Red Dead Revolver

One of the most promising games of 2002-3 is out of limbo and on the PS2 and Xbox?but was it worth resurrecting?

Once in development by Capcom and then put on death row, Red Dead Revolver has been saved from the hangman by Rockstar Games. Not only has Red escaped the rope, but it has also evolved into a brilliant third-person action game loaded with style, technique, and clever homages to the Wild West.

Dances with Lead
The plot is as simplistic as any Western film, of which the game emulates many: Red seeks vengeance on varmints who killed his family and wounded him in the process. Playing into the stereotype of Red?s part?Native American heritage is an inherent expertise with knives and a Spaghetti western?s self-taught gun-fighting skills. But the road to revenge is littered with plot twists and cleverly placed secondary characters (you even play as a boss in a flashback sequence) to spice up the story. Varied stages reflect their objectives: destroy a bridge, thwart corrupt politicians, defend besieged homesteaders, board a racing locomotive from horseback, and resort to bottles as weapons in a saloon fight -- just to name a few.

Better Red Than Dead
Red excels in technique and presentation. As daunting as the skills are to learn, they?re a true force to be reckoned with once mastered: The slow-motion bullet-time-esque Dead Eye is supplanted with a host of melee and gun-fighting moves -- including duels that are half-skill, half-luck, and pure frustration.

The game also serves up decent replays with several unlockable features that are opened depending on your performance, and once the game is completed, a host of new objectives are also available. The game?s other key aspect, multiplayer battles, doesn?t fare well due to a confining split-screen view that renders three or more player matches almost unplayable. Red?s real strength is the one-player Story mode.

Red looks, sounds, and feels just right. Blowing dust, blazing red skies, and flying lead all create an immersive atmosphere, and frequent visual dust and scratches give the game a filmlike quality without being overly distracting, as does the Peckinpah level of slow-motion bloodletting. Gunfire, explosions, ricochets, and other audio are all excellently conveyed, but the wannabe Ennio Morricone guitar riff/whistle/chorus music strikes sour notes too often. Using dual analog sticks to move and aim, and shoulder buttons to fire work perfectly, and various advanced techniques gradually become instinctive. The only real failing for the controls is lack of a custom configuration.

Open Range
Of the two Red offerings, the Xbox version has a clear edge over its PS2 brother with cleaner visuals, tighter controls, an added multiplayer level, and Live Aware compatibility. But wannabe gunslingers will be well served by either version of Red Dead Revolver, a game that finally does the Western action genre some tough justice.

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