Category Archives: PlayStation 3

No One Loved Their Past More Than Me… And Now It’s Time To Leave It Behind

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Anyone who knows me, even a little bit, knows I’m completely obsessed with my past. I’m not talking about my relationships or my friendships. I’m talking about my experiences. From school to my toys to shows and movies I watched to stores my family shopped at. I had the happiest childhood of anyone I’ve ever met. I still enjoy the shows I enjoyed as a child, including He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe, The Lone Ranger and Looney Tunes.

The happiest period of my life was from whatever point I can originally remember (probably the age of four) through the spring of 2005. At that point, things went downhill and, being honest, they continued in a downward spiral for the next 18 years. The negative points of my life were definitely a result of unhappy relationships but that’s a story for another time.

A couple of times I tried to recreate happy times during my not-happy period and it was an absolute disaster. For example, one of my happy times was a dinner and shopping trip with my parents on December 29, 1995. I attempted to recreate the experience in 2008, with a cretin I was dating at the time. Some of the stores I had been to in 1995 were closed, as was the restaurant I ate at with my mom and dad. Everything about the 2008 trip was bad. So bad, in fact, that it almost ruined the original experience for me, which was the exact opposite of what I had been trying to accomplish. And I’m worried I’m going to do it again.

I have plans this year to do a project I did in 1995-96, as well as 2001. My project is to create myself on NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07, playing my way all the way through. I’ve went in depth on my project in previous blog entries so I don’t want to belabor the issue, but I’ve been wanting to do this again for over 20 years. And I figured with better equipment (I can play the PS2 games on my backward compatible PS3 instead of the NES I had in 1995). But I’m concerned I’m going to be disappointed because it’s not a carbon copy of my original project. Even though it’s more a matter of mindset than anything else. But I’m hopeful that I can see my way clear and enjoy it.

Which brings me to the whole purpose of this entry.

My obsession with my history is a double-edged sword. While I loved my childhood, my teenage years and my early 20s, that time is gone and nothing I can do will bring it back. And I’m trying as hard as I can to let those days dissolve into the past and not base my whole life on how happy I am NOW in comparison to how happy I was THEN. The fact is, I should be happier now than I’ve been at any point in my life but I just can’t feel it. I can’t find it. I am hoping that finally getting on with my project will bring back the happy I felt in 1995 and 2001. But I can’t let that be the singular deciding factor in what I’m dealing with.

The past 18 years haven’t been so bad that I couldn’t get through them but they have been horrible. Relationships I wouldn’t wish on anyone. One with a fat piece of garbage in the late 2000s that nauseates me even to think about, and she was the one I attempted to recreate my 1995 trip with. The whore of Preston County in the 2010s who nearly ruined my life. A girl in Chicago who was 35 going on 15. These situations made the past 18 years absolutely dreadful. And I’m past all of that now. I’m in a situation that is perfect now. I should be happier than I’ve ever been. But I’m letting those miserable 18 years pull down my happy past as well as my current and my future. Even women I wasn’t romantically attached to, like a girl I knew from 1999 until 2023 just decided to make my life a little more miserable than it needed to be. And I considered her to be my closest confidant in a complete and total friendship situation. After re-assessing the situation, I realize she needed to go as much as the women I had dated in the past. And that needs to be something I never look back on.

I have to let the good and the bad go and stop thinking about how happy I was from 1982 to 2004 and how miserable I was from 2005 to 2023. Those times are both over, and while I’m not as happy as I was in my younger days, I am MUCH happier than I was at any point since 2005. And rather than focusing on either of those things, I am trying so hard to focus forward. And I just don’t know if I can pull it off. If my project doesn’t work out, I don’t know what I’m going to do from there. I’ve put all of my eggs in one basket and I’m afraid I’m going to drop it. And then I’ll know that things are far worse now than I’m willing to accept.

So, for the next 2 months I’m focused on updating baseball rosters on MLB The Show 23 and making an attempt at running franchise mode this season. And if that falls short by any length, it’s time to start on my project and I have everything leaning on that decision. We’ll see what happens but right now I don’t have the highest of hopes and I’m still obsessed with the past. And I have to get past that to move forward regardless of what I’m going to do.

