When Red Dead Redemption finally had ports announced, I was pretty surprised that PC was left out. What’s more, the ports were locked to 30 FPS for some reason I don’t understand. It’s been over a year since those ports showed up, but the game is finally on PC 14 years after it initially released. Although some were worried, this is honestly a pretty great port that has most of what I wanted from it, easily making it the best way to play the game, despite lacking the multiplayer mode just like last year’s ports.
Red Dead Redemption is, of course, the story of John Marston, a former criminal who has been tapped by the Feds to hunt down the members of Dutch Van der Linde’s gang. The story is as great as ever and its themes have stood the test of time. For anyone who hasn’t played it in a while or that is only familiar with its blockbuster sequel, this game is comparatively a lot snappier in almost every way. The pacing is quick and incredibly focused and the action and navigation are far more nimble. I personally prefer this game of the two, although this one isn’t quite as immersive.
The game is open-world and requires the player to ride their horse to various icons on the map to advance the story. Along the way there are Stranger events where John interacts with a certain character, as well as events in the world that can be completed. The game world feels very alive and, while it’s not massive, it does feel hand-crafted in a way that larger games don’t always. It’s pretty cool to play this again for the first time in so long, just taking in the ambiance of riding through the wilderness and listening to my horse’s hooves hit the dirt. Plus, there are the challenges that give you more of a reason to interact with the environment, such as the survivalist challenges.
The game’s Undead Nightmare expansion is also included here, making for a great 30 hour package of some of Rockstar’s finest work. Unfortunately, there’s still no multiplayer, which also wasn’t included in the PS4 and Switch ports from last year. But the PC version of Red Dead Redemption has several features that easily make it the best version by a fairly wide margin. You have sliders for detail and draw distance that make the game look better than ever, plus you can be sure we’ll see some full-scale texture mods too. Even without them, the game still looks very good. There are even some modern anti-aliasing and upscaling features, with DLSS and FSR included.
Framerates up to 144 are supported out of the box, but they can be uncapped with some quick modding if your screen supports it. It makes me wonder why the PS4 version was capped at 30. On my 3090 and 5700x, Red Dead Redemption runs mostly perfectly, although I do see occasional moments where the game likes to hover around 80 FPS, which is weird for a game that’s a decade-and-a-half old. The other big reason to prefer this version is, of course, the fact that you can aim with a mouse. I do think that much of the game does play considerably better with a controller, but I always switch to mouse and keyboard when it’s time to aim, which makes the gameplay feel better than ever.
As with Rockstar’s other PC ports, even if you buy Red Dead Redemption on Steam or Epic, you will need Rockstar’s launcher installed alongside a Rockstar account. This adds an extra few seconds at start-up, but players on Steam don’t seem especially bothered by this, likely due to how they’re used to it by now since the company’s been doing this for so long. What people are concerned with is the price. Despite being a 14-year-old game, it costs $50/£40. That is, understandably, quite a bit for a port of an older game like this, especially one that’s missing the multiplayer mode that the main campaign launched with.
Of course, it does also come with Undead Nightmare, but the price is simply quite high. However, I’ve wanted Red Dead Redemption to get a PC port for so long that I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very happy with this release overall. It’s great to be able to play it again at high framerates and with mouse aiming. This is one of Rockstar’s best games and I had a great time jumping into it again for the first time since I had a TV that a component cable could be plugged into.
Red Dead Redemption PC: Red Dead Redemption has held up very well over the past years, plus this port offers most of what you'd want despite the lack of multiplayer and high price tag. – Andrew Farrell
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