Online game roleplay is a wonderful and curious exercise in creativity and adaptability, especially as the number of participants in an attempted scenario grows. Such was the case when the Wild West RP server for Red Dead Redemption 2 got together a group of players to act out the sale and transfer of cattle between two ranches. Herding cattle can’t be so hard, can it? Unless people are playing the unruly cattle, that is.

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Gather round the fire, possemates, the votes for the yearly Steam Awards are in and you lot have decided that Rockstar’s cowboy adventure Red Dead Redemption 2 was the game of the year in 2020. Come have a look-see to find out if anything you voted for during the awards wound up lassoing itself a win.

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Red Dead Redemption 2

‘s online mode has been separated from its singleplayer cowboy adventure today, offering Red Dead Online as a standalone game. You can still get it all together in one big RDR2 package if you’d like, but if you’re more into the idea of roaming around as a cowpoke in multiplayer, you can do just that now for a mere $5 as part of its introductory sale.

Today’s update also expands the Bounty Hunter role, so players old and new have more pesky outlaws to bring in, and higher ranks to reach.

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For those who fancy the rootin’ tootin’ multiplayer shootin’ of Red Dead Online but aren’t too interested in the grudgin’ trudgin’ singleplayer buy-in of the full Red Dead Redemption 2 package, Rockstar have announced a standalone version of RDO. It’s launching next week with an introductory price of $5 for several months, which, sure, is a price that’d get my interest. Not least of all because I want to try doing conference calls inside Red Dead Online.

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As it was leaked, so it shall come to pass. Red Dead Online has been updated with a Halloween-themed Outlaw Pass. The new Outlaw Pass has 20 ranks to climb with unlockable rewards and will run through November 16th. A new zombie game mode has been added as well and—wait, hold on. No, it isn’t a follow up to Undead Nightmare, the well-liked zombie expansion for the original Red Dead Redemption.

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Red Dead Online

cheaters get up to all sorts of mischief by summoning various NPCs from the game data into the world. As only one of oh so many examples, there was a spree of two-headed skeleton attacks several months ago. Mischief becomes more malign when they, say, summon white-robed KKK members to attack other players. So of course they’re doing that. Rockstar say they have removed the ability for these character models to be summoned in Red Dead Online.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons has become a phenomenon. If you’re not playing it, you’re probably still seeing it everywhere you turn – on Twitter, on Twitch, on the lips of your friends discussing turnip prices. It’s likely enough to inspire FOMO, the fear of missing out.

There are a couple of Animal Crossing adjacent games available on PC. Stardew Valley is one which comes instantly to mind, and other games like Stardew Valley. If you want to truly capture the spirit of Animal Crossing, however, there’s a surprising contender: Red Dead Redemption 2.

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As I said last time, my favourite thing about Red Dead Redemption 2 is the fact you can treat the game as an extremely perilous wildlife-spotting sim, with new creatures to behold every time you enter a new corner of the Cowboy’s grotty, whiskey-stained world. Some 234 creatures, in fact. And as a mark of respect, largely to the concept of animals but also to the Cowboy, I’m writing short reviews of all of them. Last time I managed twenty, so there’s only 214 left to go! Beast mode engaged.

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“Found my own body floating down the river today. Didn’t recognise myself for ages.” This may sound like the start of a magical realist detective story, rather than something you’d say in a meeting with colleagues. But in Red Dead Redemption 2, which is rapidly emerging as an unlikely competitor to Zoom and Skype in the world of conference calling, this is business as usual.

I’ve long been a fan of the way the Cowboy Game – especially its multiplayer mode – mixes obsessive realism with glitchiness and ultraviolence to create a sense of weird, unreal melancholy. But writer, illustrator and good tweeter Viv Schwarz, who related the above anecdote to me, has discovered that this recipe was missing a crucial third ingredient: corporate culture. They’ve been meeting with workmates in the uncanny environs of RDR2 for some time now, and while they can’t swear blind that it’s the most efficient place to do business, it is at least not Zoom. So grab yourself a seat by the fire and a rusty tin of hawk viscera, and let’s action some deliverables.

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Whenever I return to Red Dead Redemption 2, I find myself wanting to be released from the shackles of Rockstar’s design. Much like the Van der Linde gang, I’m looking for a place of my own, one that’s free from the concerns and constraints imposed by The Man. So I turn to mods, where I can make the west wild again.

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