Call Red Dead Redemption on the Switch whatever you want. A remake, a port, or, as per the official message from Rockstar Games, a "conversion". To me, it doesn't really matter. What matters to me, and I'm sure the same applies to many of you, is how it looks, feels and plays in the palms of my hands. We've seen this game on consoles already, albeit on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles way back when or via PS Plus streaming more recently, and we've since been wowed by its stunning 2018 successor on PS4 and Xbox One. If I'm to be impressed by John Marston's maiden voyage in the Old West all over again, quite frankly, I need something new.
And so, after spending several days doing just that, I can confirm: Red Dead Redemption indeed looks, feels, and plays great on Nintendo's flagship hardware. In fact it does all three of those things so well, that in the process my mind went back in time – not to my PS3 days, but to the last few months of 2005.
Back to the future
Red Dead Redemption, of course, launched just shy of five years after that. But as I watched that iconic opening cinematic – black smoke belching from the chimney of the steam train, pastors and older women jabbering away to one another inside the carriage – I wasn't transported back to New Austin or Nuevo Paraíso, but instead to Liberty City. Namely, GTA: Liberty City Stories.
Released on October 25, 2005 in North America, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories marked a prequel to 2001's GTA 3. It starred Toni Cipriani, who'd first featured as a mission-giving NPC in the mainline game, and charted his rise through the ranks of the Leone crime family in the same Liberty City map. Besides some nice quality of life tweaks – not least the introduction of motorcycles, clothing upgrades, and a fully-voiced protagonist – Liberty City Stories was, by all intents and purposes, an evolved version of GTA 3 in its standard form. Which was great. So great, in fact, that GTA: Liberty City Stories is cited as the best-selling PSP game of all time.
But there was something beyond the game itself that I fell in love with at the time. Sure, the missions were fun, and it was nice to return to this world – all the while handling an uzi on the back of PCJ-600 superbike, wearing a white tux, and listening to DJ Clue and DMX's Ruff Ryders Anthem Remix – but there was something simply wonderful about having all of this, right there, bookended by both hands. Everyone has at least one 'how can it possibly get better than this?' story to tell about video games, and that first introduction to the Liberty City skyline flitting around my LCD screen is definitely among mine.
Fast forward 18 years and I'm reminded of this whole experience while guiding John Marston through his first steps in Armadillo. I replayed Red Dead Redemption just before it exited the PS Plus Premium service last year, so I felt pretty familiar with the original game before booting up my Switch copy. Still, in order to make comparisons in real time, I fired up the game's opening cinematic on YouTube, running on its native PS3 hardware. Double Eleven Studios (the team tasked with bringing RDR back in 2023) has done a fine job of buffing and polishing the original's visuals, seemingly tweaking everything from its water physics, to its lighting, shadows, resolution, particle effects, texture density, and facial animations. All of this looks lovely in the RDR base game, but I'd argue it looks even better in its Undead Nightmare DLC, which comes bundled into this package.
Western fronting
"Whether you're willing to part with £39.99 / $49.99 for what is still essentially a souped up version of a 13-year-old game is a different question entirely, of course."
Sure, it's perhaps not quite as impressive as seeing GTA: Liberty City Stories on a 4.3-inch screen for the first time just one year after San Andreas had stormed the scene – RDR is a 2010 game being played in 2023, after all – but there's something wonderful about rediscovering Red Dead Redemption with your feet up, sprawled out on the couch, watching highlights of the Women's World Cup on the TV in the background. And sure, there's speculation to be had about why Rockstar has chosen now to officially port/convert John Marston's story to PS4 and the Switch, but we'll never get, nor do we need, an official answer on that one in any event.
What Rockstar probably did need following its divisive GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition launch in late 2021, and that package's subsequent issues, was a win in similar terms. For me, this Red Dead Redemption and its Undead Nightmare expansion throwback is it. And while I appreciate bringing this RAGE engine-powered game forward may have been an easier task than doing the same for GTA-of-old's Renderware engine projects (everything up until GTA: Liberty City Stories, incidentally), that matters a whole lot less when the outcome in this instance has turned out so well.
Whether you're willing to part with £39.99 / $49.99 for what is still essentially a souped up version of a 13-year-old game is a different question entirely, of course. I can't make that decision for you, but I can say that this is the most accomplished version of one of the best games of all time – one that's capable of taking you back in time, be that the American Frontier, or, in my case, the heady days of the mid-2000s.
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