Quite nice game, i love hunting animals, like the previous one.

I guess I'm still on the extended tutorial (chapter 2) as the missions are still very rigid. My favorite part so far is setting a way point back to camp after a mission, entering cinematic mode and watch him auto navigate through the world. Yep it certainly looks like a movie, just the game play lags behind so far.

Minor nitpick is that it's slowly turning into a next gen nagging simulator. Your stamina core / health core is empty, find some food. Your horse is dirty, you should clean it. Your gun is dirty. You horse's health / stamina core is empty, you should feed him. You lost your hat. Contribute to camp. Your dead eye core is depleted. And the all the people asking / screaming for help when you're enjoying a quiet ride back to camp. Then there is all that traffic! Even at night the traffic never ends lol.

It's oh so pretty though. Just wish they had given the same attention to game play and controls and less focus on turning it into a survival light sim. At least it hasn't asked me to take a piss yet :) I reckon my horse made it back to camp by now with the bear pelt, on to the next mission.

I wonder if R* will ever develop a GTA or RDR game where aiming with a controller is actually possibly without auto-aim, shit's trash.

So, by and large it's great, obviously. There's dozens of reviews out there that'll tell you as much….but there's really a lot of little things that make the game pretty annoying at times.

The survival elements, as has already been mentioned….frankly, they suck. I know there's people who get a kick out of that stuff, and find it really immersive. Personally, I find it obnoxious. I have absolutely zero interest in being forced to jump through hoops in order to keep enjoying the core gameplay loop at an optimum level. Being forced to worry about my characters weight, whether he's eaten/drank enough to maintain his "cores," cleaning and feeding my horse, going for regular baths, cleaning my guns, getting regular sleep, etc. It's all really just in the way. Sure enough, each one on an individual case doesn't exactly slow you down much, but the combination of the lot, and the frequency with which you'll be tasked to keep up with them….it adds up pretty quickly.

Then you combine this with the slow, often sluggish way that Arthur loots bodies, and searches through valuables….dear god. You spend an astonishing amount of time in this game not really doing much of anything. You take a nice scenic ride along the countryside (and it truly is gorgeous), spend maybe 5-10 minutes on whatever you actually had your mind set on doing there, and then probably an extra 3-4 minutes making sure you got everything….if you're afforded that time before more people wanna come and kill you that is.

Speaking of which, if killing people, and being an actual outlaw is you fancy….good luck. As if the time it takes to relieve people of their earthly possessions wasn't bad enough, the game is ridiculously unforgiving (and surprisingly unrealistic, given it's apparent obsession with it in all other areas) when it comes to people noticing crime. Just earlier, after finishing up a main mission and riding back to camp, I spontaneously decided I wanted to rob a train that passed me by. So, I rode my horse alongside the back, and jumped on. There was only one armed guard in the back, so I promptly ran up behind him, and sent him flying off. Cool. Now to slowly, and methodically work my way forwards, loot everything, and rob everyone I thought. Nope. Just as I was looting this back cart I was in, armed guards came running from somewhere way up the front of the train, ready to shoot me dead. There's no possible way they should have been aware of what had happened back there, but alas, chaos must ensue.

This chaos mind you, no matter how many people you end up killing, or how many goodies you snatch, before you either make it out alive, or die trying, is not worth it. It doesn't take much for you to end up with a bounty on your head that's exorbitantly larger than any haul you could possibly muster in the midst of any significant shootout. And these bounties never diminish over time either, so moving forward, you're either writing Uncle Sam some pretty sizable checks, or you better be prepared to have dozens of bounty hunters on your ass at any given moment. And no….changing your outfit, and putting on a mask isn't really going to help you out much. Even if you ride into a town in an outfit you've never worn before, with a horse you just caught, and your mask on the whole time.....if you get yourself a nice juicy bounty in that look, and later you're out and about hunting looking completely unrecognizable from when you committed those crimes…..bounty hunters are still coming for you, They know. Everybody knows.

I once held up a guy in a ticket booth for the show in that first town you get to (whatever it's called). Wore an all black get up of clothes I've never worn since, plus mask. Every single time I come back there, if he sees me, he's yelling a the top of his lungs for help, regardless of the fact that he shouldn't be able to tell I'm the same guy that robbed him.

