Four funerals and a wedding.

A lot of stuff happened and some of it was actually related to Niko's plot.

After doing several missions for the lower mob boss, Niko is told that the boss's main body guard was staying for the police and Niko has to kill him while he's in the hospital. It all ended in a car chase where I lost the cops 1 second before the car i was in completely died, if it was a second later they would have caught me and I would have to do it all again. On the up side I had Niko running around in scrubs for the next half dozen missions.

Next the lower mob boss had to show that the cops infultrating his place hasn't made him lose his grip, so he gets Niko to kill off one of the minor bosses that he was working for last act. This mission reinforced the sayign that it's better to have a rocket launcher and not need it than to need it and not have one, taking out 2 cars at a gas station has never been easier.

The top mob boss stays true to his word and after a few missions he delivers the man who betrayed Niko during the war, and he's now a strung out heroin addict who was hiding in a third world country. The game actualy give the option of weather or not to kill the guy in revenge, which is the second time in the whole game you even have that option. I chose to walk away and let the city and his own vices take care of the guy.

At this point there was no more missions left on the map, so a bit confused I start just driving around. Then a partner of the lesser mob boss calls Niko and tells him that he has a job for him working with the slime bag that double crossed him at the end of the first act. I then have the choice to work for him and make the cousin happy with all the money, or kill him and make Niko's girlfriend happy with his convictions. I chose to kill him since I personalty disliked the guy and would have sided with the crazy boss in the first act if i had the choice.

Then there is another gap where there is no missions, and after driving a while there is no calls either, so I decide to save and advance the game 6 hours. After the save the cousin calls and says that he's getting married the next day, having noting else to do I save a few more times to skip to the following day. The day of the wedding I put Niko into his finest suit and go pick up his girldfriend, who oddly says that he's dressed too casual. Along the way Niko tells her that since his revenge kick is all settled there is no reason to stay with a life of crime and he wants to settled down and go legit. They get to the church and the cousin yells at Niko for dressing like a slob and tells him to quickly get a new outfit. Confused I go to the nearest high class store and the promt tells me Niko needs new shoes, turns out that he was still wearing the ones from the hospital and that was what was triggering people to freak out. For a bunch of harded criminals, they sure are anal about fashion.

Since this is GTA and no one can be happy, the lower mob boss (pissed about something) does a drive by shooting as everyone leaves from the wedding, and wouldn't you know it, the only one killed is Niko's girlfriend.

So now there seems to be one revenge mission left to do...

Agro mobs

Niko is now working for the head mob boss in the area (who also has connections to the shady government agent guy), and also a lower down mob boss. The head mob boss says that if Niko helps him he will bring in the last remaining guy who possibly betrayed Niko during the war, while the lesser mob boss is just giving him tons of money.

Also there is a sub plot that Niko's cousin is getting married, but that only seems to come up randomly after several missions, it may be related to how much money Niko has or maybe just scripted for a certain number of missions.

Looks like the end of the game is drawing near, there's not many eole left to kill and not much higher to go in organized crime.

Revenge is fabulous!

Well Niko finally tracks down the man he thinks is responsible for being betrayed in the war, and it turned out that he's currently a flamboyant gay man dating a politician. So now what little plot the game had is gone and all that seems to be left is to go on assorted missions until the game stops giving them.

I was right though that the next act would use that last area and most likely the politician connection will come up eventually.

Brother against brother

Well the Irish family act seems to be ending soon. one of the missions I did was I had to chose to either kill the crooked cop brother or the heroin addict brother who was going to expose him. I killed the cop brother since he brought up the idea of killing first and his petty motive was his career. Then I had to do a mission were I defended the funeral from attack from other local gangs, and next I have to bust the brother I didn't kill out of jail.

Air traffic control

Did a few more missions for that Irish family today, mostly killing off old acquaintances of the oldest brother, also did a government mission where I had to fly a helicopter while a Rastafarian blew up another helicopter with an RPG.

