True Grit

The Coen brothers return with their most successful movie ever - a remake of the John Wayne classic True Grit. Tipped for the Oscars, is this modern Western going to sweep up in 2011?


I'm going to be honest, I've never seen the original True Grit - all I know about it is that it was John Wayne's sole Oscar winning performance and his last. Jeff Bridges takes on the one eyed Rooster who is employed by a young girl to find her father's killer - it's a simple chase movie that we know the Coens can do well, but is it their best yet? To be honest, I don't think so.

There's nothing I like more than a good Western but I just couldn't get into this story that much, it's great don't get me wrong but I don't love it as much as I loved No Country For Old Men for instance. That's not to say the performances here aren't incredible, because they are, and I'm sure that there might be an Oscar nomination nod here. Bridges is perfect for the dissatisfied, nihilistic Marshall and his gravel-tinged voice is full of the spite that he has for criminals - he truly doesn't care about killing another man. This is in contrast to the rather conservative Texas Ranger Matt Damon who has been chasing this notorious criminal for a while and his journey crosses theirs more regularly than they might like. Brolin as Chaney is again a small but perfect performance but it is Steinfeld as young Mattie that really stands out. For such a young actress her bold, brave and startlingly convincing performance sometimes completely outshines the others and I would not be surprised if she is nominated, or perhaps might even win an Oscar this year.

Not only is it just the acting, but the writing is also remarkable and every character in this movie will make you love and yet hate them. The girl is clever, sweet-natured but yet bloodthirsty and often annoying, Brolin is clearly evil but naive and subservient, Damon is brave yet stubborn and Bridges is the classic anti-hero. The dialogue and pacing is perfect, keeping you on your toes one minute but then lets you embrace the exchanges around the campfire the next, all without losing interest. A big issue here was that there's a lot of grumbling, murmuring and often I couldn't understand what was being said, an issue I'm finding cropping up more and more often - either that or I'm getting older.

I guess there are some deeper themes here, some more apparent than others such as feminism, sexism, existentialism and generally the idea of killing a man. However, there is also the idea of following your dream, coming-of-age, family and it's all generally very macho. It was an enjoyable film and I highly recommend it, but I can't justify giving it top marks because I immediately forgot about it as soon as it was over. It might get the same score as Tron: Legacy, which people might see as blasphemous, but I really did enjoy it the same amount. Coen brothers are generally considered 'cool' and 'indie', but have they ever been truly indie? They are usually the first names people go to when they try to suggest they know something about film, the amount of times I hear 'I think the Coen brothers are amazing', I agree that they are amazing but people often gush over them way too much then they should - A Simple Man? Burn After Reading? They got rave reviews but I didn't think they were much cop. Shock!

Overall, this is a good film that I would enjoy watching again, but not unless I had to. Great performances and I'm sure the Oscars will love it but if you've seen the trailer, you've seen the film. I don't really care if it's got Coen's all over it, it's a great film but it's not amazing and I'm sure they will release something similar in a couple of years. Quantity doesn't mean quality.

Rating: 8/10

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare DLC

Red Dead becomes Undead in this new DLC that successfully combines the Western genre with Horror so that shooting zombies never looked so cool

Rockstar have graced us with an odd add-on that takes the original game and completely changes it by adding zombies into the Wild West without taking itself too seriously. You start as John Marston again on his farm as his dead Uncle attacks his family and turns them into zombies. After tying them up, he vows to find a solution to help them and so the action begins.

Rockstar have taken advantage of the current Grindhouse trend and given this a B-movie cult horror genre feel by exploiting it in all the right places and being completely self-aware. The zombies move realistically and can only really be put down with a shot to the head and when you do shoot, instead of a typical gaming 'blow-up' head shot, instead only that part of the head is blown away giving the game a physicality not often achieved, especially with such fodder as Dead Rising 2. As you save town after town trying to uncover the truth, you bump into the characters from the original story making it a bit of a nostalgic trip as well. Similar to the original game, you have to help strangers along the way, find missing people and other small missions but essentially you're trying to find out what's behind all this.

As fun as it was to play, saving town after town by giving survivors ammunition (something that is scarce at first but builds up rather quickly) becomes a bit of a ball-ache. You have to go up to one survivor and then head to the others giving them ammo before finishing off the zombies. Trying to negotiate a way to get up to these survivors can be taxing to say the least, especially with zombies biting at your tails. However, once you've saved all the towns and done the main storyline (with a great 'few months later' epilogue) I'd imagine unless you're a completist you'd probably leave it there.