I know this is all kind of a mess, I just felt like it would do me good to get all these feelings out and see how things go in the future. Thank you for taking the time to read. Peace.

The Ultimate NCAA Sports Video Game Project

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It’s difficult to even know where to begin with this blog entry. Even though it’s many years in the making, it’s still difficult to put everything into words and try to lay the groundwork for an explanation. So this may seem long-winded and rambling but it’s the most important blog post I’ve ever written.

In late June I’m going to be walking away from social media and the Chicago White Sox. Yes, I know, I’ve said it before and did not follow through. This was a timing issue more than an issue of desire. I’ve been planning this out carefully, down to the last detail. And while I’ve been considering this move since at least 2011, the actual want to do this stretches back much further than that… 2001… 1997… As far as 1993.

I’ll begin with exactly what my plan is and why I want to do it. The plan part is easy, I want to play an entire college “dynasty,” or career, in the video game world. I want to play four seasons of college football, basketball and baseball. You may wonder what that has to do with the White Sox or social media, and I’ll get to that as I go on. The why, I can’t answer for sure. It may be a midlife crisis, it may be a longing for happier days, of which I’ve had many, back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It may be a lot of things combined.

As a lot of you know, EA Sports stopped making college sports games in the 2010s (and at least one college franchise in the 2000s) due to the athletes not receiving any kind of royalties due to their likenesses being used in the games. The last college football game hit the shelves in 2014, the last college basketball game in 2010 (both on the PlayStation 3) and the last college baseball game (of which there were only two) in 2007 (on the PlayStation 2). So it is here that I made my decision to play the entire Dynasty on the 2007 games for the PlayStation 2. NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07.

Yes, they’re severely outdated (like 16 years outdated), but that means less than one might imagine since updated rosters are available not only for download but on memory cards that can be purchased from eBay or other online stores. So while the graphics will be extremely dated, the experience won’t be.

Now, I want to take a step back in time and explain how I got to this point.

I have a long experience as a sports video gamer. One of the absolute highlights of this came back in 1993, when my friend Calvin and I spent a weekend playing Baseball Stars on the NES.

Baseball Stars was the first video game to include a fully programmable option, you could create your own teams and your own leagues, even with the ability to make players male or female. This was unheard of at the time, and that game was, and still is, one of my all time favorites. Calvin and I had what might be considered a fantasy draft, selecting players for our teams, as well as one minor league team each. We then created ourselves and our entire teams and proceeded to play an entire season.

The idea of “creating” yourself in a game stuck with me. My next favorite sports game (chronologically) was Tecmo Super Bowl. This was the first sports game to feature not only real teams but real players, but the “creation” option hadn’t reached it’s point in time yet. At this point, my senior year in high school, my friend Joe Nunez and I played a complete season, just “pretending” we were the players in the game, as Joe played as the Cleveland Browns and I played as the New Orleans Saints. But I wanted to “be” me.

In the summer of 1995, I bought a copy of an old NES game called John Elway’s Quarterback. This game had neither real players or real teams, just a bunch of bland players and city names instead of teams. It’s at this point I began the “dynasty” concept; I would play four “seasons” of football on John Elway’s Quarterback and then I would start playing Tecmo Super Bowl as an NFL draftee.

John Elway’s Quarterback doesn’t have any kind of stat saving ability, so while I played I kept a spiral notebook in my hand, and every time I completed a pass or ran for positive yardage, I would write that number down in parenthesis in my notebook, and if I threw an incomplete pass, I’d mark that with an “x.” Then I could figure out my completion percentage and total yards, as well as my touchdowns and interceptions. I used the “Los Angeles” team on the game as the UCLA Bruins, and when I finished, I was “drafted” by the Cleveland Browns. I proceeded to play seven seasons with the Browns on Tecmo Super Bowl, winning three Super Bowls before I quit. For whatever reason, I didn’t keep all of my stats like I wanted to.

