I've been out of console gaming for a while. The last retail game I bought was the criminally underrated Alien: Isolation back in 2016, for the Xbox 360. For a long time I never felt the need to upgrade to the current generation of consoles; the games I was interested in either failed to deliver (Battlefront; ME:Andromeda) or simply didn't excite me enough to make the jump (Witcher III; Elite:Dangerous). Coupled with the demise of online gaming in my usual group (real life getting in the way of Left 4 Dead and COD parties), I was content to give it a miss.

All that finally changed with the release of Red Dead Redemption 2.

RDR on the 360 remaining s one of my favourite games of all time. The single player story and multiplayer freedom made it something special (and the sheer hilarity of a Wild West Undead Nightmare was a lot of fun as well). So when the sequel trailer hit, Rock Star had my immediate attention, and on it's release, my money.

Two weeks later and so far - like most things current generation - I'm a bit underwhelmed.

Don't get me wrong, the story so far is good, visually the fame is beautiful and the attention to detail is out of this world.

It's just a bit... clunky. The controls aren't as smooth or as polished as the original. The menus and item management are unnecessarily conplicated. And the tutorials simply aren't there.

At it's best, free roaming around, hunting or exploring the game is a joy. At it's worst, the game can be immensely frustrating.

Just today I had the fun experience of my first duel. By the time I was half way squinting through the tiny instructions in the top left corner, the duel was over and I was dead. Three more tries later without getting anywhere I gave it up as a bad job for another day and went back to riding around looking for animals to shoot and skin. The game definitely doesn't hold your hand when introducing new mechanics.

This isn't an isolated instance either. Deadeye barely got an explanation. Breaking horses wasn't made part ocularly clear either. You're pretty much left to find your way around the menu and inventory system and, in a lot of cases, mechanics from the first game have changed in a bewilderingly unnecessary say (dueling being the biggest culprit so far).

All that said, it's still an amazing game. It's just taking a lot of getting used to, and it isn't exactly helping me through the process.

I'm finding RDR2 to be a joy to play but as you stated, it doesn't hold your hand which creates a big learning curve. I really like the open worldness of the game and all the possibilities to explore, hunting, gambling, trapping, fishing, exploring etc.

The Witcher 3 is an excellent game. The 2 expansions are great additions also. This is actually my favorite all-time game, with Baldur's Gate and Persona 5 right behind it.

Some other excellent games for this generation are, Spiderman, Dragon Quest 11, Assassins Creed Origins, Horizon Zero Dawn. Most of these games are PS4 exclusives though.