I'm beginning to think all this is the story, such that it is. Niko just goes around and interacts with different people in each act, and the acts change when his cousin gets him a new place. There is no over all narative or plot, just several little vignettes (some interconnected) that the player experiences as the go through the game. first act was the cousin's friends and local mobsters, second act was drug dealers and ganstas, and third act is this Irish family and the feds. there is one more section of the map that I haven't had many missions in yet so the 4th act will probably take place there and i'm betting it will be with politicians and CEO's (going up the crime scale).

A higher class of criminals.

Finished the back job on my first try today, I must have been just tired last night.

Also the kinds of missions available seem to be getting to be more impressive. Going from killing dug pusshers and avoiding mobsters members to doing government black ops and robbing banks. Also there's a new "love interest" character (sister of the bank robbers and the crooked cop) who seems to be the only decent person in the city.

Still no sign of the plot line though.

The Irish Job

Spent way too long tonoght trying to comleat this one mission where I had to help two Irish-american brothers and their friend rob a bank. Of course things go bad right away and Niko has to get them out of there.

First there they have to get past the cops out side of the bank, then several more groups of cops as they go along the back streets. then they fight some in the subways, then they have to get out of the subway and seal a car, lose their wanted level, and make it back home.

over and over again I would get a bit farther as I learned the pattern they show up in and which ones to target first, but then I would die in a new place. finally I died due to the AI robbers being too stupid to catch up and called it a night.

Off the record

Did a couple ore quests (still no way to tell if they are side or main) today and then just ran around the city checking thins out and getting some achievements. Flew a helicopter, saw the giant heart inside of the statue of happiness, blew myself off the top of the tallest building, and escaped 5 star wanted level by hiding in the subway tunnels. And non of this I saved since I didn't want it messing up my stat.

playing both sides.

Odd thing about this game is that Niko seems to have no loyalties at all (other than to his cousin), and would work against some one just as likely to work for them, all for the pay check. So far he's worked for vigilantes against drug dealers, and for the drug dealers he was against, helped one gangsta and then trashed his place for another gangsta, shot cops and worked for crooked cops. Now it turns out that his "girlfriend" (never saw after the first date) was actually a spy for the government and Niko's now doing their dirty work.

Does all this advance the plot? I have no idea. going on a street race with some muscle head seems about as relevant to the plot as performing espionage.

Moving on up

Well somethign I did may have triggered a plot point, I think. Niko's cousin gets kidnapped and I had to save him, and after that Niko gets a new safe house in a luxury apartment. This may be a plot point (last change of address was) or just an award for getting enough money, no way to tell.

This is sort of like a TV series where you don't know what episodes are filler until after the season ends, still interesting filler though.

fight sharks with sharks

This odd thing about this game is that it gives no indication as to what's important or why. There's about a half dozen available quests at any time, but no indication of if they are advancing the plot or just optional side quests. So Niko just runs around and mostly kills people for other people he knows, and mostly for money. There is also no explanation as to why he even needs money, you relish your life by eating but food is cheep and you can't carry it, and there are so many guns lying around after a fight you don't need to buy any. There is also no indication of if maintaining friendship with any one has any benefit, is there any reason to hang out with these characters?

So I went about and did a bunch of quests that seemd to have no bearing on the plot

Community service

Niko and his cousin set up shop in an apartment close to where the cousin's girl friend lives, and Niko then starts arning money helping out around the area. Fortunately for him the area is full of drug dealers and vigilantes who need help killing off various people. Also the cousin got his insurance money for his shop burning down and started up another, so sympathy for him lasted all of 2 days game time.

An annoying thing is that after several missions the car you used disappears, forcing me to either hoof it to the next location or just load the auto save if the location is near the apartment. One time I went on a mission and the NPC drove off with my car (after the last owner passed away), which was never seen from again...

