Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Red Dead Revolver ::
by William the Bloody
You don't see many video games
dealing with the old west. Remember "Wild Gunmen"? Well, Rockstar games set out
to make a damned good western shoot 'em up called "Red Dead Revolver". It's a
revenge story with some twists and turns that plays very similarly to "Max
Payne".
The main character, Red, is a young bounty hunter whose parents were killed as a
young boy. Bounty hunting works good for Red, since it's a good way to make cash
while he travels all around searching for his parents killers. The plot involves
Red traveling to a town called Brimstone where a the local sheriff gives him
plenty of work and some info to help him along the way.
Although Red is the main character, throughout the game you play as a handful of
other characters to progress the story along, including one of the bad guys.
Other characters you play as are: Annie Stoakes, a local ranch owner ; Buffalo
Soldier, a black union soldier; Shadow Wolf, Red's cousin on his mom's side;
General Diego, bad guy with bad accent; and lastly English gunman Jack Swift.
When you play as Diego, your actually playing a flashback.
The story is a good solid western shoot 'em up revenge involving gold and
dueling showdowns. You play the game a lot like "Max Payne", but the targeting
helps you more. It even has 'dead eye' mode which is just like Max Payne's
bullet time. You get a variety of revolvers, rifles and things to throw like
knives and explosives. You even get to do some shooting from a horse. Upon
completing missions you get money for your bounties to buy weapons, pay for
weapon repairs, and buy items that unlock journal pages and showdown characters
when not in story mode. Depending on how well you do on a mission also
determines whether you unlock more
showdown characters or showdown territories.
Throughout the game you also have quick-draw revolver duels. These are in slow
motion but are a little tricky when you get further into the game. This is
especially important for later in the game where the town holds a dueling
competition.
Besides the story mode, there are journal pages to look into the characters and
weapons of the game. There's also showdown mode, which is one or multiplayer.
You can choose the location and the characters, using nearly every character in
the game, depending on how many you unlock during the story mode. You run around
shooting each other for cards like hands of poker. This is a lot of fun.
However, I'm surprised they don't have separate game just for revolver duels. I
would've liked to see this; hopefully in a sequel. Upon completing the game you
can play in hard mode or bounty hunter mode. Bounty hunter mode is extremely
difficult since every shot has to be a
head shot or you start the stage over again. Hard mode didn't really seem all
that hard to me, maybe because I already new how to get through a stage smoothly
the second time around.
The best thing about the game is the look of it. The movie scenes have that
gritty film feel to it, with nice colors giving them an earth tone dessert feel.
During play anything remotely far out has a heat blur affect to it, which is
nice. The animation of the characters is a little blocky and cartoony, but not
too shabby really. They got some good
music in the background for the game as well.
Overall I really liked this game. The story is fun and I liked the variety of
characters you play as during the story (especially Shadow Wolf). Besides the
lack of a separate duel mode outside the story mode, the game is another tip of
the hat to Rockstar games, which consistently makes games that entertain and
relieve my boredom. Loved this game..................
A-
