Whilst being stuck inside the flat by myself I’ve been playing a variety of games, and in truth not really knowing which one to focus on. At some point last week i decided that I should probably take a look back at Red Dead Redemption 2, a game that I’d barely played for a year. After completing the story, along with the DLC sized Epilogues, I played a little online, but after reaching level 21 I’d given up the ghost of trying to hit level 50 online with the game in the state it was. Would all that change after that year break?

The first thing that caught my eye were the various professions that you can choose, and the prospect of calmly roaming around the map doing the collector’s tasks did intrigue me as to how quickly one would be able to level through doing it. After a brief little re-introduction one evening, if nothing else to get my head around the control scheme again, i logged on the next morning, complete with online interactive map marking out where all the collectibles were located, so I was all ready to go.

The first thing to hit me was the loading screen of course, and I’d really forgotten just how long the game takes to load. The old school black and white photos that the screen cycles through are very good in setting the tone of the game, but are clearly there to mask the loading times. In the end i regularly resorted to just going off to make a cup of coffee or tea whenever I had to enter the game world again.

The second thing that caught me out, (and still does a week later, though thankfully not as much now) was that the touchpad on the dualshock controller DOESN’T bring up the map. I’ve clearly just gotten used to this being the case on games I’ve played in the past as I must have spent the majority of that first day pressing the touchpad and being infuriated by finding the camera view changing instead. It feels such a waste of the pad to just use it to cycle through camera angles, especially when some games have used it for multiple inputs, with a click on the right side bringing up a different menu/map compared to clicking the left side for example.

Not that the control issues ended there. Indeed I’d forgotten just how clunky and outdated the control scheme of the game was. Tapping ‘x’ rhythmically to run is not something I’d encountered since playing the game, and not something I’d encountered prior to that since the original Red Dead Redemption. You may not be surprised to hear that my natural instinct was to attempt to sprint by pressing in on the left stick, something that’s been common in many games over the last decade, only to find my character squatting down on the floor. As with the other issues mentioned so far this is something that, even after a week’s worth of having returned to the game, i still find myself doing on an infuriatingly frequent number of occasions.

In spite of all this i set out on my adventure to acquire all of the collectibles to hand them in, and with 14 collections to fulfill I was certainly going to be busy! The online map was a massive help in order to find out where the various collectibles were hiding that day, but there was still a little rush towards the end of the day in order to get all the items I could before the in game clock ticked over to a new day and reset all the locations. A couple of the collections I’d had to give up on as I hadn’t picked up the shovel to dig with, and only opened up access to the metal detector as the day progressed, so figured I’d just get them when I handed everything in and I could then use the items the following day to make sure i maxed out the XP i could get that day.

After handing in all of the complete collections I’d acquired, and with it the laborious notifications on the side of the screen that slowly announced the increase in my new character level one at a time, I’d managed to hit level 36. Having previously tried to gain levels by shooting policemen from the rooftops in Saint Denis and finding it both boring as hell and no where near as productive as internet guides had suggested I was pleasantly surprised to find that I’d managed to power through a whole 15 levels in one day. With the knowledge that i should be able to increase that XP gain further the next day I retired for the night feeling pretty confident that the level 50 trophy wasn’t as much of a pipe dream as it had felt prior to returning to the game.

The following day, after getting myself mentally prepped for another day of collectibles farming, I loaded up the game (whilst making a cup of tea of course) and started making my way to my first marker of the day. Things got a little confusing after attempting the first few custom markers, as whilst a couple of them had proved fruitful a couple of other’s hadn’t. I started to doubt whether today’s online location map was quite cycled with the game correctly, which would pose huge problems in obtaining all those items in one day. A little while later, after some of the plants and tarot cards weren’t being highlighted by eagle vision even though I could clearly see and farm/collect them I decided to log out and see if that improved the situation. A few minutes (and another cup of tea) later and I was back in the matrix, and this time everything seemed to be working correctly, which subsequently meant returning to my starting location of the day to retry the bugged items from earlier, which this time all appeared as expected. With my faith now restored in the game and my collectibles map it was time to plough through it and see how close I could get to the magical level 50.

Once again it wasn’t until late in the evening that I’d managed to acquire all 14 collections and handed them in, waiting to see which level the game would slowly progress me to. As it was I’d already reached level 43 just from the xp given for picking up each item, so that was 7 levels out of the way prior to handing everything in. As I sat there the notifications slowly showed up on the side of the screen, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48…. and there it ended for the day, with only a level and half required to get that gold trophy.

An hour or so the next morning and level 50 was mine, and together with filling all 4 of my online stable slots, all of my online trophies had been completed. I still can’t remember if there was more a sense of relief rather than achievement upon completion, but it’s safe to say that without having already been stuck indoors for a few weeks I probably wouldn’t have spent an entire 2 days just collecting imaginary items in a game. Even with a map to follow i still don’t think it’s something I would have attempted over a few evenings if I’d been working, especially with the locations resetting each day. Would I have just found myself re-farming duplicate items and only rarely completing a collection?

That being said though, the fact that I managed to hit that level within a couple of days or so was immensely surprising considering how slow progression had previously been in the game online. Clearly some improvements had been beneficial, although a couple of missions of the moonshine chain instantly threw me back in to the typical ‘go here, collect this person/item and then shoot your way out’ ganeplay that had plagued the original online missions in the game (and arguably the main story of the game too). This, coupled with the 2 days of travelling through an empty world where I only occasionally would bump in to another player has meant that I probably won’t be returning to the online world again now that I’ve hit the level i needed to.

Not that i need to worry about returning to the online world, as now having acquired all the online trophies there is now no longer that mental roadblock preventing me from gaining the platinum trophy, so now it’s time to start looking at finishing that ridiculously long journey.

The battle may be over, but the war has a long way to run!

To be continued…………….