Red dead redemption

(August - November 2010)

Cool

The landscapes are excellent.
The horse movement (and other animals in general) is very convincing.
Climbing up is good (slow, but realistically so)
You can lasso a human and drag them.
You can lasso cows, and they are gloriously stubborn. So realistic feeling (not that I've lassoed a cow before).
Riders can be dismounted by low branches
(postscript: I think this is true. I only saw it once early on, and now I'm wondering if someone fell off coincidentally near a low branch.
postpostscript: After hours more in the game, I've never seen this again, and assume it now to have been coincidence. I've even tried dismounting myself on a branch, and that didn't work either).
You can leap off buildings on to your horse's back.
If you use an inappropriately large weapon to kill a small animal at short range, you blow it away so completely that you can't find it to skin it.
GPS in 1911.
You can shoot the heads off statues in cemeteries.
When a horse walks through blood, it leaves bloody hoof prints for a while.
(postscript: It appears that, given the right circumstances, anything will leave bloody footprints)
When John runs through closed doors, he lowers his shoulder to barge through them.
Random individuals piss randomly against random things...including, seemingly, their horse.
You can shoot the limbs off cacti.
I saw a coyote take a chicken and run away at Critchley's Ranch. That's awesome.
I did the gang mission at Twin Rocks, and went to loot the dead bodies. I was preparing to bitch about not being able to loot the two guards on the Twin Rocks themselves. If they can get there, why can't I?....but there is a way up both rocks. Good thinking!

Not cool

Climbing down is rubbish (unless with a ladder)
You can lasso a deer, but you can't lead it anywhere (like, in front of a train :-D)
You can't easily tell how good a horse is or whether a new one is better than an old one. But this is true to life, so it's ok, but a chart would be nice. Also, some means of identifying what you already have would be nice.
John Marston can't swim (at least, not yet)
My horse seems to change. Maybe I have one per town? Do I leave them behind or something? I also seem sometimes to downgrade. Like: one horse dies in a freak cougar incident and then when another spawns, it's not necessarily the same horse (might not be a downgrade).
When looting a body or skinning an animal you sometimes return to the game facing a different direction. Not convenient when there are baddies around.
John walks too slow. Would be nice if the analogue joystick took him from an amble to a jog, and then X to run/sprint.
John gets stuck against low edges. Just auto climb them. Slowly is fine, so you can back out, but just do it!
John can take more hits from a boar/cougar than his horse can.
When John stands up after being knocked to the ground, his gun is holstered and he's disoriented, so it takes more time to arm myself and target the attacker than it takes the attacker to line up the next attack. Often 2 or 3 attacks will kill John. If I, the player can keep my eye on what's where, with the screen shaking and blood red, that's enough. I don't need another disability. I'd rather have to find my gun on the ground. At least that'd be more real.
If I'm standing on the body of an animal, why can't I skin it?! Why do I have to be 2 or 3 feet from it to be given the option?
Skinning an animal is real time (although admittedly somewhat quicker than skinning an animal for real) so if I see stuff happening in the background, I'd like the option to cancel skinning it. I don't care if I lose the goodies, if I see danger or a better target, I want the option to stop skinning.
This might just be my perception, I've not timed it, but I seem to spend rather longer at night in the game than by day. Night is markedly more difficult.
It seems to me that when I die, I lose anything collected since my last save, but I keep my stats, I keep my money and I keep what ever horse I died with. I haven't corroborated this, but it seems that way currently.
When you hunt down a criminal, if you shoot him dead and return to the Marshall with evidence, you claim the bounty. If you yourself have a price on your head and you get killed by a bounty hunter, you respawn still with a bounty on your head.
Limited poker banter. Speaks in plural when only one other player at the table.
People can 'see' you stealing from armoirs and drawers even when not in line of sight. If you chase and kill or capture them, if any one is within close range, the 'eyewitness' passes to them even when they can't know the nature of the crime.
Often, your first indication of a nearby rattlesnake is that you hear it, because they're hard to spot, so it's a bit unfair that a rattlesnake sound effect features in the ambient soundtrack.
There's no indication from which direction you're being shot. You can be dead before you've identified your attacker. You'd sure as hell know where you're being shot from in real life even if you're dead before you can react.
When under attack by a human with a  gun, it's ridiculous that the auto aim would target an incidental dog or a bird. Maybe target the wrong human, but not something else.
My horse got affectionate with me during a shoot-out and pushed me out from a rock I was hiding behind.
Earlier in the game, I entered a jail which had people locked in. I tried shooting the locks, because that's what you do in a cowboy movie. This didn't work. The cell doors remained locked and the people remained locked in. Later, I'm required to free revolutionaries using the same tactic, which, of course, works when it's convenient for the game.
When you pull a weapon (or lasso) it used to be that you pull the last weapon you used. Skinning animals didn't include this. So if you kill an animal with a pistol and you skin it, the next weapon drawn would be a pistol. A recent update has changed it so that if you kill an animal with a pistol and skin it, the next weapon drawn is a knife because, I assume, that's what you used to skin the animal...not cool. That's had me killed a couple of times. I reckon I'll get used to it just when they decide to change it back.
John is very hard on Uncle. It feels way out of character. Maybe it's just the way I'm playing the game, or maybe there's some history not yet revealed, but while John's tough, he's normally more fair than this.
Too many of the cut scenes pushed me into situations which I preempted. In all fairness though, the game would have lasted 3 minutes had the cut scenes not driven the story line. There was at least one cut scene during which I was 'outnumbered' by far fewer enemies than I had previously beaten fairly easily. Again, it's perhaps necessary for the game but I'm sure some other methods could have been used.


