Just when you thought video games set in the Old West had about as much chance of surviving as a gut-shot sheriff left for dead by an outlaw posse, along comes this shiny gold nugget of a game to prove that where's there's gun smoke, there's fire.
Arriving on the heels of Atari's lacklustre Old West first-person shooter Dead Man's Hand, Rockstar Games' Red Dead Revolver positively shines by comparison. But even if there hadn't been a recent limp attempt at recreating the drama and flavour of the Old West in a video game, Red Dead Revolver would stand tall and proud in its own snakeskin boots.
Essentially a third-person shooter that walks a fine line between frenzied arcade-style run 'n' gunnin' and thinking-man's tactical gameplay, Red Dead Revolver casts you as Red, a gunslinger with a score to settle. A whole passel of scores, actually.
Having seen his parents gunned down by a Mexican general lusting after his father's stake in a gold mine, a young Red grows into a steely-eyed anti-hero who vows revenge on those responsible. This takes him through 20-odd levels that encompass virtually every classic spaghetti western environment you could imagine, and several you probably couldn't. Frontier towns, Spanish forts, dusky canyons, genteel mansions, heavily armed and armoured war trains thundering along rails of steel ... it's all here in spades, pardner.
You spend most of the game runnin' and shootin', wielding a wide array of revolvers, rifles, shotguns and more exotic weapons. The game's innovative aiming system quickly becomes second nature and allows you to concentrate on plugging varmints in the most efficient (or stylish) way possible.
But the game isn't all about Red sprinting through each level, spraying hot lead like they were giving it away for free at the general store. Rather, it's as though the developers created a shopping list of every cool western movie experience they could think of, and found a way to implement each one: tense one-on-one showdowns at high noon, defending a stagecoach from marauding Indians, stopping runaway trains, storming a fusillade of cannons and even engaging in a rousing bar brawl armed only with fists, boots and bottles.
Red Dead Revolver was originally in development by Japanese game giant Capcom before it was cancelled and abandoned. The pieces were picked up by Rockstar Games' San Diego development studio, and the amount of effort and polish that's gone into the game is impressive.
What could have been just an average action title with a cowboy-type dude in the lead role has been elevated by attention to detail. F'rinstance, the game is layered with all kinds of graphical effects that give it the look and feel of an old movie reel that's had one too many trips through the projector down at the Bijou, and it adds significantly to the overall visual atmosphere.
Even the game's storyline is relatively interesting, especially because you'll often play flashback sequences or parallel plot lines as another character, whether it's the shotgun-wielding Annie Stoakes defending her pastoral farm or Red's Indian half-brother Shadow Wolf quietly dealing death to a camp full of unsuspecting outlaws. You even control the dastardly General Diego in one level, directing his army against a row of cannons.
There are also a staggering number of unlockable items, weapons, backstory details, characters and multiplayer maps in the game, all of which are detailed in a 300-plus page journal that's one of the most impressive virtual props ever assembled. The three different splitscreen multiplayer modes are relatively simple but an absolute blast to play, and include a host of power-ups and far-out weapons not found in the sprawling single-player campaign.
One of my favourite games of yesteryear was LucasArts' Old West-themed shooter Outlaws, beloved both for its slick single-player storyline and its frantic multiplayer component. Red Dead Revolver, while a different style of game, feels like the spiritual successor to Outlaws. And I reckon that there's about as good as good can be.
This here game is a-brimmin' with more gunslingin', hoss-ridin', outlaw-shootin' goodness than you could fit in a stagecoach's worth of 10-gallon hats. It's rootin' AND tootin'.
