Red Dead Redemption 2 is possibly the greatest video game of all time and certainly my absolute favourite. Red Dead Redemption was my absolute favourite for a long time, boasting gorgeous graphics, wide, open-world gameplay, and a super compelling narrative, yet Red Dead 2 exceeds the first in every way (I even liked Arthur Morgan more than John Marston, which is saying a lot) and seems to continue a growing trend in offering the rare prequel that surpasses the original (Better Call Saul is another prequel that comes close to being as good as if not better than the original, but I think Breaking Bad still reigns supreme). So what makes this game and experience so great?

The story is set in 1899 and follows Dutch’s gang in their final heyday before their (inevitable) breakup. You play as Arthur Morgan, Dutch’s trusted lieutenant, and the story sets you in media res in the middle of a snowstorm after a chaotic Blackwater ferry heist that ended with the deaths of several gang members and some serious Pinkerton bounties. Morgan is increasingly skeptical of life in the gang, realizing that it’s not the romantic and idealistic career choice that he envisioned so many years ago, and the core gang members are growing older. Hosea, arguably the most sensible member of the gang, is getting older and likely has cancer, and as the story progresses, we see Dutch beginning to unravel. What is his plan? We see time and again that Dutch has no plan or his plans are so fallible and there is no stable, long-term plan that will guarantee survival or success. For me, this was part of the tragedy, to see Morgan’s hopes and dreams and trust in Dutch and what the gang signified gradually deteriorate at the edges.

In the first game, Marston functioned as a lone wolf, pursuing the remaining members of Dutch’s gang (and even Dutch himself) across the Old and changing West many years after the gang had fallen out. I loved playing as John (and Jack) and exploring the dying frontier, but I think what makes Red Dead 2 so superior is how it builds and develops the relationship between the gang members. For me, it was the fellowship and interconnectedness of the gang that makes this game so special. It really does feel like a family and to some extent they seem to treat each other as such, which is why it is so heartbreaking when things take a turn for the worse after Hosea’s death and the Saint Denis bank robbery (he should have listened to Hosea!). Even the antagonists from the first game such as Bill Williamson and Javier Escuella are more humanized and portrayed quite sympathetically and it adds extra poignancy to their interactions in the first game. Looking back at the opening scene between John and Bill at Fort Mercer, you feel Bill’s anger and frustration at being always treated like an idiot and it provides a deeper dimensionality to the characters and the gameplay. I really liked most of the characters at camp, and even the more questionable ones like Reverend Swanson have their more redeeming moments in the game. Some of my favourite characters in the gang include Charles, Lenny, Hosea, Arthur, Sadie, and John. I also enjoyed the diversity of the characters: Lenny is black, Charles is half-black and half-Native, and Sadie is a woman. Sadie’s character is particularly exciting because she is a fierce, independent, and sexy woman who is not overly sexualized in the game or depicted as romantic interest but follows her own path and is still very appealing as a character (unlike annoying Bonnie from the first game). This is excitingly different from the caricatures or one-dimensional women presented in previous Rockstar games such as Grand Theft Auto V, and I hope they have better characterization for female characters like this in future games. The camp offers a few other female characters such as Miss Grimshaw who almost seem to be prototypes for future female characters in their games.

There is one camp member (apart from Leopold Strauss) who I detested in the game, and that is Micah Bell. Micah has taken a lot of flak from the online community for his bullying nature, psychopathy, disloyalty, and the fact that he is a piece of shit. This is all fair game because Rockstar wants us to hate this ratty, crusty man who shows no signs of loyalty and kills dogs and children. I couldn’t help but think of other Rockstar psychopaths such as Trevor Phillips from GTA V as I encountered Micah. Both are volatile, wild, and unpredictable, but whereas Trevor is loyal to Michael and Franklin, Micah is a rat, aligning himself with the Pinkertons (and possibly the O’Driscolls since they lure you into a trap after he calls the meeting). This is definitely one of the reasons why games hate him so much, but Rockstar deserves credit for crafting such a despicable, well-written character, and the voice actor does a great job with the role (“he’s lying”, “cowpoke”). I still wonder why Dutch liked Micah so much and chose him over Arthur – was it Micah’s sycophantism and seemingly absolute obedience? This may say more about who Dutch truly is (the snake!).