Bad day

I played today several more missions for Niko's new bosses, and they were rather divided. One was a coke head who wanted everyone dead and the other was obsessed about control and painkillers. In the end one had the wrong sort of person killed and the other wanted control, and Niko had to sort things out. After offing the coke head boss the other one double crossed him and revealed to be working with the loan shark that drove Niko out of his old country. Niko then escaped that mess only to find his cousin's apartment and business burned to the ground.

The game's writing really took off at this point, the cousin was an annoying sexist pig but he had managed to scratch out a life for himself out of nothing, and then it's all destroyed because of Niko's actions. I actually felt sorry for him losing everything, his life sucked but at least it was something.

So now the two of them are hiding out in a new location and basically have to start off with nothing but the clothes they are wearing (and any guns in the inventor).

Unpleasant

Started playing GTA IV and for most of the early game play it's a rather unpleasant game. Niko has no personality at the start, his cousin is an annoying jerk, they both do jobs for an arrogant loan shark, and the first girlfriend option is a desperate OCD twit. Also the car you have for most missions is a piece of junk.

Fortunately it seemd to be turning around by the end of playing today. Niko gets tired of the loan shark and kills him, then explains to his cousin that he's actually in the city to find out who betrayed his platoon during the war. So one annoying character down and Niko actually grows a personality and a plot. Then are then picked up by the next higher up guy in the underworld food chain and he seems much more interesting and professional, so doing missions for him should be more rewarding and less petty.

Also I'm giving myself my own limit of not breaking any laws when not in a mission (other than traffic laws), so no killing or stealing or jacking cars unless it's mission related. I figure the game has enough unpleasantness within the storyline with out any extra wanton acts of destruction.

After I saved the game I tried out for a while the most interesting part of the whole game, the catapult swing. A particular glitchy swing in a park that if you slowly drive against it will fling your car blocks high up into the air. The second time I tried it I had the spectacular result of having the car explode in mid-air and Niko flying 2 blocks into a 5 story apartment building, then still walking away after landing.

Well that's forty down...

Turns out that I was closer to the end of Undead Nightmare than I though, there was just 1 mission left. In the end the zombie outbreak was caused by the disturbance of an old Mayan shrine, and after John put the sacred mask back to where it belonged all the people returned to normal (or dead). Then a while later the grave robber from the main game steals the mask and John comes back as a zombie but keeps is mind due to being buried with some holly water, so in the post game he runs around forever saving villages from zombies. I didn't complete all the side quests, like finding the unicorn, since it would take hours to do all the requirements and I didn't want to spend an extra day playing just for that.

So tomorrow it's another Rockstar game and it's a leap forwards in setting and a leap back in release date, GAT IV.

Zombies attacked the convent, nun survived...

In the story quests John manages to drive an army train through the barricade blocking the Mexican border and continues along visiting the laces he did before and clearing out the undead. I manged to get all the settlements in the Mexico area cleared out too, but it's only a matter of time before they start getting attacked again. Before clearing out the last city I also found Famine, a black horse surrounded by flies, yet still looks healthier that that black horse I was stuck with for a while last time John went through Mexico.

One new character introduced in the mother superior of a convent in Mexico after he clears the place out of the undead (zombie nuns are a disturbing sight). She gives John some holy water to use on the zombies and mentioned that she heard the rebel leader John met last time (now to be president soon) has been messing with some ruins and may have offended a goddess and caused the mess. So it's off to pay a visit to him tomorrow.

This horse, huh, what is it good for?

Started on Undead nightmare today, and it's a lot more like a sequel/alternate ending to the main game. The story takes place during the time that John is reunited with his family before the government comes back to kill him, and in typical zombie movie fashion his family is one of the first to be attacked. Uncle infects Johns wife and son and is shot down, while the other two are tied up and locked inside while John tries to find a cure.

