F.U.D.Cast Season 2, Episode 18: Grand Theft Equestrian: The Endless Mexican Adventure (Red Dead Redemption)

[Mot Wakorb]

http://www.gameradio.us/pics/fudcastcog.jpg
The FUDCast takes a turn to the past as we return from the holidays to play Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption. From odd aiming mechanics to having issues learning how to drive a four-horse carriage, the FUDCast crew had it's fair share of struggles as they played through the spaghetti western. Join us as we wrap up the end of our second season by travelling through the American Southwest (and Mexico, for what seemed like forever) to protect our families. Was the game worth the many accolades that it received in the previous year? That and more as the FUDCast returns!

Have a suggestion for a game for us to play? Let us know! (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/showthread.php?t=15807)

Download MP3 (http://www.gameradio.us/Media/FUDcastS02E18-RedDeadRedemption.mp3) | General RSS (http://www.gameradio.us/feed/podcast)
iTunes Subscribe (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=303543612) | Zune Subscribe (zune://www.gameradio.us/feed/podcast) | FUDCast@Twitter (http://twitter.com/fudcast)

[Bone]

Wow, so much hate for what was actually my favorite GTA game. I will say that all your opinions are just wrong, for the first time in my listening to your podcasts. :)

I disagree with just about everything you guys said. Mexico didn't take me long at all. The pacing was great, the story was great, I felt like I was in a proper Western and the whole thing just worked for me. I loved the voice acting, Irish was hilarious, the snake oil salesman was truly annoying for the right reasons, and freaky gravedigger was freaky. The payoff at the end was dramatic and a ballsy way to end a game.

Herding cattle worked in context to the story, it's what I would expect from a guy being evaluated to work a ranch. And- it was easy if you paid attention to the tutorial. Later, I was able to keep all of my cows from going off the cliff during the stampede, first try. Driving wagons was fucking easy, guys, I don't understand how you had a problem (although you do have to treat it like a heavy vehicle, not a single horse. Driving vans in GTA would have taught you these driving physics). Keeping it on the marked trails gives you enough speed boost that you can actually slow down when necessary to turn. Roping enemies, hunting, all these things were not only intuitive for me to learn, but they were fun for me as well. It all fit in the world they created and made sense to me.

I heard a lot of complaints about the interface, and the fact that some of you guys missed the campfire and fast travel options. So much of this basic stuff was provided to you in-game if you just read the text- which I had no problem seeing on my 50 inch TV with my uncorrected bad vision. Jeremy, come on, it was like three clicks to fast travel. This was never an issue to me.

Also had no problems with the gatling gun, nor firing from horseback- and I am not a master gamer by any means. I could shoot over my shoulder while on the horse and pick off anyone I wanted, easily. As someone noted, it was similar to driving a Warthog. Easy. Also, I did a lot of the wanted missions starting as early in the game as I could, and I suppose that my attempts to bring them back alive made me better at the rest of the game as far as handling the mechanics of riding, shooting and roping. I started out early also looking for costume pieces once I found my first note, and I think I ended up with all but two costumes, but never felt like I was grinding at any moment (I did the costume quests alongside my main quests for the most part).

The treasure maps made complete sense to me, by the way. As they progressed, they became harder and depended on you noticing landmarks as you rode- which served to make me learn the landscape by memory and not rely on the map so much.

I can agree with a couple of things: Drew, hunting was really fun in this game. Finding rare (legendary) animals was worth the wait. Getting ambushed by cougars or bears while hunting much smaller animals could be scarier than any zombie game. You got the sense you were in a really undiscovered country. Along those lines, the random side missions (usually robberies, but not always) that were only hinted at by the screams or gunfire you'd hear out in the bush- that was brilliant. Especially the ones where the damsel in distress was a trap- you always had to come up cautiously and survey the situation, trusting nobody. Very Old West.

Jeremy, you're mad about the ranching? It's act 3. You are ranching because they are building the character relationships between you, your son and your wife! You consider it a waste of your time, while I thought it was a good way to segue to the end game- maybe your mistake is you're not listening to the story they are trying to tell. It worked for me. It's actually decent character work, and some of the scenes while father and son are talking are really well written. He's only been talking about getting home and spending time with them the whole game, and this buildup is what makes the last scene actually memorable. Yes, the ending is pretty standard Western fare, which is the point. It's not that it was a surprise ending, it's that it was a real Western ending instead of a happy ending.