Red Dead 2 also gives us arguably the most gorgeous graphics and fully realized open world we’ve ever seen, and I was awestruck in the beginning of the game at the landscapes and panoramas as the gang descends the mountains. Seriously, if you can’t afford a Montana or Colorado vacation this summer, play Red Dead 2 because the sights are the next best thing. The story is long and epic, taking nearly 60-70 hours to properly complete, and what surprised me is the huge epilogue which took me a while to get through but I loved it. Just when you think it’s over, there’s another huge section of the map to explore, and it pays homage to the first game with New Austin. The most fun part for me in the new areas of the map was experiencing Tumbleweed before its fall, although it would have been fun to explore Mexico and see New Austin as Arthur Morgan.

Dutch also emerges as one of the most intriguing and complex characters Rockstar have ever written, and while I really disliked him at the end for the snake he was, the nature of his leadership still comes into question. He’s very much like a cult leader, lulling us in with his promises of the romance of the Old West, endless charisma, and the promise of being listened to, but as the story goes on, we see him fall apart. Yet it is a failure taht he cannot afford to show, and what I still wonder is if he was always like this or if the death of Hosea and his own failings just make it more apparent. Dutch’s failures and inability to recognize his delusions and accept defeat and pursue a quixotic dream seems to be a commentary on America then and today. You can’t bring the past back – what’s dead is dead and we have to think about a workable future for everyone even if it means changing how we do things forever. I would have shot Dutch alongside Micah on Mount Hagen if I could, and the tragedy for this game is that Arthur, Dutch’s most loyal follower alongside Hosea, is led to an early grave for simply wanting the best for everyone. The story is very much about Arthur’s redemption, taking a man who has done unspeakable things and forcing him to atone for what he’s done and rebuild. And I truly think Arthur atones for his previous actions and then some, and we see it happen more apparently as the story goes on. While perhaps not as bright as John, Arthur is certainly more philosophical and musing, and I enjoyed reading his journal and the updates as a means of understanding him better and looking further into his world.

I enjoyed seeing the wildlife and exploring the desert vistas in the game as well. The prequel is much more expansive and diverse than the original, and it truly feels like America on a microcosmic level, offering Montana’s desert and mountain vistas as well as Louisiana’s swamps and bayous and Virginia’s hillsides and forests. It was fun hunting some of the Legendary Animals, but to be honest I was more interested in studying the animals than killing them.

The main story missions are a blast, offering creative storylines such as robbing a steamship to driving a train to blowing up a bridge to bank robberies to posing as deputy officers of the law (what irony!!), shooting up whole towns to getting drunk with Lenny, but the story missions are also a real treat, and I arguably has as much as fun if not more pursuing all the side missions, particularly the ones with the Veteran and the Downes redemption arc. Oh, and it’s hilarious to think that you’re a wanted outlaw doing bounties for the lawmen! There are also Easter eggs galore, including ghosts, robots, mad scientists, and more. Experience as much as you can. I loved spending hours riding my horse around, but if I do have one minor complaint about the game (aside from a few odd bugs), I do think the Fast Travel system could be a bit better, but again, it’s very minor. Red Dead Redemption 2 deserves all the hype and accolades it gets and I think it’s the best game ever made. It’s well worth the $85 price tag and you’ll savour every minute. I hope y’all love it as much as I do!

Ever been to your friend’s house and they’ve bought a new video game? They hype it up, put in the disc/cartridge and you two anxiously watch the spinning wheel of the loading screen. Then, before you can read the strategy guide, your friend apprehends the controller and begins their vicarious interactive derring-do solo. Remember how deflated you felt to be the passenger on the madcap ride? Basically, that’s how Hollywood hijacks and commandeers the viewing experience in regards to console game adaptations. Not to commit the same sin of shanghaiing the op-ed article but be my NPC on this examination of a few of the best and worst specimens.

5. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)- With diversity being a buzzword among the Hollywood executives today, Prince of Persia might be the prime example of how whitewashing can result in cataclysmic miscasting. Jake Gyllenhaal can play many roles on the Caucasian spectrum but a swarthy Persian  street urchin-cum-heir to the throne is not within that ethnic margin. Then he is flanked by posh English actors (Ben Kingsley, Toby Kebbell, Gemma Arterton) which might be a statement on the British imperialism and colonialism in the Middle East but I doubt the filmmakers are on the pundit level of Gore Vidal. Not to mention Mike Newell has positively no flair with the parkour action sequences of Dastan leaping from rooftop to rooftop.

4. Max Payne (2008)- Mark Wahlberg was in a slump when this fiasco came out and if he continued to make films like this rightfully so. The game itself is a hard-boiled detective story with film noir elements. The movie attempts to capture that Phillip Marlowe-Elmore Leonard rhythm but flails by reducing the slow-motion into belabored John Woo tributes. And along with being at the coattails of trends, the film is desaturated with the monochrome of Sin City which utilized in a brilliantly vivid stylization. By contrast, Max Payne looked drab, dank and murky.