The next time I decided to do a Dynasty was 1997, and it was much more advanced and involved than the 1995 version. This time, I was using the Super Nintendo and was playing both football and basketball at UCLA, using College Football USA 97 and NCAA Final Four Basketball and when I finished, I created myself on Madden 97. This was leaps and bounds ahead of what I had done before, with College Football USA 97 keeping all of the important stats I needed and, while NCAA Final Four Basketball didn’t really have a season option, I made the best of it and played what amounted to four full seasons. When this was finished, I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers on Madden 97 but I never got around to actually playing for them.

This was not my least successful run, but it was definitely not my best. While College Football USA 97 was a million miles ahead of keeping my own stats with a “fake” team, there was still no option to create myself (however, on the Sega Genesis version of College Football USA 97, player creation IS an option) and the game play was so unbelievably slow, there was no real enjoyment to be had playing the game. But the fact that I was able to play football AND basketball was a revelation and really did change everything.

Fast forward to 2001. I had upgraded to a Sony PlayStation and the first thing I did was purchase NCAA GameBreaker 2000 and NCAA Final Four 2000, as well as NFL GameDay 2000. These games were all produced by Sony’s 989 Studios, and what a major improvement compared to my previous dynasty. I could play a full career at UCLA in both football and basketball with real stats, schedules, etc.

I enjoyed this immensely, and allowed myself to be drafted on NFL GameDay 2000 and ended up with the Carolina Panthers as a second round pick. I decided to run with it. A couple of games into my second season with the Panthers, it said my character had suffered a knee injury and I ended up being out the rest of the season. This was doubly bad when, at the end of the year, I was on the Panthers’ list of retired players. This bothered me more than it should have, and it would be nine years before I decided to try again.

I went on to pick up MLB 2000, and by 2004 I was completely off on college (and pro) football and basketball, and subsequently bought MLB 2004 and MLB 2005. Once the MLB The Show series started, I bought every game every year, including 2023. As I mentioned, during this time, EA Sports stopped producing college sports games, and at some point in the early 2010s I did buy NCAA Football 10 and NCAA Basketball 10 and eventually bought NCAA Football 13 and NCAA Football 14. They were never used and, in fact, NCAA Football 14 has never been out of the case. I just didn’t feel anything anymore for college sports, I was all in on baseball.

The problem with that is I have burned myself out beyond the ability to even function anymore. My life has been all baseball, all day, 365 days a year since 2004. I got on social media in 2005 (MySpace) and it’s been posting stories and lineups and transactions every day for 18 years. And I am ready for a change.

And I’m ready to take a step back in time to happier days and even though I know the experience won’t be the same, I still want to take the time and do this one more time, a little better than the last time I did it, because now it’s time to play college football, basketball and baseball. The complete experience.


I have procured brand new, unopened copies of NCAA Football 07, NCAA March Madness 07 and MVP NCAA Baseball 07 as well as updated rosters for each. I’m going to create myself and play all the way through, all three sports, until I “graduate.” After that, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I may “get drafted” on Madden 07 or I may buy the newest Madden (whenever that may be) for the PS5 or I may break down and play Road To The Show for the first time on MLB The Show. I’m not worried about it right now. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Right now, my focus is on unfocusing on the White Sox.

I’ve not yet decided if I’m going to do this dynasty with the WVU Mountaineers or the UCLA Bruins but at the moment it’s definitely 90% UCLA. That decision will come within the next month. The other decision I’m battling with is what to do with social media. I know the vast majority of people who are friends or followers on social media are there for my White Sox posts, so my plan at the moment is to just create new social media accounts strictly for college sports. I’ll keep my other accounts in case this idea falls flat or something happens to hasten my return to the way things are now. I’m hopeful that doesn’t happen and I hope my friends who enjoy college sports will follow me to my new platforms. That decision will also be made in the next month.

So, in closing, as I stand right now, I’m fully planning on making this project a reality. And while I’ll be using PS2 games, I have a backward compatible PS3 that does upgrade the graphics slightly. Once I’ve made the decision, I’ll be boxing up all of my White Sox memorabilia and putting it in storage. I figure this project should take roundabout two years to finish completely, at which a White Sox return is certainly possible.