In short... I went in expecting a Western, and that's exactly what this game delivered to me. Some of you guys talked about ignoring the story, but the story is the whole point. My girlfriend watched the entire game because she felt like she was watching a movie, and she doesn't watch me play single player games ever. But again, I like Westerns.

If you hate the genre then obviously the game is not for you (Jeremy in particular). To me, this game was more successful than any GTA or even Bully in making you feel like a major character in an interactive movie. I agree with people who called this their Game of the Year.

EDIT: Lastly, for a game that did as well as it did, hearing you guys smugly talking about what the lead designers did so obviously wrong just makes you sound like jealous haters to me. Make a better game if you are so smart! And I say that with full respect for every one of you guys.

[Ghostbear]

Make a better game? Really? I expect better from you. What exactly would I be jealous of? I have no desire to make a game. How well a game does is not a good metric on its quality. It is A metric certainly. I still maintain that the game throws shitty roadblocks in front of you just to waste your time. Also no one said they skipped the story, I'd go back and relisten to that part. I felt the story as a whole was weak, boring and hardly the hook I would have needed to get past glaring flaws in other sections of the game. It just sounds like we ruffled your feathers. You are clearly a big fan, but a wall 'o text will hardly convince us this was a good game.

Also I happen to love westerns.

[Bone]

Make a better game? Really? I expect better from you. What exactly would I be jealous of? I have no desire to make a game. How well a game does is not a good metric on its quality. It is A metric certainly. I still maintain that the game throws shitty roadblocks in front of you just to waste your time. Also no one said they skipped the story, I'd go back and relisten to that part. I felt the story as a whole was weak, boring and hardly the hook I would have needed to get past glaring flaws in other sections of the game. It just sounds like we ruffled your feathers. You are clearly a big fan, but a wall 'o text will hardly convince us this was a good game.

Also I happen to love westerns.
I mean that in the sense that there are a lot of comments about how the designers failed to do their job, etc. I think they did their job as well as they could, and clearly a lot of people besides you guys agreed. It's not a perfect game but the level of hate I got from this review was, to me, not a match for the game I and many other people played. It almost seemed like you guys were just trying to pile on it, and I expected better from you guys.

Of course we have differing opinions; I never felt like anything was an obstacle to my path, instead, I treated it like the game designers had a task for me and I was able to handle it with little difficulty.

A couple of people suggested ignoring the story, or ignoring Mexico, etc, that's what I was talking about there.

I was listening to the review as I wrote, and found a lot to disagree with, so pardon my wall of text. I've never felt angry listening to you guys talk about a game, but this was an exception. It's not that I love the game so much that I'm offended; instead I feel like you guys complained about the game you wanted it to be instead of trying to play the game in front of you. It's also difficult reconciling all the flaws you guys bring up that simply were not an issue for me at all.

[Ghostbear]

I think you know us better than to think we'd attack a game just because it's popular. What a ludicrous thing to think. I think this was an awful game with no real direction, that gave me tasks (that were not hard btw) that I found were a colossal time sink for no good reason I could think of. This game failed on every level except voice acting and visuals. You can't reconcile the flaws we had? I can't reconcile the fact that so many people either missed or weren't bothered by them.

[Bone]

"Anyone who liked this game was stupid." "OK, maybe not stupid, they just don't know what a good game is". "If you thought this was a game of the year, you are retarded".

Come on. If you don't want angry retorts I wouldn't say shit like that to your audience. It's disappointing to me.

EDIT: Beyond this, I'd rather talk to you in person about it. Clearly we're in strong disagreement. I found that most of the gameplay complaints you guys had were explained in-game or intuitive, and I won't resort to calling you guys stupid for not figuring it out.

[Ghostbear]

Heh to be fair, I was making a joke with those statements.

[Bone]

You made me cry and I didn't have my blanky.

[violent]

I'm actually playing through it now and enjoying it thoroughly. I can't believe I missed the potential on-air argument.

[Vigil80]

Wow, the FUDMen really hated it that much? :eek: That's a real bummer.

[Wackman3000]

To be fair, I know a couple of the FUDcast members have no desire for open world games whatsoever, so I pretty much expected them to not have high praise for this game.

And I also agree with them when it comes to the length of the game. There is quite a bit of what I call "Rockstar filler". The kinds of missions and side arcs to their stories that really don't serve a major purpose in the game other than to add 6+ hours to it.

