I am cut off from my beloved Playstation today, visiting my Mother and the family. Was going to bring the PS3, unfortunately my brother only has a shitty old Sanyo TV. Looked everywhere for the Audio/Video cable but no luck. What I am left with is my Brother’s X Box 360 with one controller and no games. My Sister also has a Wii, honestly though I don’t think I would want to play her games.
The first problem we ran into was the lack of movie stores around anymore. The big chain movie store in the nearest town was closed, for more then the night. Newspapers half-covered the windows and clearly visible through them, there was nothing inside. We were in luck, my Brother knew of a small privately owned movie store down the street. The car stopped in front of a old brick hotel, with a bar filling the entire first floor. This place is called the Royal Hotel, and let me tell you from actually being in this place a couple of times, there is nothing “royal” about it.
The Movie Ticket was the name of the place, by the looks of the outside of the place, I doubted there was video games inside. Of course we checked, we walk inside to what looks to be a concession stand from a cut rate Movie Mill. There was about 20 Blu Ray cases and 50 new releases plastered against the opposite wall of the concession stand. This actually seemed like an addition to the building, as there was another floor about one step up. This was about the same size as the first room but with out the concession, looked bigger. I was pretty pumped to see one wall of games among the other walls and racks of old releases. Around 30 titles each for Playstion 3, X Box 360, and Nintendo Wii. Red Dead Redemption was the only game that seemed to stand out, and I heard good things about it. Made my Bro make an account and I paid.
After running around to Seven Eleven and McDonald’s to stock up on McDoubles, 2L Sprites and munchies. We got back to my Mother’s and discovered our second problem. I forgot to pack the most important gaming supply! It’s a two hour round trip, to go back home and the quality was some of the worse I have seen in years. I decided to call my good friend who lives in the nearest city to see if he could help us out. He texted me to come by for a visit, and we head out to the dismay of my Mother. She worries about what my Brother does with his car. Its only a half hour drive to the city and seems like we are there in no time. Realizing he recently moved I didn’t know where he lived. I tried texting him and calling but straight to voicemail every time. Figured his girlfriend used up the last of his minutes. Kind of fed up of not getting a hold of my friend, I called up his buddy who was going to help me out. Ordered 20 bucks worth of gaming supplies, looked in my wallet and saw a ten and five dollar bill.
I didn’t have enough for what I ordered, so I made my Brother count five dollars of car change. Most people have loonies and toonies in a cup holder in there car, my Brother has tons of dimes, nickels, and pennies. With a hand full of shrapnel, I was honestly surprised when he walked out of the Seven Eleven with a five dollar bill. Now we were set, just needed to wait for the supplies. While waiting, my friend finally called me back and tells me to stop by. Knowing my buddy is friends with my friend, I call my buddy and tell him to me at my friends. He says that works better for him because he needed to drop off there too. I told him it was probably for me consider I asked my friend earlier to hook me up. This confused the hell of him for a little while but after a few phone calls we figured everything out.
It was nice to see my friends new place, he is a good friend I have known for most my life. Very small two bedroom house with a huge yard. Coolest thing was that he was letting one of his friends keep their python there. Not the biggest, but I really like pythons and boa constrictors. If I ever seen a snake in the wild I would shit myself but in captivity I don’t mind them. It was a short visit considering it was late and he had to work in the morning. Talked a bit about his snowmobiling trip with his girlfriend and I told how he should of brought his snowboard. We are both avid snowboarders, and could of talked all night. We didn’t and we were back on the road. Gas was low so we stopped by my Brothers’ bank to get a little money. He thought he had five dollars at lease but he only had four, I called my bank not knowing what I had, three dollars was mine account. He considered only putting four dollars worth of gas using a debit card, but I think using a Seven Eleven earlier as a bank, was enough gas station embarrassment for one day.
Took the gamble and made it home ok, set up the food, drinks and supplies around 12: 30am. I put in the game before we left, the X Box actually had a hard time reading the disc. Had to open and close the tray several times before it could read it. I figured it needed updates before we could play, I got that going before we headed into the city. When we finally got back and in perfect gaming mode, the controller died. After looking in all the junk drawers and other places I figured batteries would be, I stole some from my Sister’s Wii remote. Finally, time to play.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
First off I would like to say I am not a fan of western movies, and grown up in and hating southern Alberta. Which I like to consider the Texas of Canada. Not that I hated my life or childhood more then normal, I just never liked the cowboy, rodeo scene. Second, I now appreciate my HD flat screen and kick ass sound system. All the tutorial text in the start of the game is almost indecipherable, and I missed out on how to do the bad ass slow motion shooting. Lucky, it’s not like Fallout 3 or New Vegas and has no subtitles and all the characters seem to speak well in the cut scenes. Which brings up another point, the spaghetti western accent is hard to understand sometimes. Background noises and music is very loud and the voices are quiet, on my stereo it would be fine. Being a Rockstar game, the controls play a little like the Grand Thief Auto franchise. I completely blow goats at riding horses in the game so far and find it is sort of something to get used to. Especially when switching from riding to shooting and walking, although there seem to be a really good auto aim on.
Story wise, seems ok for now. You are John Marston, a bounty hunter from somewhere I already forgot. You go to try to convince your brother to leave a gang of thieves, only to be shot in the ribs. I lady doctor finds you and nurses you back to health. Only playing for an hour or two, I didn’t get too far into the story. It has a open sandbox environment, like the GTA series, but I stayed to the close, early, very mundane missions. These are basically tutorials, which I can not read, and the shitty video store I rented from didn’t include the instruction manual. No matter, just a trial run for now. Really not impressed with the lack of online gaming available here. That is one things I don’t like about the X Box, online play is not free. I hear it is better thought.
It’s rented for two more full days, I will write a half review on it because I hope I can’t beat it in two days. Maybe I will buy it, after all I heard it is really a good game. Plus the add on package has something to do with zombies, that’s high on my awesomeness rating system. I will let you all know in three or four days.
What I really like about this game, is its playability, it is really addictive. You can see your rank in the top left hand corner and gives you drive to survive longer. You can continue on the level you died on, to continue the "evolution" but your score resets. This is a great game after smoking a fat joint, there are some amazing graphics and trippy patterns. I couldn't imagine playing on Psilocybin or other hallucinogens. Anyway for ten bucks, its a good buy and is while worth it. Plus you get to listen to your own music. Have fun with it. 
