The New 'Red Dead Redemption' Reveals the Biggest Problem With Marquee Games Today: They're Boring as Hell.

An anonymous reader shares a column: Everything about 'Red Dead Redemption 2' is big. The latest open-world western, released in October by Rockstar Games, constantly reminds you of this. It takes roughly 15 minutes for its bland everycowboy star, Arthur Morgan, to gallop across the 29-square-mile map. It has 200 species of animals, including grizzly bears, alligators, and a surprising number of birds. It takes about 45.5 hours to play through the main quest, and 150-plus hours to reach 100 percent completion. There are more than 50 weapons to choose from, such as a double-barreled shotgun and a rusty hatchet. It's big, big, big.

On top of all the bigness, 'Red Dead Redemption 2' is also incredibly dull. I've been playing it off and on since it was released, and I'm still waiting for it to get fun. I'm not alone in thinking so -- Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit called it 'quite boring' and Mashable said it's a 'monumental disappointment.' There are a glut of Reddit posts from people complaining about how slow the game feels, usually with a tone of extreme self-consciousness. Unless you're a real a**hole, it's not exactly fun to stray from popular consensus. Perhaps the general hesitancy to criticize the game is due to the fact that it's not technically bad. Its graphics and scale really are impressive. It is designed to please.

And yet 'RDR2' seems to exemplify a certain kind of hollowness that's now standard among Triple-A titles. It's very big, with only tedium inside. Call it a Real World Game. The main problem with 'RDR2' is that it's comprised almost entirely of tedious, mandatory chores. It always feels like it's stalling for time, trying to juke the number of hours it takes to complete it.

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