BOSTON – You can warp across parts of Red Dead Redemption's open world, but you'd be plum loco to want to.

I played a little bit of Rockstar's new open-world cowboy game at PAX East on Saturday and immediately grokked how I'd be playing the game when it comes out May 18 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. I'd be chasing every distraction, just the way I scoured the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3.

Red Dead Redemption's plot is easy enough to find. On my mini-map, there were a couple of capital letters (familiar enough to anyone who's ever played a Grand Theft Auto game). It's easy enough to tilt the D-pad to call my horse, press Y to mount the steed and pump A to coax my mount to move. But the last thing I wanted to do was hot-foot it to my next plot point, even though I knew that a smartly-written moment of character building would be waiting for me there.

There's just way too much to get distracted by in Redemption's old West. From where I stood on a small desert rise, I saw a wild horse in the distance, galloping through the shimmering haze. These, I'm told, can be lassoed, broken and tamed.

While riding through the brush, I stirred up a mess of armadillos. I picked them off one varmint at a time with my pistol. On the way to my goal, I came across a pair of cowboys tearing ass through a shadowy ravine. I could have put a bullet in their backs, suffering a loss in reputation, but I decided I'd rather race the pair. I gave my horse the spur and pushed ahead, just barely edging out the other riders as I rode clear of the narrow pass into the wide open.

Atop a small mesa I found an observation tower and a box of ammo. Futzing around near the bottom of the tower, I disturbed a crow that had been roosting in its heights. As the bird took flight, I drew my gun and picked it out of the air. This triggered a "sharpshooting challenge." I stood my ground, bullseyeing birds. Even without the structure of the mini-game challenge, I felt like I could have participated in this particular flavor of avian cruelty for hours.

I rode my horse down to where the first bird dropped and found its broken corpse in the middle of the dirt road. I dismounted and plucked a single feather from its body. This will be good for something later, I thought.

There was a small settlement nearby – barns, houses and a graveyard. The boneyard was where my next bit of story awaited. I found Seth Briars there, a raggedy old treasure hunter driven mad by his quest for gold. The old nut had a lead for me, but wound up walking me into an ambush. A dozen or so gunmen spilled out of a handful of rickety buildings and took potshots at me from all directions.

I ran for cover, crouched behind a small wall and thumbed the left bumper to bring up the weapon wheel. I switched to a rifle and proceeded to pick off the baddies at long range. Clicking the right stick let me break into "Deadeye," a slow motion mode that allowed me to highlight multiple enemies and take them out in a single hail of bullets.

My path of corpses eventually led to an old mansion. Inside, I had the opportunity to get up close and personal with my attackers. Pulling the trigger at close range triggered a contextual kill – I shoved my gun into my enemy's gut and discharged the weapon. Blood erupted from the sucker's back. My final foe guarded a chest in one of the upstairs rooms. I walked right up to him and executed him with a single pistol shot to the head.

By now it had grown dark. I left the scene of the slaughter into the starry night. The moon hung low in the sky. A half dozen wild horses galloped through the pale shadows. The panorama I found before me was a thing of beauty, a stark contrast to all the ugliness I'd just undertaken.

In less than 10 minutes, I felt drawn in to this rich slice of history that Rockstar has replicated – a place where the harshness of nature and the cruelty of man are at odds with the urge to tame and the desire for progress and for peace. I'm thrilled by the romantic notion of living on the cusp of those two worlds and spilling blood as part of the final death throes of the Wild West.

As I watch those wild horses gallop through the night, I know that this is a place I'm going to want to linger in for a spell.

Image courtesy Rockstar

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