Thank you for taking the time to read.

WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE?

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As I enter the final quarter of 2022, my life hasn’t been this confusing in years.

This has been one of the worst years I’ve had to put it, between my personal life, my spiritual life, my health and my life as a sports fan. In fact, when you put it all together, 2022 may well rank as the worst year of my life. And I can’t wait for 2023 to get here and put an end to this.

To be fair, I need to put the blame where it belongs, right on top of my head. I’m the reason, my poor decisions have lead to everything that today makes my life very confusing and unhappy. But I’ll tackle all of that in my end-of-the-year blog entry. Right now, lets look at the road signs.

This Chicago White Sox season was miserable. A team that was supposed to contend for a World Series championship finished 81-81 and couldn’t even make the playoffs, let alone make an extended playoff run. And I watched all but maybe 5 of those games this season.

In the post season, since 2015, one of my favorite projects has been doing updates to the MLB The Show rosters to upload to the servers for others to use, then I can use it to build my own White Sox roster to play franchise mode on the game, putting myself in the general manager position and making the trades and signings I would make if I had the opportunity to do so.

But I don’t feel the excitement about that this offseason, due to the poor season overall as well as the potential loss of free agent first baseman Jose Abreu, who has been my favorite player on the team since he signed prior to the 2014 season. If he leaves, I am not even sure I want to continue following the White Sox, let alone putting months of work into updating rosters.

So, I look to what I used to do immediately after the season during the White Sox rebuild, I would completely immerse myself in the DC Universe, playing the Batman Arkham video game series, watching Justice League cartoons and The Dark Knight trilogy until the MLB postseason was over, also listening to old Superman radio shows and watching shows like Gotham and the old 1950s The Adventures Of Superman and the 1960s Batman series.

While I’ve started out by playing my way through Batman Arkham Asylum and I’m currently working on Batman Arkham City I don’t have the same excitement I used to have in the past.

Finally, a little project I’ve covered previously in my blog, is my NCAA project, which is basically me running through franchise mode on NCAA Football, NCAA Basketball and MVP NCAA Baseball on the PlayStation, and ultimately moving on to either Madden NFL or MLB The Show after finishing my “college eligibility.” I’ve done the project twice in the past (in 1995 using John Elway’s Quarterback and Tecmo Super Bowl on the NES and again in 2001 with NCAA GameBreaker and NFL GameDay on the PlayStation. At this point, I have everything I need to do the best job I’ve ever done but like everything else, I lack the motivation and desire to do it.

I should say I don’t lack the desire or motivation, because that’s not entirely accurate. I think I’m in the middle of a deep depression based on everything that has happened in 2022 and I’m just waiting for the next “bad thing” to happen. Basically, I’m dealing with a form of mental block.

I have decided, after talking to a number of people, that I’m going to basically take the month of October off before making a decision. I’ll continue playing Arkham City and follow it up with Arkham Origins and at the end of the month, I will make a decision. We’ll see how that works.

In a perfect world, I’d take this month off and focus 100% on the DC Universe and in November, when free agency begins, I’ll start updating my rosters on MLB The Show with a renewed vigor. And there’s every chance that may happen. But the stress of this year has beaten me down physically and spiritually and I need to make improvements there as well. I need to get back into a routine, including a workout program, eating right and finally sleeping again, which is something that I’ve been neglecting for close to 18 months due to my personal life.

On the flip side, I can see me having no desire to do anything when this month-long sabbatical ends. If that’s the case, I’ll know I’m in a deeper depression than I realize. And I’ll have to deal with that when, and if, the time comes. But for now, I want to focus on the potential positives.

So, we’ll see what happens in about a month, and I’ll go from there. Thank you for taking the time to read, I really am not one for posting publicly about my issues, but sometimes just laying it out there is the best way to get it out of my head. Whether anyone sees it or not.

Peace.

BACK IN THE CLINK: FACEBOOK JAIL 2022

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Back in the clink.