Interesting/amusing

The US flag has the right number of stars on it for the year.
Paradoxically, of course, New Austin is a fictitious state, so it's inaccurate in that sense.

It's not really a bug I guess, but an oversight. I bought a bandana, and I'm led to believe that I can now commit crimes with some anonymity. I went to the Armadillo bank, but it was closed because it was night time. As I walked away to commit mischief elsewhere, a character ran up to me and said "Sir? Sir?! Are you John Marston? I heard you shot 17 people once!"
A fat lot of good that bandana did.

While manning a gatling gun on a train, a Mexican Captain was delivering a some spiel about...something, during which I was testing the gun for movement and targeting. I trained the gun on his head, and he broke his spiel to say "Don't point that at me!". Very good.

I need beaver pelt for the Daedalus guy, and I'm fairly certain I'm going to find beaver in the locked bit of the map to the North East. Naively optimistically I went out by Tanners Span to see if Beaver stray west of the river. My horse got cougared. I got the cougar but lost my horse. I wondered around a bit and tried whistling a horse into existence. A new horse spawned on the other side of the river and ran to me through the river to an immediate and watery grave.

The irony of revolution - immediately after risking everything to help Reyes take power, I took some time to look at the map to see where my next destination was, and decided to return to town to save. Two individuals started shooting at me from the city walls. I shot them back and became wanted. The wanted value was $50, indicating that my previous wanted status (about $750) had been wiped out during the revolution. What short memories my comrades in arms seem to have. I'd only just helped them overthrow the Dictator.
Maybe they found out that I'd spent half my time in Mexico fighting for the other side.

Occasionally in the game, you encounter a guy running away from two bumbling law dogs. The spiel indicates that they are incapable marksmen. It's not vital or relevant to any story line, but it's a simple task and can earn you money, and probably respect etc. During one such encounter I accidentally ran the criminal over on my horse while trying to draw a gun. He fell to the ground and was lying there prone but alive for several seconds while the law gathered around him at close range unloading their guns on him, still unable to hit a static target from point blank. I ended up shooting him myself.

Shopkeepers and Doctors actually turn up for work. In buildings, some of them sleep in a back room, but in Mexico where they have market stalls, they don't just *ping* appear, but they walk up to you and then they're open. It's quite nice and elegant. They keep funny hours, mind.

Wanted posters are actually put up by someone. If you wait next to a wanted poster place, someone will eventually turn up and post it. I interrupted a guy pinning a wanted poster on the Armadillo telegraph building, and he stopped putting it up! It wasn't fully attached and was there flapping in the breeze. I wasn't given the option to read or accept it.

I was killing time in Blackwater waiting for the general store to open to see if I could buy a Hungarian whatever horse deed there. While the shop was still closed, I got approached by the shopkeeper saying he'd been robbed by "some bastard cowboy". I chased down the perpetrator, lassoed and hogtied him. For one thing, this "bastard cowboy" was clearly a redskin. For seconders, when I took him back to the shopkeeper, the shop was open for me to enter, but the shop keeper just stood outside kicking the baddie in the head.

