Right, been playing this for a week now and have a few things to comment on.. Firstly, I pounded that crap out of the first one on PS2, Red Dead Revolver, but now I understand why RDR wasn't just labeled as the 'number 2'. Honestly I don't see any similiarties between the two other then the dead eye ability, and thank god they god rid of those annoying boss battles.
Singleplayer, I first bought the game and went over to a mates place where we system linked so I only got 15 minutes into the singleplayer until I was 'convinced' to join them on the multiplayer but was able to tackle it later on. It does share some features with GTA, yes.. But I wouldn't at all call it a clone or a reskin. The campaign did start a little slow, which I was glad of after multiplayer havoc. I spend probably an hour or two doing the first few missions (which involved herding cattle, breaking horses etc), and also riding out to the middle of nowhere for some hunting. Every time I did that however, I would constantly find myself distracted by side quests, calls for help etc.
I just stopped playing it tonight and have so far played 22 hours, and have barely scratched the story missions at all, there are alot of challenges and whatnot, hunt so many this, gather these herbs etc.. but these challenges are also in the multiplayer, so after hammering the hell out of them on there I was reluctant to repeat them on the singleplayer without mates to help me.
So for now I've been focusing on the more ambient things; a good game of poker lasts anywhere between 10-30mins, a bit less so for the other gambling games like blackjack, liars dice and a few others. But as a long time fan of shooting shit, I find nothing more enjoyable then hunting critters and beasts, and laughing at the poor misrable riders that often get chased by beasties and call for aid (teehee, take that cityfolk!)
Multiplayer, needless to say my first multiplayer session where myself and two mates formed a posse was a blast, we kept out games open so anyone could join and more often then not they would also join our posse and help with a few challenges. We probably each reached about level 15 in our first session, but had raided so many strongholds and picked up a whole heap of weapons so new unlocks were at the time, little concern to us.
Just tonight I jumped online solo, to do some of the social club challanges that pop up and happened to join a game where two fellow australians were running around storming strongholds and also trying to get outlaw challenges by busting up towns. I joined their posse and was happy to find we all had our mics on and played a good 2, 3 hours having an absolute blast.. It was awesome to hear them getting excited over little things like the weather and lighting effects, the creatures and gun and horse physics, both of them apparently only just bought the game an hour before we played.
If I had to say one bad-ish thing about the multiplayer however, it was that alot of the towns seemed sparse in NPCs, the roads were always busy and you'd come across countless camps, but travelling to towns like blackwater never had the hustle-bustle that the singleplayer had, but I guess resources had to be kept somewhat down to cater for 16 players.. I've yet to get the whole 'join and keep getting killed' but most probably because I either instantly join a posse and get somewhere good for defending from any clowns, or we simply hit the road and by the time the bastards catch up with us all they can see is a smoking stronghold :D
Damn that was a bit longer then I intended, but yeah… If you are any fan at all of the old west, I advise you run out and get this game pronto, I need more Posse members :)
PSN- FistfullofFlour