Red Dead Redemption Preview

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You can choose to ignore most of the distractions the game flings at you as you trot through the desert, but they still offer glimpses of a stark and ungovernable environment, as the next rise reveals a rotting corpse tangled in amongst the scrub, or a strange plume on the horizon, which may emanate from drunken good ol' boys gathered round a campfire, or the dust flung up by a group of desperadoes dragging a local farmer behind them. Frontier doesn't just seem dangerous, then - it feels promisingly unhinged.

Transport around such a huge space is as volatile as the rest of the wildlife. Powered by Euphoria's real-time animation system, which allows for an unending parade of saggy, staggering deaths, each horse Marston finds, whether he steals it from a town or tames it from the wild, has a different set of traits, ranging from speed and toughness, to general orneriness, all of which reveal themselves in wilful handling. His rides are easily spooked, too, with snakes, gunshots, and even reckless over-spurring causing them to throw him if he doesn't treat them right, suggesting horse management may add a fascinating wildcard to many of the game's missions.

With the wilderness drawn with such surprising force, it's harder to gauge what kind of order Rockstar is seeking to impose on such a convincingly lawless world, and while the three brief missions we're shown focus heavily on combat, they reveal little in the way of story or overall structure. The first, a tense hostage exchange in an sun-bleached ghost town - this being Rockstar, it's a trap, of course - throws Marston straight into the middle of a dusty shootout, with a nice range of cover options (players can hide behind rocks, fences, and even horse carcases if they're really desperate), and a handful of Dead-Eye special moves for when the odds stack up. The first of these is a standard slow-mo, while the second allows Marston to line up as many shots as possible on multiple enemies before unleashing them all in a single deadly volley, adding a deft tactical dynamic to the 360-degree staging.

Each territory has a distinct colour pallet, Mexico's deep reds alternating with Frontier's subtle golds, and the neon blues and greens of the disco savannah.

Two subsequent missions give a taste of other, equally traditional scenarios, the first riding shotgun on a fleeing stagecoach, the second on horseback, protecting a battered steam train from bandits. The stagecoach offering has a pleasant hint of shooting gallery to it, with blindfire to exploit and a range of guns at Marston's disposal, from the thuggish close-up blast of a sawn-off, to a carbine useful for picking people off in the distance. Meanwhile, shooting desperadoes looks just as satisfying on horseback, which turns out to be a lot more interesting than blasting away at someone out of the window of a Blista Compact. Marston's both more manoeuvrable and more vulnerable than Liberty City's motorists, a few well-placed volleys taking his nag's legs out from under him and dumping him into the sand, on foot and at a significant disadvantage.

An ambush and two escort runs, then, but while the missions we're shown may be fairly conservative, there's an undeniable freshness in the old west details, leading to a slight thrill every time you select not just a rifle, but a Winchester from the weapon menu, shoot a man's hat off during a chase, or stumble across robbers with bandanas covering the bottom half of their faces.

Rockstar's proud of its horse-killing, and a good ten minutes is spent bringing various mounts to their knees.

Due to the general scarcity of decent Western titles, and the developer's own skill at mimicry, Rockstar's latest is shaping up to be that rare game in which it's still exciting to see your favourite genre clichés enacted as much as undermined. And while we've only been given a quick glance at a gigantic title, it's more than enough to remind fans of Revolver what a perfect match Rockstar's found in the Wild West. With a setting that offers a handy means of exploring the company's fascination with brutal morality, while simultaneously providing a neat framework of cinematic references to hang the whole thing on, Red Dead Redemption sees Rockstar shooting from the hip - and, so far, it's hitting most of its targets.