Ask people about the Rockstar’s new game Red Dead Redemption and you’re bound to hear people say it’s Grand Theft Auto but with horses, however after playing it for a few days I don’t think Red Dead Redemption is much like GTA at all. It’s much more similar to games like Borderlands or Fallout 3 with lots of roaming across an barren and sparsely populated wasteland while occasionally meeting people, completing missions, and collecting things — though RDR is more of a shooter and has fewer RPG elements than either of those other games.
Rockstar has really done a stellar job of recreating the many different types of terrain in the American west, capturing the subtle differences in the flora and fauna of each region. As you travel from one end of the map to the other you see a number of distinct types of landscapes which really add to the feeling of traveling from say Texas to New Mexico to Arizona to California, with mountains and trees giving way to tall cacti and eventually the joshua trees of the Mojave desert.