The improvements are numerous. For a start Red Dead Redemption feels like the first Rockstar sandbox title where play isn’t hindered because I’m too busy fumbling with the controls. Though by no means perfect (hand-to-hand combat is as clumsy as a drunken pub brawl, but perhaps that was the point), the cover system, targeting and slow-motion Dead Eye mechanic ensure gunfights are pacey affairs. Add in fair checkpoints, the option to replay missions (first introduced on console in GTA IV expansion Gay Tony), regenerating health and the ability to summon your horse from nearly anywhere, and Red Dead Redemption is a consummate package. It proves Rockstar are willing to learn from previous lessons, and take tips from their rivals; whether San Diego’s work here ends up being an exception to the rule remains to be seen. Strangely these changes also seem to make the game a lot easier than I expected.

There are countless ways to pass the hours outside of the main story. As well as simply wandering around the plains, chewing tobacco and skinning dogs (which is as fun as it sounds), there are myriad mini-games (poker, horseshoes) and jobs (herding cattle is almost a game in itself). The ‘strangers’ are another intelligent addition, random people dotted around the world whose missions can be completed in your own time, and who reward you with fame and honour – Red Dead Redemption’s RPG-lite system of experience – upon completion. Because these distractions are stitched into the game with the same cohesion as evidenced in the world overall, they feel less like token gestures to artificially enhance playing time, and more like genuine aspects of a rich, living and breathing community-centred life. The whole thing is a masterstroke of design.

It’s testament to Red Dead Redemption’s world that the Free Roam mode in multiplayer will likely get the most play online. Free of the frantic score-chasing aspect of the other options, Free Roam is a hub that allows you to idly traverse the entire map in a party of up to 15 players. While there’s limited mileage in the competitive modes, Free Roam has excellent potential in extending the game’s already large lifespan beyond 100% completion. Taking a lazy stroll on horseback with your friends, no objectives to worry about, almost justifies Rockstar calling their online presence the Social Club.

For all its achievements in aesthetics and game structure, perhaps the most significant feature of Red Dead Redemption is the way Rockstar has invested the experience with such a sense of nostalgia and poignancy, by stripping the open-world back to an era in which the telephone is the height of technology, an era which, in all its naivety, doesn’t yet realise how fast the tide of progression and modernity will be. I started this review thinking that GTA IV was the more impressive game for its ambition and sheer scale, and it probably still is. But what the guys in San Diego have created here is arguably braver: the regular feeling of isolation and a persistent world that will linger long in the gaming consciousness. Rockstar and the Western, they make quite a team.

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