I very confidently pre-ordered Red Dead Redemption 2 months before launch.

That’s a huge vote of confidence from me as I generally HATE paying full price for a game. Being a veteran of the last 40 years of gaming I know that all games are eventually sold at rock bottom prices. I take pride in buying a $60 AAA title for dirt during a Steam sale!

You can imagine my eagerness with RDR2. I had months to read about it, salivate over impossibly beautiful screen shots, and imagine how I would play my character in this 4k open world western sandbox.

Launch day finally came and I eagerly clicked the icon from the pre-installation!

This is where I made my first mistake. Instead of choosing the open world I was interested in, I decided to play the single player campaign. I found the cut-scene heavy intro was slow and plodding…and then the game play seemed, by most accounts, very slow and plodding. I wasn’t a big fan of the characters I was interacting with and not nearly as invested as the dialog was suggesting I should be.

Another problem was that I was just of the heels of completing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, which could be one of the greatest games to be produced. I was expecting my RDR2 experience to be on par with my AC:O experience. Yes, they very similar games which follow a protagonist through the story and it’s “open world” but that’s where the similarities end.

Odyssey is a single player campaign. Period. There is no “massive multiplayer” content in the game. So comparing RDR2’s single player campaign to AC:O is easy.

AC is a better game in terms of propelling me through the story line. My dislike for the RDR2 single player experience has leaked into the MMO play space of the game…which again, is completely separate.

My goal is to keep playing and become more familiar with the MMO side of the game. Like AC:O, I keep seeing amazing screenshots taken by pixel drunk adventurers…and I want that same experience!