Red Dead Revolver screenshots   The Final Say! Gameplay 8.2 Graphics 7.4 Sound 7.9 Value 8.0 Red Dead Revolver - reviewed by Tory Favro & Andrew B Review Date: June 2004 Review Score 8.0/10 Distributed By: Take Two Interactive

We can't remember the last time a western game was done as enjoyable as Red Dead Revolver. Red Dead Revolver is a third person shooter brought to us by the fine folks at Rockstar games that is set in the deadly world of the wild west. For those of you buying this title, you may be thinking it is in essence a continuation of the Grand Theft Auto series albeit in a western environment, then you better think again. Red Dead Revolver brings its own essential ingredients to the field, making it a unique game in its own right. The story is a common theme in the video game world, that of revenge. Red lead a peaceful existence with his mother and father, until they were savagely ambushed and killed when he was a child. Red earned his nickname when avenging his fathers death, as he picked up a burning hot firing iron from the flames, killing his father's murderer in the process and giving himself a permanent reminder of the tragedy by scarring his hand. This game is heavily story driven with a number of important cutscenes to work your way through in order to understand why you are taking upon yourselves this vendetta. Along the ride, Red will make friends and even more enemies  and in general get to traverse the great plains of the wild west. The nice thing about any shooter is the variety of weapons that Red can get his hands on. From a trusty shooting iron to antique revolvers to rifles, Red can cause havoc with a  number of weapons of destruction. Whilst some will say a particular innovation in this game called dead eye, whereby Red gets to slowdown the action and specifically target his enemy, it's very reminiscent of the Matrix series and we believe that it is pretty much a first in our memories with Max Payne being excluded. What happens during dead eye time is the player gets to a lock on more than one targeted area and you can also react with enemy fire as you see fit. Apart from the dead eye, Red also engages the enemy in traditional duels where the player will have to actively take responsibility for Red's shooting. Red Dead Revolver is heavily based around rewards for the player for achieving objectives by providing a host of unlockable items  that guarantee future playability and longevity. Red Dead Revolver is also jam packed with multiplayer options that both of which run very smoothly on both the PS2 and XBox consoles. These multiplayer options allow up to four players to be involved in a variety of gameplay modes that includes Bounty Hunter, Showdown and High Noon. A personal favourite of ours was the High Noon which was great for when having a couple of drunken mates over.

Graphically, we must admit that we were not overly impressed with the colour palette on the PlayStation 2 version of this game. The overall appearance was very washed out and appeared to have been painted in water colour. This made spotting enemies at a distance a little difficult at times.

The characters of the game were also a little disappointing and appeared too blocky and sometimes glitched too much with background environment. One thing we particularly enjoyed about this title are the slick loading scenes between each stage, showing Red develop from the boy into the man. Adding to this was the great old fashioned technique of making the cutscenes appear older than really were by placing flecks and lines across the screen.

Red Dead Revolver features a traditional spaghetti western sound track mixed with a touch of upbeat disco that is extremely befitting of the title. The music reminded us somewhat of something Tarantino  might have put into one of his films. Apart from the addictive music, the voice acting of the game has also been professionally done and even though it sounds a little too contrived, it fits the title perfectly.

In conclusion, Red Dead Revolver is a title that we are more than happy to recommend as it's a ton of fun, has innovative gameplay and an intriguing yet clichéd storyline. The title is lacking in certain areas, however these are more than made up for its abundant strengths.

- Tory Favro & Andrew B