This is my 11th trip to Facebook Jail, and I consider it to be just about as legitimate as the rest of my trips.

A friend of mine had posted a video on my wall, taken at the MLB All Star Game in Los Angeles. A group of kids were standing behind a fence waiting for a player to sign baseballs for them. At one point, a man with gray hair and a gray beard, forced his way into the line, shoving children in the process, to get a ball autographed. I commented that this man “should be taken behind a building and have a few of his bones broken.” Shortly thereafter, I was told that I would be going to Facebook Jail for 5 days.

My crime? “Inciting violence.”

To be fair, I had 2 prior warnings. In December 2021 I posted a meme featuring a scene from the film National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. In the scene, Clark and Rusty Griswold are hanging Christmas lights on the roof and the caption read “Rusty, like Jeffrey Epstein, these lights aren’t going to hang themselves.” This was a violation for “promoting suicide,” even though Epstein memes are strewn about Facebook like party favors on New Year’s Eve.

In November 2021, I committed the ultimate sin, which I’m surprised didn’t land me in Facebook Jail permanently, or maybe even in “real” jail: I posted that there are two genders and everything else is mental illness. That was removed for “hate speech.”

So, before I jump into where I go from here, I just want to put a few things out there because I’m not ashamed of my beliefs and I will continue to hold them whether or not I’m able to mention them. There’s a fine line between free speech and a complete shutdown on same, so if this also gets me into trouble, well, I’ll talk about that later in this dissertation.

I hate Joe Biden with the fury of 1000 suns. If I woke up tomorrow and he had died from COVID, I’d consider it a national holiday. I think he’s a miserable, lying, good for nothing, worthless piece of garbage and he has been for as long as I can remember. I first became aware of him in 1987, during the 1988 Presidential race, which we covered in my 6th grade social studies class. This was my introduction to politics. Ol’ Joe was running for the Democrat nomination but had to drop out after it was discovered he was falsifying (i.e. lying about) his academic history.

Along with Joe, I hate his entire party, especially the far left liberals. The ones that Malcolm X very eloquently outed in the 1960s who have only become worse over time. The “woke” folks. The “trans community.” You people are all sick. Like mentally ill.

I’ve made no attempt to hide my feelings about these “people” on social media, and to be fair to the Facebook cocksuckers, er, “fact checkers,” it wasn’t my posts on this garbage that landed me in Facebook Jail. To be honest, I’ve had very few problems posting my thoughts on these subjects on social media, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

The issue at hand is that I was at a tipping point anyway. I’m not in a good place in my life. I’m burned out on baseball (I think), but I’m not sure if I’m actually burned out or if its being pushed at me by certain people in my life that I’m burned out. There is a person in my day to day life that is doing everything possible to change everything about me. I don’t like it, and I wouldn’t do that to anyone. I keep hoping it will subside, but if it doesn’t, I will need to extricate this person from my life. However, there’s also a possibility that she’s being honest, I may well BE burned out.

I’ve been trying to roll my life back as much as I can to the last time I was happy, which was anytime between 1995 and 2005. Actually, to be completely fair, I was happy from the day I was born until around May 2005. Since then, it’s been one disaster after another, more misery piled upon more unhappiness, so I’ve been trying to find a way to go back to happier times.

What has been at the center of my unhappiness for 17 years? Social media and the internet. I don’t beat around the bush about this, it’s been women on social media that have made me miserable for 17 years. Every unhappy moment and every aggravation can be traced to some female I never should have been dealing with in the first place. This is not hyperbole in any sense of the word. These are facts. Those who have been around me can verify that this is a fact.

So, part of what I have been looking at doing to try to turn back the clock is getting rid of social media. Beyond that, I have fantasized of getting rid of my smart phone. I recently got my dad a 4G flip phone (which I had no idea still existed) and this has made me yearn for one. I can’t get rid of the internet completely, as I have 2 internet businesses I run so getting completely off the grid is impossible. But it’s possible to remove myself from 90% of it.