I could go on, but I've already rambled enough. Basically though, TLDR, while this game is certainly a marvelous achievement in many ways, it's also strangely anti-fun in others. It impedes you for the sake of realism, and immersion...yet simultaneously features stupidly "gamey" AI that are hyper aware of every fucking thing you do, even if they're a hundred yards off, facing the other way, drunk, and blindfolded. The chaos that usually ensues as a result, is amusing enough - even when it's unwanted - but the bounty system will quickly discourage you from having such fun, lest you wish to find yourself in an endless cycle of violence (try hunting in peace when random bounty hunters are always just waiting to ruin your day), or constantly going broke from paying off your debt to society. Rockstar wants you to be a nice outlaw, only doing naughty things when the main missions require it of you.

I dont like the hdr implementation on the ps4 pro version. Sdr looks better IMO.

I've been playing all afternoon on my old 1080p set in SDR and it looks gorgeous. Last night I was playing on 4K HDR and constantly swapping back and forth while fiddling with the HDR calibration, never getting it to look right. Nights are too bright, shadows are washed out, dark crush is still the same just more greyish. It doesn't seem to be HDR at all, just the brightness stretched for an overall brighter picture.

I'll be playing on the 4K set again tonight and leave HDR off. It's just a shame that restricts it to 8 bit color. Compared to GT Sport, SotC, God of War, Spiderman, this is not what HDR is supposed to be like.

Regarding the survival elements, I have been ignoring them. It seems to only result in more nagging, the lower health and stamina regeneration don't really matter so far. Turn the hud off to get rid of the red flashing icons, problem solved.

I prefer the hunting and crafting system from HZD. That felt like you were working for a worthy upgrade to actual game play. Plus the different tasks and vastly different machines to hunt kept it interesting. In RDR2 you get an overwhelming list of possibilities and samey animals to kill for stuff that doesn't really matter. At least that's how it feels like so far. Far cry 4 did it right for hunting animals. RDR2 takes it too far. 200 species to track, kill, skin, put on horse, ride back to camp or trapper, gather different components from each. It's a completionist's nightmare!

I'm kinda having an identity crisis in this game lol. What am I, outlaw, do-gooder, problem solver, negotiator, game hunter, bounty hunter, drunken idiot, homesteader. One moment I'm helping someone out, the next beating up a defenseless sick man for some loan or tying up a crazy women to drag to jail. Then I capture a witness to a crime I supposedly committed, no clue what to do with him so I drop him off a remote cliff then shoot him in the head as he didn't die from the fall. No bounty on my head.

I've been playing for about 5 hours now. Is this game going to start getting fun any time soon, or will I be spending 50 hours hunting (which I hate doing in every open-world game), searching for food and drinks to help maintain my "cores", and interacting with characters who are only slightly less dull than the ones in Mass Effect Andromeda?

I must be playing it wrong lol, What's up with these bounties and magically appearing posses every time you do something. How the hell do they know I stole a train. How the hell does a random character finding a body, instantly know it was me, reports it to a bush phone not 20 seconds later for a fully armed posse to show up another 30 seconds later. This is some next level ultra efficient police state 1984 nightmare.

Reload last save game, try something else. Luckily the world is great to look at. Perhaps I should give up on the missions as well as soon as I reach chapter 3. The game play is solidly stuck in the past. About as far back as the time the game is set in ;)

Oh ffs, clunky controls, horse bumped into a guy, dead, murder reported, bounty, reload. Seriously.

Watched my brother play it today. Holy crap the graphics are insane. Game felt and looked polished as hell. Saw clouds in the distance accumulating and eventually became a storm and the main character got shiny and wet from the rain. Bullets passed thru wood objects, grass and trees swayed in the wind, carriages left tracks in the ground. Wow.

Definitely picking this game up soon. Feels like the game of the generation just from that ever so brief observation.

Yep, me too.

I gotta say, though...those visuals surprised the hell out of me. I knew they'd be good but DAMN it's the best looking open world to date, I think - better than Horizon maybe.