1581

I threw up in my mouth thinking about how you would have ruined a fantastic game.

1582

Expand your sample size. Most games, even M rated ones, still have happy endings or at least have you victorious in a more traditional sense. FO3’s problems had nothing to do with it being unhappy or character death, and everything to do with how contrived and stupid that ending was (HAI SUPER MUTANT FRIEND LET ME GET TOASTED HERE WHILE YOU HANG OUT), even setting aside the crazy train of bullshit you’d put up with to get there.

RDR’s ending, on the other hand, was perfectly in keeping with the modern conception of westerns, with plenty of flavor from the traditional ideas to keep it from being William Munny getting the shit knocked out of him for a whole movie and fit the player protagonist role.

1583

BTW, re: the Undead Nightmare DLC–let me get this straight: if I buy it on Xbox Live it’s 10 dollars (800 MS space bucks) but if I wait till freakin’ November 23rd for it to come out on disc it’s 30 bucks?? WTF, dude?

EDIT: Ah, I see that it bundles other DLC in there too, like the Legends and Killers pack.

1584

Which is still more expensive, because they also released the Undead Nightmare collection which bundles all three DLC packs together for 20 bucks as DLC.

However, the $30 disc will no doubt be heavily discounted at retail after a while. While the $20 pack will probably not get a discount for a long time, and even then it will be part of a Deal of the Week for Gold members only.

1585

While I don’t know that I’ll get that much use out of the multiplayer, the single-player undead pack is easily, easily worth ten bucks.

1586

First cutscene was worth 10 dollars for me. I’m loving it!

1587

SPOILERS:

While I was incredibly “WHAT???” when John was killed in that final shootout, in hindsight it fit in a “film noir” or “western noir” style. He did a lot of bad things in his life, thought he had finally found happiness, then sacrificed himself to save his family. The hunting down of the evil government guy by the son and ending with him killing the man who caused his father so much pain, then fade to black, also fit that noir type of storyline.

What I did object to was that so much of the storyline before that did not fit. As someone else said, John tells the prostitutes “sorry, not interested, I’m married, I’m an Eagle Scout”, talks all the time about how he had turned his back on the bad things he did in his previous life, then has no problem helping rape and pillage poor villages in Mexico. I was trying to figure out how to shoot and kill the Mexican soldiers who are laughing and executing the villagers and grabbing the women to rape, but no, I just watched what I had helped accomplish. And did it over and over.

I also agree that they just never developed the character of his wife. I felt a stronger connection to Bonnie than I ever did to the wife.

You can argue, dude, it’s a Rockstar game, it’s just about the shooting and missions. But they did create an interesting story and it would have taken almost no additional work to make the story a true epic. When I think of the game what comes to mind is not one of the races to make money for the con man, but John Marston sending his wife and son away, peeking through the barn doors at all of the agents on the other side, contemplating his life and family and realizing that perhaps this was the end that was inevitable for a man like him, and walking out of those doors into the gunfire. I had an emotional reaction to that as strong as any I’ve had in 30 years of computer gaming.

1588

I’ve played a little bit - about 30 minutes after the opening cutscenes. It’s pretty damn amazing. If you like RDR at all YOU NEED TO BUY THIS DLC.

1589

Giant Bomb Quick Look of the Undead Nightmare DLC:

1590

I’m messing around with Undead Nightmare right now and I can say that for the money this is a pretty incredible value. However, it really might not be for everyone. If you think the feel and flow of the shootouts is the greatest part of Red Dead Redemption you’ll find little of that in RDR:UN. I’ve found myself playing more multiplayer using the Friendly mode - which is actually pretty friendly. I’ve found myself in plenty of casual, fun, posses running around and taking on bandits in co-op. So much fun I spent some coin on the other multiplayer DLC.

That’s probably the whole idea behind selling UN so cheaply when, obviously, so much work went into it. Getting folks to take a second look at RDR as a whole and picking up, possibly, more than just UN. Worked on me!

That said, I can’t think of anything more fun to play for Halloween. It’s a bit messed up in that they can’t seem to figure out if this is horror or comedy or just tragedy. The mood bounces all over the place. Also, while at first, zombie hunting can be a challenge (headshots ain’t a piece of cake and those zombies can seem to come out of nowhere sometimes) once you figure out what you need to do, and score a couple of things, it can get to be a bit routine. There’s always some risk, you can always mess up especially if you get overconfident or unfocused, but it’s pretty manageable.

All in all, UN is an impressive DLC especially for the price. All the NPCs, graphics, subquests, voicework. It’s more like a full sequel than an addon. The entire focus of the gameplay changes as well.

1591

Have y’all read through the Red Dead spoiler thread? Well I scanned 'er pretty good and the arguments for the ending being right and true to the genre were more convincing.

1592

I’m the wrong person to review Undead Nightmares as I had no interest at all in adding Zombies to the game, but I ended up getting it for free (legitimately.) So I tried it out. I figured hey, it’s RDR.

Only barely into it, had the ranch encounter, the encounter in town with the first person you run into there, then the girl. Won’t say more than that even though they hardly count as spoilers.

But having zombies coming at me non-stop just isn’t very enjoyable. I know I’m barely into it, so I’ll play more and get more into the package, and I understand this is NOT RDR. It’s not a western. It’s a - well, I don’t know quite what it is. I guess you have to be a real zombie fan to “get it.” Which I’m not.

So I’ll try to pretend I didn’t go through the emotional wringer of the story of John Marston and play it as if this is the first time I’ve ever seen him or his family, and try to play it as a pure horror movie.

BTW - are zombies infinitely spawned? If I try to kill scores of them in town will they just respawn?

1593

You can secure the towns you pass through by killing enough of them. You need to talk the the survivor in the town first (blue dot). Sometimes the zombies will come back and you’ll need to return and do it over again.

I think UN does what it does pretty well and Zombies in the Old West is a neat idea (aside from general zombie overkill in the market these days). However, I have much more fun with shootouts, the original gameplay, than running around trampling or shooting the shambling hordes.

1594

Yeah, I was just about to fire up Saboteur or Saints Row II and see what they were all about when I was given UN for free, so I thought I’d see how I liked it. I’ll go awhile and see if it grows on me, but fighting swarms of zombies for the sake of killing zombies doesn’t do anything for me, and it certainly destroys what was so attractive about RDR for me, the Western theme.

1595

Check out multiplayer. If you don’t like PvP, there’s a new Friendly server (at least on PSN and I assume on XBox Live as well). I’ve been having a pretty good time knocking around there with random strangers. Many of them don’t bother using voice so that’s not a hassle either.

Edit: And I’d been meaning to play my new Assassin’s Creed 2 game. I’ve gotten a little ways in but not enough to have a firm impression yet.

1596

Wow, glad I stopped reading this thread at around page 40 or so because it really veered into spoiler territory!

Anyway, I’ve been playing this for the last week or so and I’m really enjoying it. So far I like John Marston - he’s probably my favourite Rockstar protagonist, largely because the time and place sort of suits his moral ambiguity. Whereas I always felt conflicted playing Nico Bellic, I never feel that way about Marston. Marston is a mostly reformed character living in a time when life was cheap, short and often brutal and he ‘gets away’ with doing things that would be utterly reprehensible these days like - shooting horse thiefs, killing his bounties and so on - but weren’t viewed in the same way back in the day.

1597

Any word about a PC port of this?

1598

Not that I’ve heard of. The modding possibilities could be amazing.

1599

EDIT: Ahhhh, I figured it out.

1600

Dammit, I spent hours playing this today and finally made it to Mexico and… the damn song didn’t play. I’ve no idea why. :(