When hunting with Jack, we're led to a group of three elk. We killed all three, Jack skinned one, then we headed off to where ever to sell the meat with John teaching Jack that you only kill what you need....having left two dead elk to rot.

I have a feeling the whole family section towards the end of the game was originally planned as an opener to the game. It feels like training missions. Some of the dialogue sets the time line straight, but dialogue is probably easiest adapted to cause.

John keeps complaining how tough life is at the ranch and how little money they have. I'm running around with 13 grand in my pocket. In 1911, that must have been a fortune. (this heightens my suspicion that the family section was originally designed for the beginning of the game).

I managed to jump my horse into a cart which had been abandoned. I was able to drive the cart around with the horse in the back until the horse managed to turn around and flee in terror.

Things I could lasso

Horses, cattle, humans, dogs, deer, bucks, pigs (ironically, I can't hogtie a pig), boar, cougars.

Things I couldn't lasso

Trophy heads in saloon, cacti, rabbits, any birds, coyotes, snakes, road(trail) signs, statues, buffalo, anything smaller than a dog.

Bugs (features!)

The blacksmith was in the Thieves' Landing saloon heating a horseshoe in a nonexistent furnace, hammering it on a nonexistent anvil, and quenching it in a nonexistent bucket of water. When I started a fight, he fled and the horseshoe was left smoldering on the saloon floor.

I was advised by the game that the shopkeeper had been killed and the shop would be unavailable for 5 days. A short time later (real minutes, not 5 game days), a side mission triggered in which the shopkeeper approached me claiming to have been robbed. I caught and killed the thief, retrieved the money, took it back to the shop keeper, who thanked me and payed me, then walked in to the shop. I followed her, but she turned around and left.....presumably because she was dead and the shop was closed for 5 days! :-/

The Rathskeller Fork teleport - If you go into the building the wanted sign is posted on and approach the corner of the first bed on the left, you briefly get the option to view the wanted poster or accept it. If you can press 'O' to view at the right moment, you are transported outside the building in front of the sign.

I threw a dog through a wall. I went the other side of the wall to see if it was there and it wasn't.

A startled bird flew through my house in Escalera.

Floating boxes. I didn't see the lead up to this, but I captured the result:

I saved a woman from being kidnapped by killing the guy who had her over his shoulder. After she'd finished thanking me, I turned to loot his body. His blood stain was there. He wasn't!

While returning a horse and cart to its owner in Mexico, I turned it over at speed. The game told me that I'd failed because I broke the cart. During the incident, unbeknownst  to the game, I had died. My character lay prone, face down on the ground, sliding very very slowly North. The world continued to do meaningful things around me. I could select a weapon, and hold it, but I couldn't use it. I could select the main menu, but nothing else. I waited for a while to see if something would trigger me back to life, or more dead than I was. Some wolves ran about me, seemingly interested in my presence, but never attacking me like you expect in the game under normal circumstances. Eventually I reloaded from the main menu as the only option available that would work from within the game. I had slid around...maybe 30 feet in this time.

I killed a buffalo with one single throwing knife in the backside.

I went to the town square in Blackwater at night. Where the newspaper seller normally stands was a pile of newspapers. I imagine this is a bug. If not, and if I'm so badass, why can't I steal one?

The Saboteur

(May - July 2010)

Cool

Awesome black, white and red Nazi occupation zones.
Great climbing dynamic, if a little unrealistic.
Great map size.
Nazis passing in the street salute each other
When the driver of a Nazi attack vehicle gets shot and killed, the passenger/gunner will take the wheel.
The German civilians in Germany speak German.
The French civilians speak Frenglish.
If the Nazis can't see you, they won't see you until the spot you or you reveal yourself.
Exploding back packs on flamethrower Nazis.
Exploding cows and chickens.
Key characters are not impossible to kill but impossibly difficult to kill.
Once you kill key characters (unless it's part of the story line), you restart from HQ, because they're dead.
Unrealistic jumps (human).
Excellent but limited soundtrack.
The atmospheric sound effects were excellent.
You *can* climb all the way up the Eiffel Tower on the outside provided climbing a stair's hand rail and using ladders isn't cheating.
Jumping off the tower into a pond gets you a trophy and you don't die.

Not cool

Too often, Sean will fall from a ledge and grab on (good) then immediately climb back up (sometimes bad).
Shitty jumps (car).

Interesting

If you don't shoot Dierker at the end, he jumps of his own accord.
Melancholy 'Feeling good' piano rendition at the end.