Video Game Review: Red Dead Redemption

Do you love Westerns? If so, the setting and motif of Red Dead Redemption will rock your socks off.

Underneath the hood, the technological elements are more or less successful, with the exception of a few glitches that aren’t gamebreakers ( during one mission the game forgot to spawn a horse for the accompanying NPC, so I had to ride off without him and fail the mission. Second time through the naughty errant horse was where it was supposed to be). I’m a huge fan of the sandbox game style in general, and the Grand Theft Auto series in particular, and this game hits all the right notes to be in good company with the previous Rockstar efforts.

The desert is a lot less forgiving than other sandbox settings. I was killed by a cougar attack within the first 20 minutes of wandering around, and I still flinch and spur my horse on when I think I hear a cougar shriek.

The horse AI is something to talk about as well. It’s not that the horse is your intelligent sidekick and ally. No no, think more realistic and annoying. Anytime you dismount it, the horse will slowly wander around and eventually out of sight.  You can hitch it to a post in town, but in the wilderness he just moseys along as soon as you get off him. If you leave him in a dangerous spot, he’ll leave more quickly. You can always call your horse with a loud whistle, but there are certainly times when you urgently need the horse to be at your side, and he’s off in the bushes playing horse hide and seek.  And, you can spur your horse on to run at a full gallop, but if you do this too much he will buck you off, usually at the worst possible moment.

But, even though I enjoy the game, there’s still something missing. I like Westerns well enough, but not enough to be enthralled by riding across the dusty countryside to the sound of instrumental mood music and the occasional coyote howl. After an hour, all the cacti look the same. I missed the different radio stations and giant cities of GTA.  And I definitely miss all of the people.

Overall, Red Dead Redemption does stimulate my gaming-related pleasure centres, but in doesn’t reach the almost narcotic levels that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City did. I give it a 7.5 out of 10.

Well now I’m just lazy

For a man bemoaning about his lack of consistency, I put a shockingly small amount of effort into fixing the situation. Oh well, on to the news.

This weekend, my wife has taken our two-year old Max on a plane ride to see Grandma and Grandpa in Thunder Bay. This has left me here to exist in some kind of unfettered bachelor life for 4 days.  The first problem? I have no idea how to be a solitary individual anymore. Just like a prison inmate, I’ve become institutionalized and I don’t know how to behave in the real world.

Bits are coming back to me, as well as a realization that I’ve always accomplished very little when left entirely to my own devices. So, the lists have come out and the push is on. To Productivity! (with a side order of fun).

There is such an amazing sense of comfort and confidence that I get from spending my days with my little guy. Even on his rare grumpy days, he  is an ever-present source of validation and love. I know exactly who I am and what I have to do: I am dad. So it’s a little hard to remember who I am when I don’t have to be dad.

There have been two moments of profound sadness so far. First, all of the moving around and cleaning that I’m doing reminds me of the frenzied cleaning I did when we bought the house. I did that cleaning all alone, and it was a very stressful and emotionally draining time (as  it was for Kristen as well).  The second one was when I went to bed last night, all by myself in a big empty room. I have to admit that I really like all three of us sleeping in the same room, and I miss  both of them terribly. I actually stood at the foot of the bed and pouted.

So, now off to shampoo the carpets, clean and arrange the living room and play area, edit my book, clean out the disaster zone in the car, have some fun, eat lunch and a thousand other things before Monday.

Yes I’m Complaining about a Cartoon

I’ve had to endure the normal amount of children’s programming, maybe a little more than average. I don’t think that there is anything detrimental to watching educational programming, and Treehouse Tv doesn’t show commercials (well, almost. They sneak ‘sponsors’ in at the start of a show, but before the show actually starts, and only once every half hour) so no harm done. I even like some of the shows. I’m officially a fan of the Wiggles, for example.

But to the point, there is one show that irritates me with its lack of logical cohesion. That show is Little Bear, a Canadian cartoon that stopped production years ago. The main character, Little Bear, capers happily around the forest with his diminished-capacity friends. Sure, his friends could be all children themselves, but then why do they have adult voices? Anyway, they all frolic without any clothes on, yet Little Bear’s parents are always wearing clothes. What?

The first reasonable excuse you could use is that the need for clothes is a symptom of growing up, and youthful innocence is represented by the nudity. I don’t like that explanation, but I went with it until there was an episode that displayed a picture of Mother Bear when she was a child AND SHE WAS WEARING CLOTHES! So, the nudity is not an established tradition in their culture, it’s just the wierd, hippy decision of this bear’s parents to let him run around with his business in the breeze.

One other facet that bothers me, is using a character’s species as their name. What happens when the new ducklings grow up-are they all named ‘Duck’? Is ‘Duck’ now ‘Old Duck’? Are they numbered ducks 1 through 9? Way to confuse children, Little Bear.