Red Dead Redemption Multiplayer Hands-On

More constructively, there are packs of cougars to fend off, hats to gun from civilian scalps, bounties to collect, enforcers to annoy and outlaw hideouts to raid, among other global or localised objectives. As you scale the Free-Roam-specific 50-level experience ladder, you’ll unlock new steeds, new threads, new weapons, new modes and maps. It’s possible to spend hours in the hinterland between competitive matches, joining posses and wreaking havoc on the locals.

Among the customisation options are little floating descriptors that let other players know how you roll.

Once your posse leader cracks the whip, teleports everybody to his or her location and slits open a playlist, you’ll find the competitive modes a little prosaic despite the mayhem they foster. Deathmatch (or Free-for-All Shootout) and Team Deathmatch (or Gang Shootout) unfold much as they do in any other third-person, cover-focussed shooter with recharging health, give or take that procedural physics model and a hearty dose of yeehaw.

Disgruntled miners with heavy duty facial hair toss dynamite from rickety wooden rooftops, Mexican guerrillas unload sawn-off shotguns over market stalls, and keepers of the peace train their pistols on saloon windows. The dessicated townships of Chuparosa and Armadillo are large and fairly intricate, balancing high exposure killzones like main streets with one or two storey buildings and, of course, lashing upon lashing of chest-high wall. While interior action was plentiful, we noticed little in the way of chokepoints, though this may have owed as much to a smaller number of participants on the day (eight) as to scrupulous focus-testing.

Sprinting for the chest in Gold Rush.

John Marston’s Dead Eye special ability carries over to the online modes, letting players pre-load a super-accurate, multi-target fusillade, but for obvious reasons there’s no longer a slow-mo aiming period, which makes good timing a necessity. Dead Eye juice is stored in chests that are flagged on your radar, fiercely contested prizes of which there are generally no more than two or three per map.

The radar is one of Redemption’s more interesting aspects, as we discovered during a round of base defence (Hold Your Own) on the plains of Diez Coronas. You’ll appear on enemy mini-maps only when you move, providing you’re out of sight. With guns-a-blazin’ directness proving foolhardy across the level’s considerable open ground, infiltrating the other base was a suspenseful affair, as we scuttled from boulder to boulder during lulls in the other team’s attention, expecting at any second the distant, vengeful snap of a Springfield rifle or the rumble of a Gatling gun emplacement.

Don't bring a horse to a gunfight.

That Rockstar isn’t better known as a multiplayer gamer’s publisher should give us pause for thought: this, after all, is the outfit behind The Warriors, with its wince-inspiring tag-team takedowns, the sublime pile-ups of Midnight Club: Los Angeles and the bewitching pick-up-and-playability of Rockstar Table Tennis.

Red Dead Redemption is being pushed as a single player epic first and foremost (and Lord knows we’re eager to get our teeth into Marston’s tale of woe) but its plump, gleefully unscientific online component shouldn’t be discounted. Keep your hand near your holster this May.

Red Dead Redemption is due out for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 18th May in North America and 21st May in Europe.