Red Dead Redemption (2010) (Computer game)

The comment that this is basically Grand Theft Horse is probably a fair starting point. None-the-less, it's clearly the best Western game that's been made for a long time (if ever: I still prefer Outlaws, but I think that's largely nostalgia talking).

The game is nominally a sequel to Red Dead Revolver, but I don't think there's any continuity (I haven't played the original, but I didn't notice anything). The hero is John Marston—a reformed outlaw—who is coerced into hunting down some of his former associates by the forces of the law. The majority of the time it's fairly open-world, although access to a greater portion of the world becomes available as the game progresses, with the player free to pursue the main missions, take on other missions such as bounty-hunting, or just ride around shooting stuff.

The one area the game is really successful at is creating the illusion of a truly big environment, while not being so big that riding anywhere takes days. The game "Gun" is an interesting precursor/comparison here, since it tried to do many of the same things, but failed slightly when it came to the West feeling "big enough". The area that was slightly disappointing was the integration of the main story with the player's other actions: throughout much of the game the players actions determines people's attitude to them, however the story is absolutely fixed whatever they do. Obviously, this is the same as for many other games, but it felt slightly off in the otherwise free open-world setting.

A minor niggling point that bugged me much more than it should have (my inner pedant...) was the second of the two songs (at a couple of points in the story the game decides to play a song relating to that bit of story). The song has the lyric "off the radar" which is obviously historically wrong, and kind of broke the immersion.

I haven't played either the multiplayer, so the any of the extra content available for purchase, so couldn't comment on those.