While some people love that about open world games like GTA and RDR, I find that it makes me lose focus on what I was doing in the first place, and once the story picks back up again, I really don't care anymore. I'd much rather see them tighten up the story, and leave more of the stuff as optional side quests to do if you care.

If you compare GTA4 to the 2 expansions in Liberty City Stories, you can see that they cut out a lot of the unnecessary stuff and focus more on story oriented missions to keep the games a reasonable length while still giving you a great experience. I thought that method worked great and in turn both games were (IMO) infinitely better than what I thought of GTA4.

[Mot Wakorb]

Bone, I'm glad you're saying everything with respect, however, in a decent chunk of the game, I find it to be utterly boring and it never felt like things were moving forward. I felt like an errand boy, and that annoys the piss out of me. On top of this, nothing about this game felt groundbreaking or new to me. It felt like they just took the GTA formula and stuck it in the old west. That's really what bothered me the most about this - let's take our tried and true (and frankly, in my opinion, old and tired) formula and just go with that. It just didn't feel that great. Don't get me wrong, it had some great parts, but for the most part, it didn't do it for me. Just because we don't give the game GOTY doesn't invalidate our arguments - it just makes me feel as if the same thing is just going to be pushed on me time and time again, and I'm tired of giving Rockstar my money for the same game in a different time and place.

Regardless - that's the best part of this show, it's opinion. We sometimes shit on games that other people found to be brilliant, and that's the best part of what we do - some of us like this kind of game and some don't, and that's why I enjoy doing this podcast, because I at least get to give out my opinion that might be completely different than the rest of the crowd.

[shodan2020]

I loved this episode. It's wonderful enough when Ghostbear goes into his GhostbearRage(tm)... but when both Jeremy and Drew go off it's the best. I actually listened to this podcast right after the Comic's Archive: Darkwing Duck/Aquaman episode and they dovetailed exceptionally well.

[shodan2020]

I'm actually playing through it now and enjoying it thoroughly. I can't believe I missed the potential on-air argument.

I can't believe you did either. :)

[Bone]

Bone, I'm glad you're saying everything with respect, however, in a decent chunk of the game, I find it to be utterly boring and it never felt like things were moving forward. I felt like an errand boy, and that annoys the piss out of me. On top of this, nothing about this game felt groundbreaking or new to me. It felt like they just took the GTA formula and stuck it in the old west. That's really what bothered me the most about this - let's take our tried and true (and frankly, in my opinion, old and tired) formula and just go with that. It just didn't feel that great. Don't get me wrong, it had some great parts, but for the most part, it didn't do it for me. Just because we don't give the game GOTY doesn't invalidate our arguments - it just makes me feel as if the same thing is just going to be pushed on me time and time again, and I'm tired of giving Rockstar my money for the same game in a different time and place.

Regardless - that's the best part of this show, it's opinion. We sometimes shit on games that other people found to be brilliant, and that's the best part of what we do - some of us like this kind of game and some don't, and that's why I enjoy doing this podcast, because I at least get to give out my opinion that might be completely different than the rest of the crowd.
Cool. Look, I respect differing opinions, I really do. I tried to outline how different mine was from the opinions of the review. But where I had a nasty reaction was to what I felt was a nasty tone to the audience from the review itself. I felt almost insulted for liking the game. And that's my opinion.

[Dag-Sabot]

-Just had to log in and say as someone who missed this game but was interested in possibly checking it out and looking forward to a decent critique, I was taken aback on how imbecilic this podcast was, I had to do my best to strain the good points from the bad from a shit storm puree composed of equal parts of drama queen, teen angst that me asking whether all of your pod-casts are this terrible... and long.

[violent]

Looks like we got us a new listener!

[Mot Wakorb]

Cool. Look, I respect differing opinions, I really do. I tried to outline how different mine was from the opinions of the review. But where I had a nasty reaction was to what I felt was a nasty tone to the audience from the review itself. I felt almost insulted for liking the game. And that's my opinion.

Fair enough to me. I don't like it that you felt that way, and feel bad for it, but I get what you're saying. We don't aim for controversy in that sense, but sometimes we are a bit over the top.

[Bone]

Bone, I'm glad you're saying everything with respect, however, in a decent chunk of the game, I find it to be utterly boring and it never felt like things were moving forward. I felt like an errand boy, and that annoys the piss out of me. On top of this, nothing about this game felt groundbreaking or new to me. It felt like they just took the GTA formula and stuck it in the old west. That's really what bothered me the most about this - let's take our tried and true (and frankly, in my opinion, old and tired) formula and just go with that. It just didn't feel that great. Don't get me wrong, it had some great parts, but for the most part, it didn't do it for me. Just because we don't give the game GOTY doesn't invalidate our arguments - it just makes me feel as if the same thing is just going to be pushed on me time and time again, and I'm tired of giving Rockstar my money for the same game in a different time and place.