As john travels to all the places he's been before he meets most of the characters from the first game, and most of them soon get eaten, while he helps clean out the area from the undead. There was also a side quest where he hunts down sasquatch thinking they are baby eating killers, only to find out from the last one that they are actually peaceful herbivores and he's kill the last of their kind.

Along the way I also came across two of the four horse of the apocalypse. First I found War, who is a black horse with fire for a mane and tail, and I rode it around for most of the missions. When I finished cleared out the zombies from the last settlement in the american area I came across Pestilence, a tan horse with green vapor surrounding it, not sure if that was a scripted encounter or just an odd coincidence that it appeared just as i finished the last town.

I then spent a bunch of time finding missing persons on bringing them back to a fort for safety, during the second of which Pestilence some how disappeared and I was stuck with undead and regular horses. tomorrow I'll continue the story quests and most likely find a way into Mexico.

Like father, like son.

I figured I was close to the end so I went around finishing off the remaining skill levels, maxing out hunting and survivalist, and finished off the remaining Stranger quest (watching a fool glide off a cliff). Then I did the last story quests.

John teaches his son how to hunt and skin animals, and saves him from a bear, then one day the government comes back to kill John along with a small army. John's son and wife manage to escape while he stays behind to buy them time, he's then shot dead by about a dozen men. The game play then switches to Jack, John's son, as they return home and bury him, and then it fades to 3 years later when John's wife has also died and has been buried and Jack goes off on his own.

At this point the Us army outfit is unlocked and I could finish the explosive riffle skill, which I did by blowing up some escaped prisoners. The final Stranger quest has Jack track down the FBI guy who was in charge of John's quest and one of his executioners, then killing him in a duel followed by the credits rolling.

Aside for some miscellaneous achievements I might get later, this wraps up Red Dead Redemption, but now it's on to Undead Nightmare tomorrow!

And they lived happily ever after...

In the story missions I finally dealt with the last of john's old gang, and while I was expecting the government guys to shoot him in the back they actually kept their word and returned his son and wife.

And the story mode kept going...

Now the missions revolve around John getting use to normal life and getting his ranch in order, and the quest givers are his wife, son, and uncle. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop...

This is my ka-boom stick!

Did a couple more missions for the government agents today, same old sorry, John wants his family back, chase after the wanted guy, he gets away, repeat...

Also went around topping off more of the skills, and managed to finish the tomahawk skill. I tried to finish the the exploding riffle skills but the last one requires a particular outfit, and apparently you can't get it until all the story missions are finished.

So tomorrow it's on to more story missions.

Boom goes the dynamite

I didn't work on any of the main quests today, but instead worked on some of the skill rankings. Aside from the normal ruining around skinning flowers and picking animals, I found the last treasure hunting location, and picked up the tomahawk for the tomahawk skill tree.

I also got another part for the "expert hunter" outfit, which required me to kill a cougar with a stick of dynamite. I managed to luck out on this with almost my first try, after shooting a cougar a couple times in the legs to get it running away I chased it over a hill, and then lobbed the dynamite at it's general location. As the dynamite was flying through the air I thought it was going to miss the cougar, but then the cougar suddenly changed directions and ran right to where the dynamite was heading, getting close enough to kill it but having enough left over to skin.

Trains don't work like that!

Did a few missions today for a coke-head racist anthropologist that reminded me a lot of Mordin from Mass Effect 2. For his last mission I had the escort him to a train station just outside of Blackwater, there was a house for sale near by so I save there too. After I saved I noticed that there was a female NPC not too far from the train track so I figured i would go for the Dastardly achievement, where you tie up a woman and put her on the tracks till a train comes by. Things didn't go as planed though since apparently the woman was actually supper girl!

