Redneck Rampage Collection

Redneck Rampage is a Build Engine shooter from 1997, and it certainly feels like it. If you've ever played Duke 3D you should have a good idea of how it controls and plays; you get a decent selection of weapons and items to carry around with you. Health packs scattered librarrly though the levels, lots of canon fodder enemies to mow through, fun sudo-3D enviroments to run around, and goofy quotes a plenty. However, it's not all fun times and enemy blasting. The developers tried to go for "realistic" enviroments for you to play through; meaning for a lot of the time you'll be running around outside in big, open feilds and highways/roads. This highlights a big issue with the build engine. Hit scan. For the majority of the game you'll be bleeding hundreds of health points to 2 pixel tall blurs obscured by the draw distance fog. When you finally get eyes on who's blasting you, you'll have to close the distance to get a decent shot at them, as your weapons spray randomly at 45 degree angles in front of you, while enemies have pinpint accuracy from miles away. This is most noticeable with the shotgun. You gotta get right up in the meat to do any serious damage with it, while enemies treat it like a sniper rifle. Aside from the enemies having a serious advantage over you, the level design also leads to a lot of confusion and missdirection. Since the maps are layed out like real places, you'll be spending a ton of time clearing out houses and stores that are completely unrelated to progress. And to make it worse, neerly every door in the game displays "You ain't got the key!" regardless of weither there even is a key to the door, let alone something actually behind the door. I also have a few other gripes with the game, like the soundtrack. The game has CD music built in, so you can jam out to licensed tracks while you play. The problem is, there are only 8 songs, and they play about 500% louder than any other sound in the game.

There's a reason Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were king. Projectiles. Redneck rampage and some of its ilk is a product of an earlier time, full of big sprawling levels filled with hitscan enemies. On top of that the music is absolutely blasting over the sound effects and there's no separate slider to adjust the volume. So you can head into a room and the only way you know there's someone there is your health drops from 100 to 20.

HAD THEM BOTH ON DOS C.D.'S, BACK IN THE 90'S ! LOVED THEM THEN, AND WISH TO PLAY THEM AGAIN !

Stuck between whatever Capstone did with this engine and the Duke, Shadow Warrior and Blood games Redneck Rampage is somewhat fun but only in a stupid fun way and not in a "Wow this game is amazing" fun. RR 1 is super awful with "level design" that does not earn that title. Route 66 makes a few things better, thanks to Sunstorm Interactive, but based on the foundation of RR 1 there is only so much you can do. Rides Again is the best of the bunch with some really cool levels and vehicles that only suck sometimes. If you want to experience Redneck Rampage this one is the way to go. Still not great but the least awful of the bunch. If you played Duke, Shadow Warrior, Blood and Ion Fury to death you might wanna take a look but don't go in thinking that this is even comparable in terms of quality.

A fun little game that my late BF had introduced me to. The music is hilarious and fun along with the concept of playing as these Hill Billies who are the only ones out there to fight and save the world from an alien invasion! Beyond this one stream (https://youtu.be/1hylDAb9HqM) I haven't actually played the game too much. Some of it due to painful memories and also how the music was claimed by some BS third party thanks to YouTube and allowing these crappy claims. Still great fun to play this though and also on GOG you get to download the entire sound track too!