Red Dead Redemption on Switch took me back to one of my beloved GTA moments.

Call of the Wild Wild West

Alright, partner, saddle up and get ready for a wild ride because Red Dead Redemption is making its way to the Switch! I don’t care what you want to call it – a remake, a port, or a “conversion” as Rockstar Games likes to put it. All I care about is how this game looks, feels, and plays in the palms of my hands. We’ve already experienced the glory of this game on consoles like the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, or through PS Plus streaming, and we were blown away by its impressive successor in 2018 on the PS4 and Xbox One. If I’m going to be impressed by John Marston’s adventure in the Old West all over again, I need something fresh and exciting.

After diving headfirst into the game for several days, I can confirm that Red Dead Redemption not only lives up to expectations but exceeds them on Nintendo’s flagship hardware. In fact, it does so well that my mind was transported back in time – not to my PS3 days, but to the last few months of 2005.

Back to the Future

Red Dead Redemption might have released nearly five years after that, but as I watched that iconic opening cinematic – with black smoke billowing from the chimney of a steam train and characters gossiping inside the carriage – I wasn’t transported to New Austin or Nuevo Paraíso. Instead, my mind was flooded with memories of Liberty City. Specifically, GTA: Liberty City Stories.

Released in North America on October 25, 2005, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories served as a prequel to the beloved GTA 3 from 2001. The game followed Toni Cipriani’s rise through the ranks of the Leone crime family in the same Liberty City map. With quality-of-life improvements including motorcycles, clothing upgrades, and a fully-voiced protagonist, Liberty City Stories felt like an evolved version of GTA 3 in the best possible way. It was so great, in fact, that it holds the title of the best-selling PSP game of all time.

But there was something more than just the game itself that captured my heart at the time. Sure, the missions were fun, and it was a blast to roam around on a PCJ-600 superbike with an Uzi in my hand, dressed in a white tuxedo, and jamming to DJ Clue and DMX’s Ruff Ryders Anthem Remix. But what made it truly wonderful was the experience of having all of that right there, in the palms of my hands. We all have those “how could it possibly get better than this?” moments with video games, and that first introduction to the Liberty City skyline flickering across my small LCD screen is definitely one of mine.

Fast forward 18 years, and I had a similar experience while guiding John Marston through his first steps in Armadillo. I replayed Red Dead Redemption right before it exited the PS Plus Premium service last year, so I was already quite familiar with the original game. However, to make real-time comparisons, I fired up the game’s opening cinematic on YouTube, running on its native PS3 hardware. Double Eleven Studios, the team behind the 2023 remaster, has done an exceptional job polishing the original’s visuals. They’ve improved everything from water physics to lighting, shadows, resolution, particle effects, texture density, and facial animations. All of this looks fantastic in the base game, but it’s even better in the Undead Nightmare DLC, which is included in this package.

Saddle Up, Cowboy!

Now, don’t get me wrong. It might not be as mind-blowing as witnessing GTA: Liberty City Stories on a tiny 4.3-inch screen just a year after the epicness of San Andreas. After all, Red Dead Redemption was released in 2010 and we’re playing it in 2023. However, there is something truly magical about rediscovering Red Dead Redemption in all its glory, feet up, sprawled out on the couch, with the Women’s World Cup playing on the TV in the background. As for why Rockstar decided to bring John Marston’s story to the PS4 and Switch now, well, we may never get an official answer to that.

What Rockstar definitely needed, though, was a win after the rocky launch of the GTA Trilogy: The Definitive Edition in late 2021 and all the subsequent issues. And let me tell you, this remaster of Red Dead Redemption and its Undead Nightmare expansion is exactly that. Now, whether you’re willing to spend £39.99 / $49.99 on a souped-up version of a 13-year-old game is an entirely different question. I can’t make that decision for you. But what I can say is that this is the most polished version of one of the greatest games of all time – a game that can transport you back in time, whether you yearn for the American Frontier or, in my case, the exhilarating days of the mid-2000s.

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Red Dead Redemption on Switch took me back to one of my beloved GTA moments.