Guardian.co.uk Hands-on with Final Code

There are certain games you love from the very first moments. Half-Life was a classic example – its opening sequence was so assured and so immersive, it set you up perfectly for the grandstanding adventure to come. Super Mario 64 with its immediately captivating world was the same… For me, Red Dead Redemption will surely soon be on that list.

I played the finished code for four hours last week and the first time I whistled for my horse and it galloped toward me, muscles rippling, utterly convincing animation (they motion captured a horse – on a treadmill) that was it, I was in. For the first ten minutes, I just trotted up and down the dusty streets of Armadillo, lapping up the perfectly replicated Western iconography; the lone rider slowly sauntering into town, the drunken gunmen lounging on the steps of the saloon, the prostitutes languidly promenading the balconies, the balls of tumbleweed blowing past...

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The strong sense of characterisation is also hugely familiar: I've seen a fraction of the game, but have already encountered some memorable personalities. Martial Johnson is a highlight, a laconic and reluctant lawman, just trying to keep his crappy town on the right side of hell. He's given immense gravitas by an excellent voice acting performance that makes a mockery of Heavy Rain's many travails into wooden lifeless recitation. I also loved the dandy New York reporter Jimmy Saint who's come down here to write about the West for the ladies back in NYC. "I'm gonna have some wild adventures!" he cries – and you just know it's going to go horribly wrong for him. And of course, this wouldn't be a Rockstar title without at least one knockabout stereotype – enter Irish, the whisky-swilling ne'er-do-well who'd double cross his grandma for a dram of liquor.