Red Dead Redemption
Last night I finished my second playthrough of Red Dead Redemption. I'd previously played the story of RDR1 on Xbox back in 2021. But, because I struggle mightily using controllers, I'd never played Undead Nightmare. Since then, of course, RDR1 has been ported to almost every platform in existence, and I'd picked up the Steam version back in 2024 to be able to play it properly. And so I tried.
The game itself holds up surprisingly well, even though the port suffers from odd quirks, and the unskippable animations (looking at you skinning an animal) are still teeth-grindingly annoying, but It's still a good, very playable, game.
The story is engaging, and the characters you meet are often more faceted than their screen-time would warrant. It's not a game where you can fix everything, there is no saving-the-entire-world power fantasy. John Marston is just a man who wants his family back. The heartache associated with that is something I appreciate ever more the older I get.
Undead Nightmare is a pretty good attempt at leveraging the world Rockstar had built, and adding more value, but I didn't I enjoy it very much. The story didn't appeal, and I found a lot of the missions quite tedious. It was worth playing, but I'd never consider replaying it.
While I like RDR1, I love Red Dead Redemption 2, and after playing Undead Nightmare, I'm so happy they never made RDR2: Undead Nightmare. RDR2 is an absolute masterpiece, and DLC of that ilk would have tainted Arthur Morgan's story. The only DLC I'd be interested in is RDR2: Arthur Morgan's Ranching Experience, where he is very happy, and nothing bad ever happens to him or Buell ever. In the meantime, I guess I'll just be replaying RDR2 for the fourth time, and trying to be bad this time.