Regardless - that's the best part of this show, it's opinion. We sometimes shit on games that other people found to be brilliant, and that's the best part of what we do - some of us like this kind of game and some don't, and that's why I enjoy doing this podcast, because I at least get to give out my opinion that might be completely different than the rest of the crowd.
Cool. Look, I respect differing opinions, I really do. I tried to basically outline how different mine was from the opinions of the review. Where I had a nasty reaction was to what I felt was the nasty tone of the review towards the audience itself. I felt almost insulted for really liking the game. And that's just my opinion. I didn't want you guys to give it GOTY or even like it, but I also didn't want to feel like every one of you looks down on people who do. Anyway... carry on, nothing to see here.

[TrackZero]

Cool. Look, I respect differing opinions, I really do. I tried to basically outline how different mine was from the opinions of the review. Where I had a nasty reaction was to what I felt was the nasty tone of the review towards the audience itself. I felt almost insulted for really liking the game. And that's just my opinion. I didn't want you guys to give it GOTY or even like it, but I also didn't want to feel like every one of you looks down on people who do. Anyway... carry on, nothing to see here.

And I'm back from the weekend! Whoa, looks like this discussion has been busy. ;)

For myself, I don't think any less of people who enjoyed RDR. I had quite a bit of enjoyment from it, my issue was largely centered around the length/pacing. It reminded me of Assassin's Creed in many ways (great open world + pacing issues/some gameplay issues). And as I said for Assassin's Creed 1, I loved it (though with AC1, I had the option to go away and come back 3 months later so it didn't get stale). But I knew that was because I liked the world enough to see past it's issues (and heck, lots of games are like that). RDR reminded me of the same thing. I can totally see why lots of people fell in love with it. My only comment is, for professional sites doing their game of the year ratings, they need to look at the whole picture, which RDR doesn't pass IMHO, so I was miffed to see some sites give it that title when there were better contenders.

Also, as is the theme common in the FUDcast, I notice we get the most angry at a game when it held so much potential and fell short (for us, such as Fable 2), rather that ones that are actually problem-ridden (or lacking the scope to be "amazing") from the outset. So that's likely the case here as well (as I just got back, haven't gotten to listen to the finished show yet to know how we sounded on the proverbial "other side"). At any rate, thumbs up to you Bone for loving RDR, if you've got the right mindset for it's gameplay style and setting, it's fun romp for sure.

[Bone]

Right on. Well, I owe you guys a beer, maybe five for Jeremy. I was already in a bad mood when this review activated the Konami code for my angry bonus level.

Anyway... I've enjoyed all your other shows, and usually (especially) enjoy the angry Jeremy and Drew comments. My initial reaction to this review was "that is unfair" and then shortly after "wow.. what dicks!" but I do realize some of it is in jest for entertainment value. Still, the hate was strong with this one.

[shodan2020]

Right on. Well, I owe you guys a beer, maybe five for Jeremy. I was already in a bad mood when this review activated the Konami code for my angry bonus level.

Anyway... I've enjoyed all your other shows, and usually (especially) enjoy the angry Jeremy and Drew comments. My initial reaction to this review was "that is unfair" and then shortly after "wow.. what dicks!" but I do realize some of it is in jest for entertainment value. Still, the hate was strong with this one.

I didn't much care for the outrage about Earthbound when they did that episode either, but I realized that it was their opinions and their show. Also, Earthbound would be a pretty tough sell on anyone today who didn't have a strategy guide to go with it (like I do). I agreed to disagree and it's probably one of my favorite episodes.

[Ghostbear]

-Just had to log in and say as someone who missed this game but was interested in possibly checking it out and looking forward to a decent critique, I was taken aback on how imbecilic this podcast was, I had to do my best to strain the good points from the bad from a shit storm puree composed of equal parts of drama queen, teen angst that me asking whether all of your pod-casts are this terrible... and long.

They are definitely all this terrible... and long.

[shodan2020]

They are definitely all this terrible... and long.

You're a quack. :)

[Abednigo]

Hmm, I probably should have finished RDR before listening to this. LOL!