Red Dead Revisited

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was essentially finished with the main storyline of Red Dead a couple days ago, when the progress-meter was at about the 70% mark. I'm not going to spoil the plot, but suffice to say that after you defeat the last boss, the story essentially becomes this weird sort of drawn-out and annoying episode of Lassie. I'm not kidding, you'll see when you get there. Then there's one more minor boss battle at the "actual" end of the plot, which left me saying "huh? that's it?" as the credits rolled.

Still, it's a really excellent game, and worth your time to check out. As I was playing along, I made a list of noteworthy things I did or saw:

• Saw better scenery, sky, and weather effects than almost any other game I can think of... but also realized that they haven't mastered the technology for animating women's clothing yet.
• Spent all my money on the best horse in the game, only to find I already had that horse.
• Spent all my money on an upgraded gun, only to find the same gun on a dead guy 30 seconds later.
• Survived dozens of bullet wounds, but died instantly upon touching ankle-deep water.
• Spent roughly half of the in-game money I earned just to unlock new places to save the game from.
  
• Played through half the game before figuring out how to fast-travel, then hardly ever used it since a) it's cumbersome and slow, and b) watching the scenery go by is so cool.
  
• Picked more flowers and skinned more animal carcasses than I care to count.
• Watched enough cutscenes to make at least three westerns.
• Gave up on the in-game challenges once I reached level 5: "Kill two cougars with a knife."
  
• Killed about 500 bad guys with a gatling gun, which was surprisingly tedious and non-fun.
• Saw two NPCs "doing it".
• Lassoed a hooker from off a porch, threw her on my horse, rode over to the tracks, dumped her in front of an oncoming train, and got an achievement for it. Yup, it's a Rockstar game.
• Drove my cat crazy whenever I made my character whistle to summon his trusty horse.
• Accidentally drove my trusty horse over a cliff to its death... but not to worry, just whistle and his identical clone will come running up so you can hop on (?!)
• Ran errands for an infinite number of NPCs who each promised to advance the plot (but hardly ever did).
• Got stuck on world geometry when trying to run through a door into a gunfight, and died (happened to me a lot).
• Pressed the wrong button and accidentally drew my gun on a lawman or bystander, thus turning me into a wanted criminal (this happened a lot too).
• Played a cow-herding minigame that was surprisingly well done.
• Saw an NPC grabbing a horse penis.