When the train hit her it stopped abruptly, then began shaking violently as the physics tried to sort out an unstoppable force (the train) against an apparently immovable object (the woman). The woman was just fine lying in the middle of the cow catcher and kept calling out for help as the whole train spasmed. while this was going on the local authorities showed up and were not to happy about what I tried to do (regardless of the results) and were shooting at me. I then gout out from where I was taking cover and tried picking u the woman again, at which point the train started forwards again and the two of us clipped though half the cars and came to rest standing in the middle of a passenger car. Conveniently this allowed me to ditch the police at the same time as moving to a new location. After a while I got off the train with the woman and rode with her on my horse to a near by bed in the tracks, placed her down and waited for the train. Apparently physics were restored and I got the achievement, tomorrow I'll start from the save file so all that insanity never happened...

Cougar hunting

Finished off the first of the missions in the northern city of Blackwater, and it actually comes right from the government guys that took John's family. Also the situation isn't as simple as them extorting him to do their dirty work, they are also giving him a full pardon for his past crimes. though they do continue the tradition set up in Mexico that people in power are jerks.

After the mission I decided to get familiar wit the new area by tracking down some of the new wild life, and killing them. One of the trails to be an expert hunter involved killing 2 cougars with your knife, and considering that a cougar can kill you in one shot it's not an easy task. After many tries where I became cougar chow, I finally manged to kill 2 with a knife (taking lots of medicine to heal between encounters). To blow off some steam of all that frustration, I killed the next cougar I saw with the exploding shotgun... it evaporated!

Make a run for the border!

I finally finished the Mexico missions today!

First I did a mission where I stormed an army base and finally found one of the guy's that John has been after (not the one form the first act though). I then had to chase him down with my stupid half dead horse (barely made it) and managed to take him alive, and handed him over to the FBI guys making john do all this stuff.

The final mission was an attack the rebel base where john has to save the annoying rebel leader again. By the end of it he finally catches up to the man he's been after since the start of the game and then in an anticlimactic turn of events the guy gets killed by an NPC before he can be brought in alive.

But at least there is no more reason to stay in Mexico, so I bough the fastest horse I could (same color as my old one too) and rode straight to the newly unlocked northern area, saving when I got there.

NOOOOOOOOOO,,,,

After doing an interesting stealth mission where I stole an army train full of equipment, I did another rebel mission where I caught one of the main army generals. After beating the information out of him, he says that one of the men John is looking for is in a small town to the east. So I get on my horse and ride there as quick as I can, but of course the guy hasn't been seen there for months.

The tragedy strikes...

While leaving the town there's a random event where some outlaws run by with some one dragged behind their horses. I tried to take them down but one got behind me and killed me, fortunately I had a house in that town and the game auto saved at the end of the last mission so I just re-spawned there with no loss. When I left the house though some thing was strange, all the wild animals were inside the town, some even lined up in a row (wolf, bobcat, coyote, all just chilling together). So I went around killing all of them and one wolf dies right beside a scrawny black horse hitched to a post. I go over to skin the wolf but mount the horse instead (the same button), then when trying quickly get off the horse I accidentally hit the button to hitch it back up again, now making this barely alive beast my official horse...

This would not be much of a problem if not for the fact that up until now I managed to keep the same horse for the entire game!!

Very early on there was a quest where I got a tan horse, and since there was an achievement for keeping a horse for 20 missions (which is the only missable achievement in the game), I made sure to keep it as my horse. Even after getting the achievement, I continued to make sure I kept that horse (loading previous save files if it ever died), tying to keep it for the whole game. To make things worse, I have been using the auto save for a while now and when I hitched the horse it saved again, so now my last manual save point was several hours previous!

So now I'm stuck with this bag of bones until I find a new one tomorrow...

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Since Landon left yesterday and the rebels seem to be in hiding, I was stuck doing mostly icky mexican army missions today. First there was a basic raid on a rebel strong hold, then John had to protect a train from rebels with a Gatling gun, then finally he's told that the men he's after has been caught, but Big surprise though that it's actualy trap, but the rebles manage to save him just in time.

That seems to be the last of doing the army's dirty work, now there are just reble missions left. To blow off some steam after almost getting killed John did mission to blow up some army wagons with diamante.

