Tom Chick wrote:

For better or worse (usually worse), Rockstar marches to the beat of its own drum. The more I play Red Dead Redemption, the more I wish Rockstar could be more like other developers. The more I wish they had a better sense for how to finesse the open-world concept they basically invented and then let lie game after game. The more I wish they learned world building from other developers who followed up on the Grand Theft Auto model. The more I wish they would hone their interface just a tad more rather than doing it like they did it last time. The more I wish they had a better sense of character and internal consistency and polish. The more I wish their missions were something I could look forward to rather than something I frequently dread. The more I wish Red Dead Redemption was as good as it should have been instead of as passable as it is.

But it's still early. Maybe it all starts to come together in the later hours.

For now, let me tell you about how I made $23 from an $18 herb gathering mission.

Rockstar can be so careless. I don't just mean cutscenes that take place at night or in storms when they shouldn't happen at night or in storms; or these same old contrived mission set-ups that ping-pong between John Marsten as a valiant defender of the weak and a ruthless amoral killer; or even cattle herding, bronco bucking, and finger knifing minigames that really highlight what happens when minigames go bad.

I mean a lot of weird technical nonsense, which is something you'd think Rockstar would have perfected by now. People walk across saloons and pop up onto chairs. My horse gets in my way during a gunfight and then pushes me off a cliff. My own horse! Et tu, Bucephalus? The town goes as wild when I pull out a lasso as they do when I whip out a shotgun. A man plunges his knife into a woman, calling her a whore. I punch him and he runs off. The woman stands up and stares impassively at me while the blood spreads from the wound on her shoulder. "Why hello there, my dear", I offer, pressing the B button. "Howdy, stranger," she says, bleeding profusely.

These sort of hitches are unavoidable in any ambitious open-world game. But do they have to occur so frequently, and so easily? Or maybe I simply don't notice them in games as spectacular as Just Cause 2, as stunningly beautiful as Assassin's Creed 2, as refreshingly unique as Brutal Legend, or as innovative as Red Faction: Guerrilla.

In the desert scrub outside Armadillo, a man sitting at a campfire bets me $18 he can collect wild herbs faster than me. I easily beat him by frantically tapping the A button to sprint. A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A. Who still thinks this is a good idea for sprinting? Rockstar. That's who.

"You're good, friend," the man says when I return to camp with two (2) herbs. He is true to his word and gives me $18. "Looks like you won."

He says this while he's on fire, flailing around wildly and screaming. He had stepped onto the campfire while returning with the herbs. He collapses and I loot his charred corpse for an additional $5.