Red Dead Redemption is an action/adventure game, set in the American Old West - after being rescued from the brink of death after a foolish solo assault on a well guarded fort, John Marsten's days are spent recovering by doing cowboy stuff. This is awesome. Instead of shooting people in the head with a revolver, activities involve "breaking" horses, shooting rabbits at point blank range (we did say it's awesome), moving the cattle around the pastures, and protecting livestock from predators at night. Whilst each of these activities on its own is fairly simple fun, the variety and indeed the break from the norm gives an extremely fresh feel to the game. What's more, often background plot provides these basic tasks a purpose so that it's as if they actually matter. After all, nice people's livelihoods are at stake and if some of their livestock is lost to a storm, someone is going to have to starve for a week. Once returning to the main mission of tracking down an old friend who doesn't want to see John, there's a lot more gunplay. Gun skills can be honed on all sorts of animals for meat and pelt money - hawks, cyotes, bears, deer, cougars and many more. Once unlocked, three levels of bullet time balance out the difficulty of shooting moving targets while on horse-back; the "Dead Eye" meter runs down while in use.

In between missions, John can roam the countryside on his horse and just take it all in. Majestic rock formations, deep gulleys, sandy plains, snowy mountains, towns, deserted villages, rivers and lakes all come together to make a complete package of scenery that constantly amazes with how much detail has been paid to such often desolate landscapes. It all streams smoothly with the view being pretty much infinite - if you can see it from the top of a hill, you can go to it. To cap it all off, the extra layers of weather and time-of-day keep even previously explored areas fresh. Watching the sun come up during a thunderstorm is epic and then touches like seeing it go behind the clouds with corresponding darkened surroundings make it easy to feel like the whole thing matters. Ride along a ridge on a clear night, with a sparkling lake down below, shimmering stars above and a bewitching soundtrack, and you might even forget it's not a film for a minute.

Part of the mystique of cowboy lifestyle is the bond between man and horse. This is achieved here with ease - if the horse John has been using for days suddenly comes to an untimely end or gets stolen, it's a little heart-breaking. The horses are the main form of transport. There are trains and coaches (teleportation is possible too), but roaming the raw wilderness on horse-back, being able to choose when and where to detour, ignoring roads and tracks completely - this makes it the transport of choice. They are magnificent animals, with some expert motion capture and a well executed control method for most situations. If riding with others, it's a great touch to just be able to hold a button to match pace and just listen to the banter.

Much like the animations of both people and horses (and indeed people on horses), the lavish attention that has been poured on the incidental chat as well as the main cutscene scripts is marvellous. The voice acting is commendable, being some of the best yet heard in a game, and the quality of the script is top notch in most parts. John is a funny guy, but his quips and veiled threats tend to get a little samey after a while. The variety of characters you meet is well implemented, both on main missions and in the incidental side missions that keep you interested along the way, so that meeting new people is always something to look forward to. Unfortunately, many of the side and main missions involve helping people for fairly flimsy reasons. This doesn't detract from the enjoyment of carrying out the missions, but it can be a bit weird riding off into the hills on behalf of someone you've only just met and very breifly.

At least for the first half of the story, it's almost impossible not to just wander off and explore, but with the epic scope come some bugs worth mentioning. Some of them were funny with horses rattling around above the ground or even being fired off into space. Others were pretty frustrating and required a restart and the accompanying need to retravel to the task location. However, setting a waypoint on the map and finding a safe enough spot to set up a campsite gives the option of instantly teleporting to it, as long as John has visited the area previously.

Apart from the little side-quests, John can spend time drinking in the bar, playing a variety of mini-games including poker, horse-shoe throwing and stabbing gaps in between fingers with a knife like in Aliens. Or duel with randoms in the street or go shopping. If after mucking about for hours taking in the atmosphere, you actually want to progress the main story arc, the plot (and accompanying tasks) pan out very maturely and make the whole journey worthwhile. There's a big of a hiatus in the middle of Mexico where far too much shooting happens without a break, but the return to non-shooting tasks later is welcome. It's great to see game producers taking risks with the plot and not conforming to predictable videogame cliches - John isn't so much of a over-the-top-larger-than-life hero as just a hero looking after his family, making him all the more likeable even considering his chequered past.

If you feel the urge to venture online, there is a variety of free-roam activity, best performed in posses. Riding along a track through the wilderness in a group, all ready to clear out an area of an evil gang feels very cowboy film. That's if you can get in a posse without getting shot at by some idiot first. Revenge is sweet though - get near some fool's horse, push them off and ride off with it. That'll learn 'em. The usual mix of capture the flag and deathmatch options are there as well, with new modes being added via updates based on user requests. Online combat can get pretty exciting if everyone is playing well, but without the full bullet-time, it's sometimes a little one-sided if you can't get near the more powerful guns quickly enough.

What most people will be buying for here though is the single player game. It's so impressive and immersive in almost all aspects that it owns the Western genre and will do for a long time to come. If you only have time to play one large-scale game a year, make sure it's this one.