However, I’m not positive that’s going to make me any happier, and a large number of friends have agreed that leaving social media isn’t going to make me any happier. One person, though, thinks its a great idea because, as mentioned, she would like to change everything about me. My theory up until now has been if I changed social media to fit me, I might be OK with it.

I’ve been active on Twitter for a decade, and I’ve had less trouble on there with my posts than I have had on Facebook, which seems to be the polar opposite of the problems most people have. I’ve had an Instagram account since around 2016, and my problems on there are pretty much equal to my problems on Facebook (which makes sense because they’re under the same corporate umbrella and are likely policed by the same “keystone cops” who fact check on Facebook.

Ultimately, I don’t think turning back time (or making a half-assed attempt to) is going to be the answer, it might seem novel at first but I think it would get boring very quickly. Yes, I was very happy in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but I’m also not the same person I was back then. Everything has changed, including my mentality. I was naturally happy back then. Now I would be taking an angry and bitter version of myself who is 20 to 25 years older and trying to stick myself into a situation that is devoid of the few things that make me happy NOW but trying to recreate the things that made me happy THEN. Considering how much has changed, I just don’t think it’s possible.

When I look back 25 to 27 years ago, I was in college. I had a girlfriend across the county. I had one video game console, an original Nintendo. I watched Three’s Company and Perry Mason on a daily basis, taping them off television and watching the VHS tapes over and over and over. I had my cat, Bubbles. My mom was still living then, obviously. I didn’t have a lot, but I was so happy.

Fast forward to now. I have everything. PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 5 consoles which play games for every generation, as well as a Retron 5 to play everything else. A 55-inch 4K TV. Those shows I enjoyed? I have the entire series on DVD, not just the ones I mentioned but several others that were a huge part of the 2000s for me. I have more “stuff” than I have room to put it.

And it really doesn’t do anything for me. Back in those days I had a word processor that looked just like a computer from the early 1990s, complete with a full size CRT monitor. I was so happy. Now I have a $1000 gaming computer with a 25” monitor and it’s just kind of “meh.” The 55” TV instead of the 25” TV. A Blu-ray player instead of the old VCR I build out of parts from 3 broken ones. Multiple streaming services instead of cable. But I also have DISH Network. I have everything.

And I have nothing, because none of it is making me happy.

I know a lot of this, and by extension, my unhappiness on social media, is mostly in my head. I do things that annoy me. For example, if I would just completely ignore the news, be it on the radio, the TV or the internet, and I never saw Joe Biden’s face again, that would go a long way toward making me less angry. I need to stop listening to people who want me to change for their benefit. My life is my own, it belongs to no one else and no one else should have any say in it.

So at this moment, what I’m looking at doing is, when I return to Facebook on Tuesday, changing my entire presentation. Instead of anti-Biden memes and “woke is a joke” posts, I need to stick strictly to baseball, maybe a cat meme here and there, and not let politics so much as be a blip on my radar. All the news does is make me angry, and it needs to be cleansed from my life.

I also need to eliminate the people who cause me these problems as well. And there are several of them. Whether or not that means unfriending, unfollowing or just blocking, they need to be where I can’t see them and don’t have to deal with them. I am just at a point in my life where I can’t deal with such flagrant stupidity and mental insanity. Especially when it accomplishes nothing for them and nothing for me. I’m also going to go on Twitter and do the same thing.

Hopefully, this will work. If it doesn’t, I’ll admit I was wrong and consider my other options, including complete disconnection from the world and an attempt to go back to 1999 in 2022. Even though I know it won’t work, at least I will make the attempt. I hope I won’t have to, because it will likely hurt more than just knowing how much unhappier I am today than I thought I was.

In closing, I apologize for the fact that you just spent 15 minutes reading the ramblings of a guy who just let his mind vomit out everything that was going through it and you won’t get those 15 minutes back. But if you happen to see this and you know of a way I can try to close my life off to things I don’t want to see or hear about in the digital age, and how to keep from voicing my displeasure on social media with everything that aggravates me, please fill me in.

Thank you for your time. Peace.

