Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption's frontier atmosphere is still difficult to match. Riding across the badlands with nothing but dust and distant piano music is a kind of open-world experience that feels unhurried in a way most modern games are too impatient to offer. The 2023 Switch release holds up technically, which surprised me given the game's age. Where it shows its years is in the mission structure, which is more scripted and less reactive than players used to the Zelda entries will expect. Side activities are thinner than the sequel. Still, as a transportive piece of open-world atmosphere, it delivers something none of the other games on this list quite replicate.

The original Red Dead Redemption on PS Plus is not the second game. That matters. The world is smaller, the systems are older, and it does not have the same level of organic encounter density that made RDR2 so special. What it does have is Rockstar frontier atmosphere that still holds up completely. Riding across the Nuevo Paraiso desert at dusk with nothing scripted happening, just the ambient world doing its thing, is a mood almost no other game in this catalog produces. I would love RDR2 to be here instead, but it is not, and the original is a worthy substitute rather than a consolation prize.