Red Dead Revolver tells the story of Red, a young bounty hunter out for revenge against anyone who breaks the law. When Red was just a teenager, he witnessed his parents being slaughtered before his very eyes. He still carries the revolver his father gave him just before he died and uses it to dispense his type of justice. For the most part you are playing a video game version of nearly half a dozen films to be released this year. Revenge seems to be a popular topic in both video games and cinema, but, unfortunately, Revolver fails to go above and beyond the basic storyline and introduce anything mind-bendingly original.

As with all of Rockstar Games’ releases, Red Dead Revolver features excellent production values. Menus are slickly presented in a sun-bleached, washed out look complete with bugs and scorpions scurrying over your desk (which serves as the game’s main menu). You have the option of playing through the story mode, reading through Red’s journal, or entering showdown arenas for some multiplayer action. Unfortunately, only story mode possesses any value as Red’s journal is slow to read through (making you zoom-in on each page just to read it), and showdown only provides a moderate level of excitement. Level transitions featuring the game’s characters playing with guns make the time go by very fast. Some levels load in seconds while others can take almost a minute to boot, but it never feels that long.

After the initial tutorial mission and some hand holding in the first levels of the game, you get the feel for every single mission you will face during the course of your journey. For the most part, you will control Red on foot while he lays the perpetual smack-down on his enemies. Red has the ability to hide behind objects such as rocks, trailers, and buildings to take cover while popping guys off from a distance with a rifle. Other times you will be required to charge in, guns blazing, and eliminate hordes of bad guys. As you progress through the game you further the story, little piece after little piece, but by the end of each mission you have the feeling of quaint accomplishment.

Missions could be as simple as killing a specific enemy (mostly boss battles), while others will have you traversing on the rooftops of speeding train cars to the caboose, only to be required to make your back up to the engine while dodging precariously placed beams which extend over the tracks. This mission, in general, isn’t too hard but Red’s somewhat sluggish control will have you falling off the train more times than you can count.

In fact, the game possesses an odd bug at this point, where you will be instantly killed before the level has even loaded. Several times I managed to get pushed off the train and die mid-level. The game would load up the level again and I would be greeted by my death scream again and the game asking me if I would like to continue. At one point this happened three to four times in a row before I was actually allowed to die by my own hand. While it doesn’t appear to be too detrimental to your gameplay experience, it can elevate the level of frustration you already possess from the tedious platform-like jumping.

As much as the developers tried to give you something different to do in each level, the more you realize that it is merely a semi-transparent sheet used to hide the repetitious nature of the game. One shinning star of Red Dead Revolver is a Max Payne like slow motion mode where Red can queue up shots and then return to normal time and take them. This is also how the Quick Draw mode works. Players pull back on the analog stick to draw their weapon and paint their opponents body with the crosshair while hitting the fire button to queue up a shot. After about five seconds, normal time resumes and if you did enough damage you win the battle.

It’s hard to believe that a game’s unique design could be a major drawback, but sometimes the requirements inherited by these design choices only provide more frustration. At one point you reach a city where I had high hopes that I would be allowed to explore a little, maybe find some hidden areas or search out some better weapons. Imagine my disappointment when nearly every door, shop, or interesting place in the entire town was either boarded up, locked, or didn’t open till later in the day. It seems odd that you would be dropped in this hub and not be allowed to do anything right off the bad, and it seems even more restricting that, as linear as the game is, you should be held back from doing anything that didn’t fit into the straight and narrow storyline. When a game is published by the same company responsible for the most open-ended games of all time (that being the Grand Theft Auto series) it really makes you wonder.

When playing Red Dead Revolver you will be treated to adequate, yet average, graphics. There is nothing here that will light your screen on fire, but the textures look washed out and muddy, either on purpose or not, but you still get the vide you are in the Old West. I was impressed with the game’s sound effects, but beyond the basic ambient noises, gun shots, and explosions, you will find nothing special.

There are some fun-ending bugs in the game that may have you wondering if a few more weeks of development could have provided a more solid game. One boss battle has you going toe-to-toe with a big fat clown with dynamite strapped to his chest. If he gets near you he sets off the dynamite, blowing you across the screen and leaving him unharmed. Besides being a rather ludicrous battle, this boss is able to see you and detonate his bombs through walls, up stairs, on roofs, basically anywhere as long as he is near you. In this particular mission, you just rescued an English chap who aids you in the battle, but the boss ignores him at all times, only coming after you and taking cheap shot after cheap shot until you are dead and reload the level for the fifth time. The biggest problem with the game is the AI, which is either incredibly dumb (taking pot-shot after pot-shot hoping to hit you) or incredibly wise like our explosive friend described above. Much like LucasArts’ Armed and Dangerous, enemies always seem to find a way behind you and shoot you in the back over and over again.

Playing through Red Dead Revolver leaves you with the feeling that the game could have been so much more. With a few more weeks in development, the game could have easily been rid of some of the more problematic bugs, but with a few more months and some focus testing Rockstar would have realized that a lot more variety was needed in the gameplay before the game could be anything more than average in the minds of gamers and critics alike. Revolver is an easy recommendation for a rental, but anything more is money not spent pre-ordering San Andreas or catching up on the wealth of games released last Christmas that you still haven’t played.