They also cleverly use the zombie factor as an excuse to include zombie animals as well as special 'Apocalypse' horses that if you catch, give you a certain special power. Though my Pestilence horse which was supposed to be impossible to kill, died almost as soon as I got it by falling off a cliff but yet I survived, so that was a bit of an anti-climax. However, there are Sasquatches, unicorns and more to find should you wish to do so. But as fun as it was, saving the towns occupied a lot of my time and soon became annoying. Also the final onslaught in a cave wasn't the big finale I expected it to be, instead it fell quite flat. It's also worth noting that you can still use your Red Eye slowing down time meaning you shouldn't really become too overwhelmed with zombies at any one time. The good thing is there is more than one type of undead, you have the normal ones, you have little fast spider like ones, spitting ones and big boulder-like ones. Therefore, it can keep the killing fresh by mixing it up with an assortment of the four. Weapons are also customised for zombie killing including a gun that shoots dead flesh back at them.

The game still sticks to it's open world sandbox roots, with certain Ranked missions, Treasure hunting and outfit collecting so there is something for everyone here. I couldn't justify spending enough time on it to complete it 100%, but doing the main storyline with bits afterward took about 8 hours, perhaps a bit more, and that's saving all the towns as well.


For a downloadable pack, this is great but I still felt they should have eased off saving all the towns constantly and concentrated more on doing missions. It's a nice, strange 'ending' as such with Red Dead Redemption and a great alternative to the Western feel of the original game. It's unique, brave and has successfully won over a lot of the audience, it's also due to come out on disc form in the near future as well. Rockstar have also announced that a Red Dead bundle will come out at the end of November with this and all the other DLC available in one big package. I recommend you buy this, especially if you loved Red Dead Redemption and it's a great DLC but again it's not perfect. Great idea, great gameplay, but felt like there could have been more to the story and saving all the towns became more of a chore as it went along. I'd love to see a DLC to this DLC (if that makes sense) which just opened it out a bit more, but for such content, depth and originality, it's one of the best DLC's out there. Go forth and enjoy - dead or undead.

DLC Rating: 9/10

Red Dead Redemption

One of the most highly anticipated games of 2010 has reached such a fever that there has become a shortage of copies! But is it all it's cracked up to be?

A loose sequel on PS2's "Red Dead Revolver", this game follows the same 'spaghetti western' concept that it's predecessor laid out. Except this time, they've blown it wide open.

If you haven't already heard of this game, it's an open sandbox game (which means you can go anywhere at any time and do anything) that takes place in the wild west of 1911. You play John who was left for dead by his old gang and has been asked by the government to hunt down his old compadres.

What you immediately notice about this game is the incredible graphics. Rolling landscapes, wildlife, the weather, the cities and the bustling people look incredible. You are literally stepping into a fully interactive Western. Not only that, but the acting, the straightforward plot (unlike GTA's often confusing storyline) and pretty much everything about this game is near perfect.

But that's the problem, it's NEAR perfect. A lot of review sites have been going crazy over this game calling it one of the greatest games ever, and I'd agree if it wasn't for some niggling bits. Seeing as most of the people reading this review would perhaps have already read about or bought this game, then let me go through the bad points first, because I'm sorry to say that even though it lives up to the hype, I do have some issues with it.

Firstly, the horse riding. It works much in the same way as Shadow Of The Colossus, tapping the button to go faster, but yet because of your horse's stamina, you can't do it for too long. Which is fine except, there's a lot of it. At first you'll love taking in the scenery and travelling about (the world here is HUGE)but after a while you just want to get from A to B, which is lucky that they have stagecoaches or you could use your campsite, but I felt it relied somewhat on you wanting to spend the next ten minutes or so just riding around. Which at first is amazing, but after 20 or so hours, you just want to get things going. Also when you are shooting and riding, your horse will slow down or end up going somewhere else, I felt they should have left it so your horse keeps going onwards if you're aiming instead of pushing buttons and trying to aim and fire at the same time.

