Red Dead Redemption's PC port is — surprisingly — the perfect Halloween game

The original Red Dead Redemption game, first released in 2010, is back from the dead — fittingly in time for Halloween. Making its long awaited debut on PC this week, you’ll saddle up for the rootin-tootin ‘Grand Theft Auto with cowboys’ main game, spruced up for modern hardware.

But don’t pass on the excellent Undead Nightmare expansion that’s included with the release, a perfect zombie-blasting dessert after the epic main quest meal.

It’s hard to believe in this age of remasters and remakes, but Red Dead Redemption, one of the most influential open-world games of all time, from Rockstar, the masters of the art, never made the leap to PC, or any modern consoles for that matter (bar a bare bones Nintendo Switch release).

That’s despite nearly 15 years of pleading from fans of the series, and those who jumped onboard with the franchise first with the phenomenally successful Read Dead Redemption 2 on PS4 and Xbox One in 2018. But with Read Dead 2 actually a prequel to the original game, jumping onboard in 2024 isn’t such a bad thing really, letting you see anti-hero John Marston’s story play out from beginning to end across both games. And that’s now, finally, something you can do on PC from start to finish.

Picking up shortly after the conclusion of Red Dead 2, the original Red Dead sees John Marston — a supporting cast member of the sequel — take the lead, tasked with hunting down the members of his old gang in order to protect his family.

It’s a monumental game — the first time Rockstar really nailed its cinematic ambitions in storytelling — with a detailed open world to explore, heart-stopping missions, and a snappy slow-mo shot-out system that the sequel would refine to great effect.

It’s a little less grand than modern open-world games clocking in at 20 to 30 hours depending on how much side content you want to dive into — but its ambition is matched by a level of polish and execution unheard of back in 2010.

Old game, new tricks

But here’s the rub — it’s still a 14 year old game, and some of its production (be that facial animations, open-world density or lighting effects) are looking a bit Old West in 2024.

Thankfully, the PC port gives you ample room to take advantage of a modern GPU and CPU combo, and really make that old engine sing. Rockstar and Double Eleven (the development team Rockstar’s recruited to make this port happen), have done a fine job of throwing all the modern bells and whistles at your rig’s disposal at this port.

You’ve got ultra high resolutions up to 4K native, refresh rate support up to 144Hz, ultrawide monitor support (in both 21:9 and 32:9 scales), adjustable draw distances and more.

Hook up to a HDR TV or monitor, and you’ll see contrast really pop — especially in sunset scenes, when the open plains turn a fire-y orange. There’s even DLSS frame generation support, using AI techniques to squeeze ridiculously high frame rates from Red Dead — absolute overkill for a 14-year-old game.

It comes together to represent the optimum way to play the game now then, with everything scaling well for play on handheld PC devices like the Steam Deck too, and a far cry from the disastrous Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — Definitive Collection release from a few years back that was a bit overzealous in re-interpreting the look of the original game for modern machines.

B-movie magic

I’ll be riding on out through Red Dead Redemption once more for sure then — even though I mopped up every possible side quest and adventure upon its original release.

But one area of the game I didn’t fully explore was its Undead Nightmare expansion pack, also included in this re-release — and something this old horse has been champing at the bit to go through ever since its own Halloween release back in 2010.

It re-imagines the Wild West setting as the location for a ye-olde time zombie outbreak, and recasts the moody tone of the main game as a shlock-horror B-Movie. A 6-hour adventure in its own right, with additional weapons that include holy water, a blunderbuss and zombie bait, it’s as much George A. Romero as it is Sergio Leone.

You can even rustle and tame the four horses of the apocalypse, each with their own particular perks and skills, as you canter through waves of undead foes.

Undead Nightmare is ridiculously gory good fun, a perfect Halloween evening’s departure from the core Read Dead experience.

It also makes it all the crueller that Rockstar didn’t re-animate the concept for a Red Dead Redemption 2 expansion pack — the level of detail on show there would have truly made for the sort of thing nightmares are made of.

One truly terrifying element however might be the price tag here. £39.99 / $49.99 is a bit steep for a port — solid or not — that hasn’t been given the full remaster treatment.

This is very much the same old Read Dead, propelled to higher resolutions and framerates by your hardware, rather than painstakingly recreated. That this week’s other big re-release, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered for PS5, lets owners of the original game upgrade for a tenner, makes the price tag here for effectively a 14 year old game sting that little bit more.

But honestly? It’s a price I’m ready to pay to finally have easy access to one of the greatest games of modern times. If you’ve never had the heartbreaking joy of watching John Marston’s full story play out — especially if you’ve only been introduced to him in Red Dead 2 — you’re in for quite the treat.

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