THE WESTERN REDEEMED

The western is hip again, kids across the globe are thrilling to exploits set in the lawless West. And who or what is responsible for this surge of new interest in the genre?

Well there are a number of factors in play but at the moment the hot ticket is the videogame Red Dead Redemption, a computer adventure game from Rockstar Games.

The game has caused such a stir that it was even reviewed in The New York Times - The leading edge of interactive media has a new face. It is filthy, crudely scarred and belongs to John Marston, the protagonist of Red Dead Redemption, the sprawling and sublime new western from Rockstar Games. Red Dead Redemption does not merely immerse you in its fiction. Rather, it submerges you, grabbing you by the neck and forcing you down, down, down until you simply have no interest in coming up for air.

Rockstar has been known as The Company That Makes G.T.A., nothing more. Sure, the company has found moderate success with its noirish Max Payne franchise and its Midnight Club racing series, but Rockstar has been eager to demonstrate that it can create a blockbuster out of more than the profanity-spewing drug dealers and submachine-gun-toting thugs who populate the world of Grand Theft Auto.

And now it has, though this project involved no small leap of faith (and no small expense: between $80 million and $100 million, according to industry executives). For a genre that has been so essential to the film business, it may seem surprising that the western has traditionally never lent itself to video games. Then again, western games, like Activision’s Gun from 2005, have never sold well because there has never before been a western game that was truly made well. UNTIL NOW - THIS IS A GREAT WESTERN GAME that allows players to roam the frontier as they please. See that outcropping over there in the distance? You can climb it if you like, or just keep riding. When you come into one of the many towns and villages there may be dozens of buildings to explore, and they are all populated with folks going about their daily lives, even if you never visit. It is actually like being in the Wild West.

The stunning visuals look like Sergio Leone filtered through John Ford and the action comes thick and fast, every western cliché is incorporated somewhere into the game which makes for a thrilling experience, even for ageing dudes like me.

The success of the game is having a knock on effect with western movies selling particularly well on DVD at the moment, and many of us hope that games players will also develop an interest in western fiction. And so if any game player fancies loading up whatever fangled devices they possess with western eBooks then there are plenty out there and the forthcoming Edge eBook could be just the thing. After all the Wild West of the Edge books is not a million miles away from the Wild West of Red Dead Redemption.