horse and I didn’t want to happen. I haven’t attempted a robbery since.
Later in the game I was in the South where it’s all swampy and foggy, through the fog I could make out a figure on a horse but he didn’t look right, he was hunched over. As I approached he fell from his horse, he was bleeding a lot and was begging for help. I quickly put him on my horse and raced him to the nearest doctor. I then proceeded to watch as the doctor amputated his arm right in front of me. It was pretty shocking.
I’ve played poker, I’ve had bar fights, I’ve made friends with a war vet, I’ve hunted animals and bounties. It’s been an incredible opening to the game and I can’t wait to play more of it.
World War 3
I talked about WW3 in last week’s Geekly Review a little bit and this week I have a video to share with you. I wanted to talk about my first impressions of the game and decided to put them in to a video.
-Will
