Red Dead Redemption 2 the funny cowboy prequel is a difficult game to tackle as it's its own behemoth of a game but man this game just didn't do it for me. One of my biggest issues with this game comes with the fact that when playing the story it feels so utterly disconnected from the open world. On top of that there's the bloated run time of this game that just...feels like padding, as is custom with some rockstar games they have long ass tutorials and man those tutorials are already stuffed enough to the point where it becomes hard to genuinely have the motivation to play the rest of the game but I trudged on for a bit longer and I gotta say, the controls are not the best either. Most of my issue play into how the game is designed and mostly how it plays, I think the narrative of Arthur Morgan is fucking great. It has some genuinely great writing...BUUUUT I can't help but feel like this game just constantly suffers from linearity in open world design. It's that classic rockstar bullshit tht you see more often nowadays, even in RDR1. But this game just feels like an amalgamation of shitty design choices, had the game been more nonlinear I think it would have been much more...enjoyable than it likely already is to many people. Being punished for being creative in a mission kinda fucking sucks when the whole game is essentially an open world game, you'd assume it'd reward creativity in gaming but in this specific case a lot of interactions don't feel special. With a lot of other games, even linear ones, there's still something special to be had but nonlinear games tend to have the most special way of presenting themselves that essentially varies for how a player plays. I don't hate linear games at all but this game just really skirts that line between linear and nonlinear at points. As mentioned earlier this game is just..so damn long like god, and I thought the Last of Us Part 2 was long enough to feel bloated at times but this just took it to a whole new level. I wanna bring up ludonarrative dissonance but idk how the fuck to explain it or use it in a way that proves a point in this case so I'll say this, the game's honor system is so weird at times. That's about all I'll say.
NOW, I do not completely hate or love this game, which is why it's sitting at a 2.5.

In Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 37.5: Melody of Memories Sons of Patriotism 7.2/5 Enter The Gecko 1/2 64 you play as Solid Snake Gex who is actually the son of Hideo Kojima himself. But wait Gex is actually dead and the Gex you play as in this game (Solid Snake Gex) is actually Naked Gex because Solid Snake Gex is actually Gex and died in a tragic story of betrayal and revenge, he was killed by his own father Hideo Kojima Death Stranding Director's Cut. BUT WAIT Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 Nemesis actually was the one who killed Gex (who was Solid Snake Gex not Naked Gex who is the one you play as in this game) was actually Hideo Kojima and his motivations are balls to the wall bonkers, you see Resident Evil 3 Nemesis (disguised as Hideo Kojima) actually wanted to kill Solid Snake Gex (not to be confused with Naked Gex) because Shigeru Miyamoto said that Resident Evil 3 Nemesis was a stupid nincompoop on the playground at school 20 years ago and he took that to heart with him.
But actually this game can't keep its own lore straight so Solid Snake Gex is actually Naked Gex and Naked Gex is actually Solid Snake Gex due to a mix up at birth which means everything we know is a lie and Naked Gex has been dead the whole time. Resident Evil 3 REMAKE Nemesis is actually the one who killed Naked Gex and was actually Hideo Kojima in disguise meaning that Resident Evil 3 Nemesis was actually an imposter. Now, never drink tap water at Jerry Garcia's house.
This leaves us with Joel from The Last of Us Part II retiring and playing golf with Mario and the real Hideo Kojima, how does this play into our main character? TURNS OUT Solid Snake Gex and Naked Gex aren't even the real Gex and Gex has been the head of a multi billion dollar corporation the entire time.
In conclusion it's tail time.