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Red Steel 2 - Video

red Steel 2 CoverA few days ago, it dawned on me that I've been contributing to The First Hour for a year now. A whole year, no fake! Just remembering last week can be a trying experience for me, so thinking back twelve months is like trying to visualize the guts of a black hole.

To assist my trip down memory lane, I decided to play a bit of Red Steel 2, the first game I reviewed. I gave it a pretty glowing writeup at the time, and it ended up as the runner-up for my Game of the Year 2010 across all systems. The game isn't without its foibles, but it delivered the hardcore shooty-swordy experience that the target render for the original game fooled many into believing possible at the Wii's launch in 2006. That was enough for me to excuse most of its shortcomings.

To commemorate this one-year anniversary, I decided to capture a bit of video from Red Steel 2 to share. Originally, I planned on making a montage of the dozens of cool abilities, finishing moves, and cinematics that made the experience so fun for me, but then I stumbled across one six-minute mission around the game's midpoint that makes for a good standalone exhibition. It also cut way down on the video editing workload for me, which was admittedly the primary factor for the change of plans. Still, I think it turned out just fine.

Red Dead Redemption

red Dead Redemption CoverI played the first hour of Red Dead Revolver last year, mostly in preparation for what was going to be one of the biggest game releases of the year, Red Dead Redemption. I didn’t really like the start of the game too much, it felt cliched and reminded me a lot of Rising Zan: Samurai Gunman in the way the gameplay and story were structured. Pro-tip: that’s not a good comparison.

But here I am, finally, with the first hour of Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar essentially threw out everything but the Western setting of Revolver during development of Redemption, and it definitely shows. While Revolver felt like an arcade game at times, Redemption really does feel like Grand Theft Equine.

Released last May, Red Dead Redemption has sold many copies and reaped many awards, but so did Grand Theft Auto IV, and I could only stomach about a dozen hours of that monster before giving up due to its tedious amount of relationship balancing and all-too-realistic driving gameplay. But if any company has been able to learn from their mistakes in the past, Rockstar Games is that developer. Let’s ride into the first hour of Red Dead Redemption for the Xbox 360.

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