There's a mission about halfway through Red Dead Revolver that I have not forgotten even in the 22 years since I first played Rockstar's original Western. It's called "The Traitor." The player takes over the villainous General Javier Diego of the Mexican army in a flashback, as he attempts to take control of a bridge at the border between Mexico and the United States. Your goal in the mission is simple: Stay alive long enough to wipe out the U.S. Army soldiers and cannon artillery. There's nothing simple about the mission, though. The game just obliterates you with garbage: Your two NPC partners can't hold up against a stiff breeze, the American soldiers are everywhere, and the fucking cannons will not stop barraging you. The cannon shots don't kill you, but they do send you flying and make you watch in agony as the General takes approximately nine hours to stand back up. All the while, the soldiers are whittling your health down and oh another cannon is shooting at you.
It's frustrating, it's unfair, it grinds the game's pace to a halt as you struggle for hours on end to complete "The Traitor" or just give up. I passed the mission on my own game back in 2004 relatively easily, but my best friend was so frustrated by it that he had me come over to beat it for him. I somehow lost all my skill on the walk to his place, and we couldn't beat it a second time; he never finished the game. "The Traitor" is everything that is brutal about video games, just a mess where you as the player fight the game as much as the gameplay. It also rocks. "The Traitor" feels truly epic as explosions go off around you while you dodge bullets, and the challenge becomes addicting; landing a perfect flare gun shot on a cannon while diving behind cover is a thrill not unlike those found in Bloodborne or Elden Ring. "The Traitor" is, without a doubt, one of the definitive video game experiences of my life.
I thought about "The Traitor" a lot while playing Red Dead Revolver again, in 2026, ahead of this Reds Week. I wondered if it would live up to the hype I had built up in my head. I wondered if, at 37, I was better or worse at video games than I was at 15. And reader, it went poorly. So poorly. I could not complete it in the allotted hour I gave myself, and so I wound up giving up to protect my mental health. I got through the first part just fine, killing off a handful of soldiers with no real issues (you would think, however, that Diego's "Martillo de Dios" rifle would actually do a lot of damage, but this Hammer of God is more like a pillow with how many shots it takes to kill enemies), but the cannons just wrecked my shit repeatedly. It's so enraging to be sent flying and just watch as the game tries to bring your character to his feet, all while he's getting pelted from every direction. That aforementioned challenge was a blast at 15, but I'm too weathered as a gamer to put myself through it again at 37. My adrenaline can't take that.
So, yeah, Red Dead Revolver has some quirks. Unlike its two critically acclaimed followups (Red Dead Redemption and its direct sequel-prequel), no one really claims to love Red Dead Revolver. No one claimed to love it back then, either. It was a mild critical success, I suppose, but Rockstar wasn't yet the Rockstar that would hold the video game world hostage over Grand Theft Auto VI. Sure, GTA 3 and Vice City had pushed the company into elite territory, but Revolver came at a time when not every Rockstar game was a must-play event. It was just another game—an often janky one, without the massive open world or the cinematic feel of the Redemption games. But you know what? After playing it again in 2026, I think I still feel the same way I have for 22 years: Revolver is the entry in this trilogy that I enjoy the most.
This says more about how I feel about the Redemption games and the video game trends they embodied. I do not like open-world games. I do not feel freedom from having an entire map to uncover and landmarks to check off. I feel paralyzed by choice and bored by expanse. While you can surely play the Redemption games like a straightforward story, that's not how Rockstar intended it to go. Revolver, on the other hand, is a neat and tidy 10-hour experience, and though it doesn't reach the heights (visuals and storyline, mostly) of the Redemption saga, it plays with a lot of heart and a brisk pace that I can't help but enjoy even more now.
The story of Revolver is simple: The protagonist (named Red, of course) wants revenge for the murder of his parents. The story takes some twists and turns, and along the way the player gets to play as General Diego, a British trickshot, a rancher named Annie Stoakes, Red's indigenous cousin, and a captive soldier. The shifts in perspective don't play too differently, but the missions have different feels to them, which keeps the 27 chapters feeling fresh. You can see the gameplay roots of Redemption in Revolver, too, though that's not a great thing all of the time. The slow (some, like me, would call it plodding) movement of Redemption is a bit snappier in Revolver, but it still feels sluggish at times. The gunfighting is not quite precise, either, which makes it annoying to get through missions that require sniping or long-range combat. And while I do not like open worlds, the "exploration" segments in Revolver go too far in the other direction, so limited as to be all but worthless. At least a change of scenery would have been appreciated.
Even with all that, though, I had a blast playing Revolver again. It's a simple game that set out to provide a tight experience, and it mostly succeeds, provided you can beat "The Traitor" without throwing your controller at the wall. While I do understand why people love the sprawl and realism of Redemption, and I can even appreciate that what Rockstar accomplished there is something to admire, the concentrated dose of Western action found in Revolver is more my speed. Do I wish it looked better than 2004 PS2-era graphics? Yes. Do I wish the movement was more fluid? Absolutely. Do I wish they hadn't named the aforementioned captive soldier, who is black, "Buffalo Soldier"? Boy, howdy. But Red Dead Revolver scratches a very specific itch for me that I never quite got to satisfy with Redemption and its sequel. I don't need all the bells and whistles and horse trotting. I just need some ol' six-shooters, some good guys, some bad guys, and a quest for vengeance. Just please don't make me play "The Traitor" ever again.
