Reckon you’d have to search pretty far and wide to find a fella who hasn’t played Red Dead Redemption before. It’s been around for darned near sixteen years, after all. Even if a person was inclined to stick to Nintendo platforms, they would have found Red Dead Redemption around the original Switch parts for a couple of years. Yes sir, just about everyone has played this one before. Everyone but this guy right here. That’s right, this Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game is the very first time I’ve played Rockstar’s original Wild West adventure. Ain’t that somethin’?
Okay, I’ll drop the dialect. Kind of hard to resist talking like that for a while after you’ve played this game though, isn’t it? Back when this game came out, Rockstar Games was primarily known for the Grand Theft Auto series. It had a few other things under its belt, but nothing that penetrated the mainstream in an evenly remotely similar fashion. The brand itself was something the publisher had picked up from Capcom, of all places. It was developed there as something of a spiritual successor to Gun.Smoke, and that’s your weird trivia for the day.
At any rate, after a lengthy period of development and a lot of money spent, Red Dead Redemption hit PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 partway through 2010. It was a smash hit, with both its single-player campaign and online multiplayer mode garnering a lot of praise. A number of updates added more to the game, including a fresh zombie-themed campaign. It was the style at the time, you see. After the game’s follow-up was released in 2018, the series became even hotter. In 2023 the game was ported to the PlayStation 4 and the original Switch, then in 2024 to Windows PCs, and now in 2025 to just about every other platform. Seriously, you can even play this on your iPhone now.
For Switch 2 owners, this is a free upgrade to the existing release from the Switch. Zero dollars and zero cents needed, just a will to push the download button on the eShop. Doing so gives you a far better experience than the already fine Switch version. You get a framerate targeting 60 fps instead of 30, improved lighting, more detailed textures, a longer field of view, reduced loading times, and even support for mouse controls. I wish more publishers would remember those exist. Still no gyro aiming, sadly. Well, you can’t have it all. The important thing is that this is the kind of upgrade you would hope to see in the transition from Switch to Switch 2, and the fact that it’s a free one makes it all the better.
It feels weird to explain this game in the current year, but I suppose a brief bit is fine. Set in the American Western frontier in the year 1911, Red Dead Redemption follows the story of a man named John Marston as he does the government’s dirty work in exchange for the safety of his family. John used to be an outlaw, and his job is to deal with his old buddies by any means necessary. The narrative is as twisty and dramatic as you would expect from the folks behind Grand Theft Auto, and it’s the part of the game that remains just as fresh as the day it released. Indeed, once the story gets its hooks into you, it’s easy to overlook most of the bits of the game that are decidedly from another era.
Describing the game as “Grand Theft Auto in the Old West” might be simplifying things a little too much, but it works as a broad explanation. It’s a third-person open-world action game where you take on a series of story missions while engaging in any number of side missions and mini-games you see fit to. You generally get around on foot or by horse, and for a game of its vintage the open world is actually fairly detailed and interesting to explore. Given the setting, it’s not surprising there isn’t a lot going in large parts of the map, but it works.
In the time between this game’s original release in 2010 and today there have been a lot of advances in open world games, with this game’s sequel being a particularly salient example. As such, things can feel a little artificial in places. But again, the story and setting help paper over some of this. If towns are sparsely populated, well… that’s how frontier towns could be, right? Lots of repeated scenery? Deserts are like that. Now, I’m not sure how true any of that really is, but it at least seems to hold up to what a person would have seen in old Spaghetti Western movies. In terms of vibe, Red Dead Redemption is narratively more aimed at things like Unforgiven, but it’s not shy about evoking Sergio Leone either. So, you know, it all more or less comes out in the wash.
There are various quirks and bits of awkwardness to all of this, as is often the case when a game tries to do as much as this one did. Still, it’s a remarkably playable game even by modern standards. The mouse aiming makes it even nicer to play, should you be playing in such a way to take advantage of it. Not so great for handheld play, and this is where I wish gyro controls would be implemented. You’ll have to aim the old-fashioned way, but there are so many assists you can take advantage of here that it’s not really a huge deal most of the time. Between lock-on and John’s time-slowing Dead Eye ability, you should be able to hit whatever you’re aiming at.
Again, this was my first time playing Red Dead Redemption. I have no warm, nostalgic fuzzies of playing the game back when my knees didn’t hurt quite so much. This game had to survive with me by modern standards, and I’m happy to say it did just that. Does the world need one more person telling you to play Red Dead Redemption? Maybe not, but if you need a nudge to give this game a go on the Nintendo Switch 2, consider this to be just that. This is an excellent Switch 2 upgrade, remarkably at zero cost for owners of the existing Switch version, and it’s an outstanding way to play this game on the go.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Rockstar Games