My Thoughts On The Red Dead Redemption Series (SPOILERS)

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Red_Dead_Redemption

This won’t be the most timely blog I’ve ever posted, considering that the original Red Dead Redemption was released on May 18, 2010, while the sequel, Red Dead Redemption II, was released on October 26, 2018. I bought both immediately upon release (though Amazon, so I didn’t receive them on release day) but I didn’t play either of them until now, thanks to the COVID-19 lockdown and the lack of Major League Baseball.

If that wasn’t odd enough, I also played them out of order. I played RDR2 before I played the first RDR, which ended up being a blessing in disguise, as RDR2 is actually a prequel, and ends where the first game actually begins. So I’ll review the series in that order, beginning with RDR2 on the PS4 and then covering RDR on the PS3.

It took me roughly 30 days to play my way through 100% of the story mode of RDR2, playing roughly two hours per night. While I was slow to get started, within a couple of days I was completely hooked. The main playable character, Arthur Morgan, is great. He is the ultimate anti-hero. I enjoyed controlling him every bit as much as I did Batman in the Arkham series. Graphically, the game is incredible. A huge open-world, missions that actually make sense and smooth storytelling are some of the highlights of RDR2.

The first RDR is a step down on every level, but that’s to be expected since it’s being played on an inferior console. It took me 16 days to play through 100% of the game but I also put more time in per day. The main playable character, John Marston, is also a playable character in RDR2, following the death of Arthur Morgan. The point at which you take over John Marston was a negative for me on RDR2, and that feeling continued when I played RDR1. I just wasn’t a fan of John Marston as a character.

Just as you have to transition from Arthur Morgan to John Marston in RDR2, you have to transition from John Marston to his son, Jack Marston, following John being killed near the end of the RDR1 story mode. I found this transition much more enjoyable, as I think Jack Marston would have made a great main character.

If there is ever to be a third entry in the series, it would be better to roll it back before the events of RDR2, because there is a lot of talk about what happened prior to the game’s beginning, while the events involving Jack Marston at the end of RDR1 are taking place in 1915, not the best time frame for a game set in the “old west.”

I’m not crazy about the concept of a prequel game being followed by another prequel, but it would be better than nothing and would help to flesh out the story in RDR2, which opens with the Van der Linde gang already on the run after a botched ferry heist in Blackwater. A third game could cover the attempted ferry heist and what lead up to that point, including how the Van der Linde gang came to be together in the first place.

RATINGS

RED DEAD REDEMPTION (2010): FOUR STARS OUT OF FIVE

At first, I was going to rate the game three stars out of five, but I realized I was unfairly holding the hardware against the game. Yes, the PS3 isn’t as good as the PS4 and it’s really obvious when playing RDR1, especially in the cut scenes. Bad camera angles were a really bad problem as well. However, when taking that out of the equation, the game is outstanding. The story is really good and well written, but there are quite a few wild goose chases searching for Bill Williamson and Dutch Van der Linde. This is especially annoying when in Mexico. It made the game feel overlong even though I finished it in nearly half the time it took to finish RDR2. There’s just too much “down time.”

RED DEAD REDEMPTION II (2018): FIVE STARS OUT OF FIVE

There’s really no other way to say it, other than MLB The Show, this is my favorite video game of all time, and I’ve been playing video games since 1983 when I got my ColecoVision console and fell in love with Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong, Jr. It’s perfect. The graphics, the gameplay, the story telling, the game mechanics, it’s all perfect. The cut scenes are must-watch (whereas I found myself skipping the cut scenes on RDR1 by the time I was 75% through story mode). My only complaint was that Arthur Morgan was killed and the story transitioned to John Marston, but I understand why that was done given the fact that the entire RDR1 game revolves around John Marston and his family.

If you enjoy gaming and you haven’t played both of these, I can’t recommend them enough. I would, however, suggest you play them as I did, playing RDR2 first since it’s a prequel. It makes the story flow better between the games, with the only negative being going from the PS4 graphics to the PS3 graphics. But it’s well worth it in the end.

Thank you for taking the time to read. God bless.