Draw poker

After doing a mission where I saved the leader of the Mexican revolution, who turns out to be an arrogant jerk, I did a mission for the american gunslinger Landon Ricketts that was basically a poker match and a shoot out. The poker match was rather easy since the AI was set very low so you couldn't lose, so I just bet everything both hands and got an achievement for winning 3000 chips. The shoot out was trickier since it started in a draw, and for some reason every time I tried to shoot the gun out of the opponent's hand I would lose. After several atems I looked on line and found out that the game is rigged in some draws that you must kill the opponent to win the match.

After that I did an ugly mission for the mexican military where I had to fire bomb houses. I then went back to do another Ricketts mission since those tend to be about actually helping people. The mission was to free a bunch of prison wagons and then escort them to safety in the US, once it was over though Ricketts stayed on the US side and unfortunately ending his mission quests. Too bad that John couldn't stay with him, but he had to go back to Mexico to find the guys he's after, so I saved the game for the night on the US side and I'll make a run for the border tomorrow.

All in the family

I was tired so I didn't play much tonight, just did one story mission where I drover the sister of a girl I previously saved to safety.

Time for sleep. More Tomorrow.

This hasn't been our day for warm welcomes.

Well I was right about it being the last mission in that chapter. After storming the fort, John finds out that the guy he was after had already left for Mexico the day before, so he arranges with the annoying Irish to ferry across the river.

Right off the bat the ferry gets shot at by a small army out to kill Irish, and then after that John gets attacked over and over again by wolves. Not a good first impression of the Mexico chapter, and it dosen't improve from there. The local random events, like people getting executed by the road, are frustrating and depressing since you can't intervene without some how it hurting your honor level and making you an outlaw. The Stranger quests, such as delivering opium, and the couple of story missions I did were generally unpleasant too. I hope the Mexico act get better, or is at least short, or this will take some effort to get past.

Stange times

Did most of the main quests for the first act today (i think the next one is the last) and this game has some odd quests.

So far I helped an insane grave robber find the treasure he's obsessed with (turns out to be a glass eye), helped a snake oil salesmen hock his wares and ride in rigged races, retrieved a Gatling gun for an annoying drunk Irishman, and killed a whole lot of out laws for the sheriff. Compared to the quests for the random strangers though, all those seem normal.

For the apply named Stranger quests I:
-Got flowers for Norman Bates' mom
-Won a deed and shot an actor for a movie producer
-Found that the hills have eyes
-Went to tell a dead man that he's late for his wedding
-Rescued a satirist several times
-Helped a man who really loves his horse
-Gave medicine to a fatally devout woman

Also I did other miscellaneous things like hunt down bounties, pick flowers, and kill the population of Tumbleweed several times over.

The good, the bad, and the purdy grahics.

Started over playing Red Dead today, saving over the bit I played on boxing day, and it's a really solid and fun game, although not much has happened yet.

The story is about John Marston, who has to kill or capture his former fellow gang member for the government or else something will happen to his wife and son. when he first confronts him, John gets shot and left for dead, but a local rancher named Bonnie picks him up and nurses him back to health. That's about all that has happened so far.

The game is an open world sand box and there is no key plot missions, there are just several key missions that give out bits of plot as John does various things like heard cattle or take out trouble makers. once all those missions are done another segment of the story opens up and new areas.

What I sent a lot of time are the open world things, like finding treasure, hunting animals, and shooting any one who shoots at me. The game looks really good, but hardly perfect. There are several times where the geomerty during cut scnes would in firt or disappear for a frame, and I have so far found 2 people on hose back stuck up to their shoulders in the ground.

Half the achievements are for on line play, either co-op or competitive, so i'm not goign to be getting most of them, and since getting all the achievements are out of the question I won't be pushing to hard to get any of them. Once I finish the story line, what ever side quests I'm interested in, and the Undead Nightmare ad on (which is more a separate game) I'll call it done.