2h in and I'm liking it, but let's see when it become more open world.

I've been playing since Friday afternoon, all weekend, still not reached chapter 3!. It's so easy to get side tracked, so much stuff to see, so many places to explore and I guess that's all in the extended tutorial area. Of course that time also includes plenty deaths and reloads cause of the clunky controls and random nonsense that tends to happen. Horse jumps over a fence into someone, instant murder charge, bounty, reload. Heck just accidentally knocking someone over in town gets you a death sentence.

Beware the game upset my wife when one of those random attacks happened and they shot my horse dead from under me. Plus be careful with the controller in town. Even though your weapons are stowed accidentally pushing the R2 button instantly fires a round right into the face of the person you are trying to talk to, Reload. Don't stand to close to a train either at a crossing, horses are fragile things and have no sense of self preservation. They need their brakes checked as well.

However despite the game play being hit and miss, leaning more towards the miss side, I can't stop playing. The world is so awesome, characters so well defined and brought to life that all the annoying game mechanics fade to the background.

I've enjoyed it a lot so far. Some things are truly annoying though. Things like people jumping out of the way of other horses, straight to dying under your horse in town. Suddenly everyone's a witness, your aim for being a good guy rep wise is out the window. At that moment you realise you haven't saved after a long session hunting and gathering herbs and something has to give. The GTA checkpoints style doesn't quite cut it for this game either. The map is one of the worst I've seen in a game.

I'm not sure I like how you can be hunting in the wilderness and suddenly somebody starts shooting at you. So you shoot back, and despite being in the middle of nowhere, you have gone through a routine investigating - murder witness - somebody else I have to kill. It just doesn't seem quite right right that so many people would be remote places, and know it was exactly you, no matter if you ride off or hide.

It is not all about negatives. It is at times unrivalled and jaw dropping beautiful and fantastic in everything it does. My opinion might change as I do the second half of the game. It just seems with a few small design and structural changes, I could have gone from an "I love this game, but..." into a straight "I love this game."

But for now I am shocked to find it not my game of the generation, and not even my game of the year. It will probably hit my all time top 20, which is no mean feat. But the niggles, mean it doesn't steal the number one spot I had reserved for it. It seems to be a similar case to GTA, where everyone buys them, everyone says they like them, but when they give you favourite game list, most people won't include GTA on them. For now my rating is I love this game, but...

Please don't let me put anyone buying this game though. It is fantastic. My list are about things stopping it being the best game I've ever played, not disputing it's overall greatness.

Still in chapter 2 after almost 18hrs of playing(just been doing side activities and exploring), I just can't get enough of the beautiful scenery, animations, talking with people, the auto travel with cinematic view, my lovely horse who just poops after a long travel(which my daughter perfectly took a picture of lol), the combat(the guns and fist fighting feels all so solid and weighted), my only gripe would be the no load game option on the main menu.

The game mechanics have turned me into a cold blooded psychopath. Ypu can't leave any witnesses. When someone dies, everyone must die! I went so far tonight as when I was robbing some sick old ladies home (following a tip I got after helping someone) I set her on fire when she ran out to get her sons for help. I carried her corpse back in, dumped it on the bed and set the bedroom on fire to make it look like an accident. Then I watched the fire slowly spread through the house (very well done) while calmly cleaning my guns. A contribution to the camp later is enough to regain +white whatever that red-white bar represents at the bottom. (honor?)

I'm still in chapter 2 as one of the missions pissed me off so much I took a break from them. I almost opted for skip checkpoint as the clunky controls kept screwing up my stealth attempts over and over. In the end I simply ran in, took what I needed, and repeated that a few times until the random number generator landed in my favor to get away clean.

Instead I explored the rest of the map, revealed all the still greyed out spots and enjoyed the emergent game play instead. Jaw dropping does not describe the weather system and awesome sights along the way. I went swimming from island to island with my horse while thunderstorms drifted over. I hunted some cool animals along the way yet had no room to store them, whatever. I set up camp on one island, woke up on another. Just like saving one place, load the game and you're somewhere completely different. It doesn't matter, just run back again. Btw the water also has an invisible barrier. In some places it simply stops you, in others your horse stamina suddenly goes to zero, means the horse throws you off, your stamina insta zeros as well and you drown. At least when you tumble down a mountain when stepping over the invisible map border trip wire you still have a chance to survive.

Despite how clumsy it is to trace out the edges of the map, it was great fun with amazing sights. Then I did some kamikaze runs into the wanted dead or alive area. Wow, 20 seconds in it starts spawning death squads with highly accurate shooters. The game really doesn't want me there yet. You also get a bounty in the adjacent territory just for getting spotted. So still some mysteries left map wise.

Awesome world and luckily there are at least a few remote areas where there are no witnesses nor traffic. Tomorrow back to the story.

So poker is feeling pretty sketchy right now. Two hours in and I still can't clear the table. Every single pocket pair I've drawn has been 8's, no exception...

EDIT: Finally drew something different. Still feels wonky, though.

You can get the physical form, I was a bit worried for a long update but after (a long installation) you only need to download a 3Gig update;

Let me guess.... it involved an oil wagon?

I read a tip online saying change in the settings the camera from movement focused to player or horse focused. Meant to help a lot. Try it guys.

How did you guess lol. The AI with eyes in the back of their heads and telepathic powers, a character that can't stay hidden as an inch too close to a ledge makes him auto climb on top and scream TADA to all in range, combined with a fragile wagon that falls apart when you hit a pebble in the road, it was fun :)

It's also amazing how they accurately spot you after firing an arrow while concealed in a bush a long way off, at night, in a rain storm. I can't see them, simply relying on the aiming dot turning red to get a clear shot. Yet suddenly they are all shooting at me with pin point accuracy and I have to bail out of there. Amazing! Of course simply sitting behind a rock is enough to pick them all off one by one.