3. Resident Evil (2002)- While the opening 20 minutes glisten at what George A. Romero could’ve done with the slow-burn suspense of Alice’s (Milla Jovovich) amnesia fugue state, the film quickly capsizes into schlocky nonsense. Hack director and spouse of the star, Paul W.S. Anderson, plagiarizes pages from the Matrix playbook with bullet-time slow-motion acrobatics (the vivisecting-ray scene is particularly moronic). It’s also oddly cruel for Alice to pummel a suffering canine which is rabid from the T-virus.

2. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)- Surely the film’s CGI is dated by today’s lofty standards (Alec Baldwin’s character is a less photorealistic, cleft-chinned rendition of Ben Affleck) but it was a visual pioneer in the early 2000’s. To streamline the ethos of Final Fantasy into a coherent narrative is no small feat and the rendering farm has yielded some breathtaking visions of a post-apocalyptic landscape. The uncanny-valley effect might wither the human characters but it will remain a milestone in the segue to a special-effects-driven cinema.

1. Silent Hill (2006)- Without a shadow of a doubt, Silent Hill is the prominent apex of the adaptations. Christophe Gans clearly deciphers the appeal of the Konami game – an oppressively spine-tingling atmosphere patterned after Centralia with ash and fog engulfing the desolate town of Silent Hill. Survival horror is about isolation and Gans crafts an infernal milieu of Clive Barker oddities (the triangle menaces could be retrofitted to be Cenobites). Some of the images are quite haunting to the subconscious long after the credits roll (the cinder-like skin of the child).

And the crowd goes wild!

I wish I could say I was more excited for this Friday the 13th game. It should be a surefire win, given the state of games today. Take the actually good stuff from Evolve (and I know there wasn’t much), mix in the stealth combat of something like Shadow of Mordor or Batman: Arkham City, and you should have a fun little horror slasher game where you alternate between dodging Jason Voorhees and slaughtering camp counsleors. But damn, this gameplay footage doesn’t do much for me. I mean, there are pre-defined kill zones, and they mostly involve smashing heads into stuff? Jason is a great slasher movie villain because he’s creative with his kills and can execute them anywhere – why hold him back like that? This is probably still fairly early footage, and the game could get cooler from here, but from what I’m seeing…I’m not all that impressed, I’m afraid.

Friday the 13th comes out October of 2016.

E3 is in full swing, but I honestly haven’t been blown away yet by anything. Well, except for this freaking awesome trailer for Dishonored 2, which promises to bring back all the gunpowder-punk, plague-bearing, rooftop-jumping, backstabbing, stealth-kill awesomesauce from the first instalment, but turned up to 11. You play as Emily Corvin, the girl whom your masked assassin Corvo was trying to protect in part one, and it appears Emily has learned all of Corvo’s tricks and more. Yep, I’m sold. Shut up and take my money.

Dishonored 2 comes out November 11th, 2016

If you grew up in the early 1990s, remember how mind-blowing it was when video games started first featuring live-action cutscenes featuring real actors? Well, behold all these cutscenes in their original pixelated glory from a 1993 Sega CD game called Ground Zero: Texas. One of the actors featured is a still-unknown Danny Trejo, who played the role of “Shotgun”. And, yes, because this game seems to love its stereotypes, they actually had Trejo recite the line: “Badges?! We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”.

We’ve been here before, people. Hollywood just keeps trying to make movies based on video games into a lucrative thing, but honestly, there’s just no point. After literally decades of attempts, it seems pretty clear to me that removing a level of interactivity from a medium is futile. I don’t care how cool Michael Fassbender look in the cowl – this just doesn’t do it for me. But it does look like the video game, I’ll give it that. The trailers for the video games, though, are much cooler.

Assassin’s Creed comes out December 21, 2016.

I’d show you this honest commercial for video games and video game consoles, but it’s not ready yet. And even if it was, it wouldn’t actually represent the real honest commercial for video games and video game consoles.

I’ve kinda been over fighting games for a while now, but I did have a passing interest in Injustice: Gods Among Us when it first came out. Not enough to look into it, mind you, but enough that I noticed. This Honest Game Trailer, however, has convinced me not to bother, because the game looks more bloated and dumb than Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice…and that’s saying something.

Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst is probably one of my most anticipated games of 2016, and it’s not only because I really enjoyed the first game in the series, but also because I’m just really damn curious. How do you update something that felt as of-a-piece as Mirror’s Edge? Well, this developer diary video gives you some details. Free-roaming future parkour sounds pretty damn cool to me.

Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst comes out May 24, 2016.