Red Dead Online has never been able to replace Vali’s perennial favourite GTA Online. With Call to Arms, however, there is now a horde mode that fully captivates him.
So I really didn’t expect this: Red Dead Online has been available on PC since 2019 and despite various content updates – such as the latest Blood Money, which colleague Christian is thrilled about – I never really warmed up to Red Dead Redemption 2’s multiplayer mode. The grind for gold and money was too tough for me, the frequent riding back and forth between point A and point B too monotonous.
But now Rockstar Games is suddenly coming up with a new and actually damn simple game mode and suddenly has me under its spell. Since Call to Arms landed in Red Dead Online on 10 August 2021, I’ve spent every evening and even my entire weekend defending towns, forts and the MacFarlane Ranch from marauding outlaws – and having a blast doing it.
What is Call to Arms anyway?
Call to Arms is basically a simple horde mode that has only been available in Red Dead Online for a few days. Together with up to three other players, I defend well-known locations from the Open World, such as Strawberry, Fort Mercer or Blackwater, against ten waves of ever more and ever more aggressive enemies.
Despite its simple concept, Call to Arms is no walk in the park. Although AI comrades help us, no one should overestimate their “intelligence”. And there are respawning ammunition boxes and medipacks.
Nevertheless, it gets really tough from the second half of a match at the latest, as soon as armoured carriages armed with machine guns roll up, while snipers target us from a distance. And then there are the cannons on the Mercer map … Anyone who rushes into battle without thinking from the sixth round onwards will immediately catch a fatal (cannon) bullet.
Glorreich only in fours
That’s why it’s all the more important and at the same time more fun to approach Call to Arms with a well-coordinated or simply competent team. No matter whether you ride down the attackers in teams of two, set up your own sniper nests on rooftops or tackle the enemies from all sides in a foursome – Call to Arms offers surprisingly diverse approaches and always remains challenging.
In view of the last event week, however, this only makes sense: With triple bonuses, Call to Arms is paying out up to three gold bars and a scant $1,000 per successfully defended location for a short time (and only until 17 August). You’ve hardly ever earned better in Red Dead Online! So it’s no wonder that the community couldn’t believe that Rockstar was being so generous – even if only for a short time.
Of course, as with GTA Online, players also have to invest in Call to Arms in order to earn something. So every match costs me a lot of ammunition or healing tonics. Because what I can collect in or between each round is rarely enough to get through round 10.
However, I don’t want to let one downer fall by the wayside in Call to Arms: After each successfully completed or failed match, there is a cooldown of 45 minutes to serve before I can throw myself into battle again. A bit annoying for impatient natures (like me) – but maybe it didn’t hurt me the last few days to take a break after every 60 to 90-minute match.
A bit like the big screen
But what ultimately won me over completely about Call to Arms is the absolutely simple premise of Red Dead Online’s new game mode – even if it’s only presented in two tight cutscenes of a few seconds each. For this is actually the oldest concept for a western story as known from film and television.
A town or a small village is threatened by a small army of villains. Therefore, their inhabitants turn to a troop of heroes against their will of dubious morals or shady backgrounds for help. And against that odds, the motley group of gunslingers manages to save the town and thus the day!
This idea itself, by the way, is almost older than many of the most popular westerns: Akira Kurosawa did it with The Seven Samurai, John Sturges copied it with The Magnificent Seven. And even Star Wars, meanwhile, used the exact same concept in its first season, The Mandalorian, with Chapter 4: Sanctuary!
As a lover of many Westerns, the works of Kurosawa and (of course) Star Wars, the simple story premise thus naturally pushes all the buttons for me. And rarely has Red Dead Online been more satisfying for me than getting a wet handshake and a pile of dough from Valentine’s townsfolk after ten exhausting and gruelling rounds.
How much Call to Arms will keep me hooked in the long run, and especially after the first bonus week, remains to be seen, of course. Maybe I’ll quickly lose interest again as soon as the big money fails to materialise. But maybe I’ll be motivated to perfect every tactic, similar to GTA Online’s Cayo Perico Heist. Either way, the next week of triple gold and money is sure to come.
Without forced downtime in Call to Arms, my new wealth in GTA Online would be much greater, but so would the bags under my eyes.