Also I found many a glitch, at some points having to re-load a previous save because I couldn't do anything the glitch was so bad. This is understandable for a game as complex as this, but still, it shouldn't happen. I also had a problem with some of the side games, firstly the bounty hunter which I got stuck into straight away but couldn't figure out how to take them alive, that was until further down the line I found out that you get given a lassoo. But then, unless you have a blood fetish, it's so easy to take the bounties alive that it becomes a chore. In fact, that's an overall issue I had with the whole game. It's almost way too easy. The covering system helps, but along with your auto-lock-on and Dead Eye which slows down time - you're pretty much sorted from the off. I rarely died in a gun battle but annoyingly would perhaps die by chasing a bounty, and then getting mauled by an animal to death which is SO annoying I can't tell you. Especially since half the time you can't even hear them!

Many people have also dubbed this GTA in the West, which essentially is what it is, but there's a lot GTA offers that Red Dead doesn't. Firstly, this might sound strange but, I can't sleep with prostitutes. Why not?! If I beat someone up or kill them, I'm almost automatically hunted down, very different from GTA. But then, I chose the way of the light, and it is possible to go the evil way, though I'd say this time round the good way is probably more interesting than the evil. I don't think I'll quite go the way of the outlaw because you get rated in Fame and Honour and since you work on getting it up, you don't wanna bring it back down, so it feels like you choose either one way or the other from the off, which I found irritating.

Another annoying aspect is the Master Shooter/Hunter/Survivalist etc. where you have to kill, collect, and ... pick flowers. This is fine but you have to do it in a certain order and you might have killed a whole bunch of animals, skinned them etc., but none of it counts because you didn't kill those 2 rabbits to get you up to Level 3. So when I was left after doing the main game missions to do these extra bits, I had to keep travelling around and re-doing things I'd already done at some point. Couldn't they have them listed out separately like in other games? Not have it all in an order?

There was also the case of the weapons. I had so many weapons, I couldn't begin tell you. To be frank, it was more than what was needed; although it is better to have them than to not, they could have made them slightly more different perhaps, one rifle seemed as good as the next. Then there's the money side. At the beginning money is hard to come by, as is always the case, but soon enough you're rolling in it. I never had an issue with money ever and this is for the following reasons: if you kill and skin enough animals, you can make a huge amount, especially with animals like bears and horses. If you're any good at poker at all, you can clear up (the poker game is fantastic) but the five finger knife thing you can really make some money at. After winning against a couple of people you can make a $100 bet, which is a lot in the game, and the button sequence is the same. So if I ever needed money, I'd just do that - it's too easy. The Liar's Dice and Blackjack aren't quite so guaranteed but good fun nonetheless.

Also, once you think you've finished the game, you start doing more mundane things like herding cattle etc. until a final battle. But it all shattered the dream for me, I wanted John to kind of waltz in and waltz out, that he was from somewhere else in the big wild west when actually, sorry if this might ruin it for you, he lives just down the road. Then once all that's done and you've finished the main game, you're left to do all the stuff you wanted to do except something's different ... hmm ... I won't ruin it for you, but I would have preferred to do it all before completing the game. You'll see what I mean ...

There's a bit of variety in the game, but not as much as I'd prefer. Whether it's breaking horses, nightwatch duty, the confusing arm wrestling game, or duelling with other gunslingers there's enough to keep you busy but just falls short of the amount that GTA has. But then this is the main problem, it's not GTA and I just feel as open as this game is, they could have made it even bigger. Not in size, but in scope. The world in there is so incredibly thought out and well-made that it stuns people into submission but, in fact, this game is ever-so-slightly flawed and I feel, though this is an amazing game, I think Rockstar will come out with a new Red Dead that will truly advance on this game at some point in the future.

The multiplayer aspect of this looks incredible too. Whether riding in your posse or doing certain missions, you'll be hard pressed to get bored. There has even been talk of downloadable co-op content on the horizon and for that I cannot wait.

Overall, all the side quests, plots and shootouts are great and feel like they have come right out of a true spaghetti western. The graphics incredible, the gameplay smooth and everything about it makes other sandbox games feel like dirt on your shoe. I played this game thinking nothing could ever beat it, but after the 22 hours of gameplay I've already invested into it, I can see room for improvement and that's why it can't get 10/10. It's a game that you'll always find yourself coming back to and anyone who has ever loved Western films, whether you're into games or not, should pick up and play this game. You'll be hooked whoever you might be, I guarantee it mister.

Rating: 9/10