Because it’s Halloween, like any responsible and properly functioning adult, I’m looking for scary video games to play. I’m also a huge vamp (I honestly think I would if I had the chance to play PT, TThey are interactive Silent Hills teaser, I really would have died), so I was looking for a scary game that wouldn’t endanger my sleep/underwear.
Thankfully, Rockstar released a remaster of their original Cowboy Sim, Red Dead Redemptionn, just in time for Halloween for PC – and includes Undead Nightmare – One of the best game expansions ever made. I remember playing it on PS3 back in the day and loving the B-movie vibes, and finding the combination of the wild west and zombie invasion so good that I thought the game would create its own sub-genre.
Now, 14 years later, I’ve been given the perfect opportunity to revisit the classic game without dusting off my PS3 – so I installed it on my Asus ROG Ally X handheld gaming PC and for an All Hallows’ Eve Fixed… Eve (I played it the day before Halloween, basically) cowboys and zombies session – and I was shocked, appalled and yes, a little scared.
Devilishly good
Let’s start with the things that really impressed me. After a horrendous installation process (more on that in a bit), the fact that I was playing a game that was nearly a decade and a half old was just as expansive and exciting. Red Dead Redemption It was incredibly impressive on a handheld device.
I started running the game at 1080p with the graphics set to ‘medium’, and was very impressed with the performance. However, at this graphics setting, the age of the game was quite obvious, especially with the low-resolution textures and levels.
So, feeling more ambitious, I turned the graphics up to ‘ultra’ and… well, I turned them down again. In ‘Ultra’ the game became too slow to play as frame rates dropped, but on ‘High’ there was a good balance between visual quality and performance.
Sure, it was still clearly an older game, and the controls remained a bit clunky – but this is a Rockstar game after all. Controls that feel like you’re wading waist-deep through particularly bloated zombie guts are all part of the ‘charm’.
Of course, I could always play the game on my RTX 4090-equipped gaming PC and bump the resolution up to 4K (or maybe 8K…) and the graphical settings to ‘ultra’, but I really like the idea of being able to play was Game comfortably on the couch or in bed as the English weather in October battered my windows outside – and the Asus ROG Ally X gives me the perfect opportunity to do just that, a powerful handheld gaming PC device. Being as easy to hold as the Nintendo Switch, it still has some of the most powerful components you can find in a handheld right now. As much as I still love my Steam Deck, I felt that the ROG Ally X would give me a better gaming experience.
And there were times when the game looked beautiful. Riding across plains with the sun shining through the clouds, or riding slowly across a burning bridge as a zombie rampages through a city at night, despite the age of the original game and the ROG Ally X’s small screen, it’s extremely immersive. Manage to stay in the environment. .
I should really give a shout out to the teams at Rockstar and Double Eleven, who ported the game to PC. After the mess that was the GTA Trilogy remaster, I have my hopes up. Red Dead Redemption Remastered. were certainly furious, especially since this was the first time the game would officially be played on PC.
So far, I’ve found it to be a faithful recreation of a classic game that’s modernized where necessary, but doesn’t compromise or disrespect the original game.
It’s also a testament to the Asus ROG Ally X’s hardware that the game runs so well on the handheld. Perhaps most surprisingly, I was probably most impressed with the ROG Ally X’s speakers. Despite having two speakers built into the ROG Ally X, audio quality was excellent and stereo separation was wide. This meant that the groans of zombies and the screams of victims seemed to come from all around me – an immersive touch that’s remarkable considering the hardware.
And as for the game itself – well, it’s considered a masterpiece for a reason, and that includes this one. Undead Nightmare. Because it’s a standalone story, you can dive right in, and I was reminded not only of how much fun it is to play an undead nightmare, but how tense and scary it can be – and how funny it is. It was also rich.
There were plenty of scary moments (those weird zombies that crawl towards you are particularly disturbing), but it was balanced with a knowing wink and nod to classic zombie movies – and dialogue that It’s genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, showcasing Rockstar’s brilliant writing and stellar performances from the games’ voice stars. It made me wish that Rockstar would go back to releasing more than one game per decade.
Devilishly bad… and downright ugly
While there were plenty of pleasant surprises during the game. Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare On the Asus ROG Ally X, there were some bad ones.
Some of the graphics, especially when it comes to textures, reminded me why I rarely return to games from that era. I’ll happily play 2D classics from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, but I think PS1 – PS3 era (including N64) rough When it comes to many 3D games.
Running the game at 1080p on the 7-inch ROG LX screen was a good move in my opinion (humble brag), as was blowing the game up to my 77-inch 4K OLED TV (not so humble brag). Make polygon count and texture resolutions more noticeable.
It also reminded me how sad it is that we’ll never get an expansion like Undead Nightmare. Red Dead Redemption 2 – or even a remake of the original game in its sequel, albeit with an entire map included. Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most beautiful games ever made, and I would love to see how the original game and expansions would have looked in the new engine.
It also made me sad that we might never get a single-player expansion of the caliber of Undead Nightmare from Rockstar. Since GTA Vn.d Red Dead Redemption 2it appears that Rockstar is not interested in single-player DLC, instead focusing on online campaigns.
And then we get to the ugly – and the nightmare that is using Windows 11 on a handheld device. As I’ve lamented before, including in my Asus ROG Ally X review , Windows 11, an operating system designed for laptops and desktop PCs, is clearly unsuited for handheld devices. It is suitable. Windows 11 requires a mouse and keyboard to function optimally, and that’s why manufacturers like Asus have created their own touchscreen and controller-friendly interfaces for launching games — but that’s not the case with Windows 11. Sitting awkwardly.
Installing Red Dead Redemption Remastered. ROG LX highlighted how terrible Windows 11 is for this sort of thing. Launching Steam from the Armory Crate interface was easy enough. I chose to install the game from within Steam, and after a quick download, a screen appeared that said ‘Installation Initializing’. I left it for a while. And then some. And long. Finally, I thought something was wrong – swiping up from the bottom of the screen revealed the Windows 11 taskbar and I could see that another app had opened. Clicking on it, there was a window asking to install Rockstar Launcher. So I had to click through several windows (all of which were small and only touch-screen controllable). After installing it… I then had to log into my Rockstar account. After finding my details, I then entered them, painfully slowly tapping the on-screen keyboard.
Another window appeared, this time asking me to check my emails and enter a two-factor code, which I had to do again by awkwardly tapping tiny buttons.
The whole thing was incredibly frustrating, and while having to download a new launcher and log into a different account to play a game on Steam, that’s not unique to this game or Windows 11. , the process was made more troublesome. with various windows and messages that pop up. For anyone looking for a console-like experience where you can just load up a game and play, Windows 11 just can’t deliver. This is a real shame.
This meant that on a night of Western zombie killing, Windows 11 on a handheld device was the scariest part ever. And that’s not good enough.