Remember Redneck Rampage? That old DOS FPS from back in the 90’s where you control a redneck fighting aliens? Well, what happens when you put a redneck in Egypt and tell him to fight mummies and other egyptian creatures? You get ‘Immortal Redneck’ from Crema Games: A fun yet challenging FPS that, despite some setbacks, is honestly one of the more fun FPS’s I’ve played all year.
Once you’ve entered one of three pyramids (though only one is unlocked from the outset), you venture through multiple floors of enemies and traps in order to reach the apex and fight the big boss of the pyramid, along the way earning scrolls and weapons to help your quest. On the surface, this is a basic premise and, though it really doesn’t do too much to stand out, there are enough interesting ideas here to warrant a look and multiple playthroughs. For one, the premise alone is unique. I mean, how many games do you play as a redneck? Outside of the Redneck Rampage series and Country Justice: Revenge Of The Rednecks, there really aren't many, so being able to play as someone like them instead of the usual suspects is a huge breath of fresh air. Heck, the redneck himself is entertaining to listen to, with his occasional quips and one-liners getting some chuckles out of me, despite some being played more often than not. Anyway, the gameplay itself is addicting, though it does suffer from the usual suspects that plagues many rogue-lite games that I’ll touch on in a bit but, for now, I just want to gush about this game.
For starters, I’m surprised at how relatively easy this game can be at times. Yeah, you can still get cheap hits on yourself and some runs can screw you over if RNG isn’t working in your favor, but, for the most part? It’s honestly an easy game and I think that’s due to how enemy placement and their behaviors work. While there can be many enemies on screen at once, it was never to the levels of, say, Serious Sam or other FPS games and it was very manageable to handle the hordes. I like, too, how every enemy telegraphs their attacks and, since they’re all projectile based, it’s pretty easy to avoid being hit by many of their attacks. Granted, there are some enemies whose attacks are hard to avoid, like these spinning hammer dudes, but those are few and far between. What isn’t easy to avoid, at times, are the traps. Ranging from fire traps to spiked floors, I found that most of the damages I took came from the traps themselves as avoiding them is a crapshoot at times. I feel the worst of the bunch are the spiked floors; the way they’re textured makes it hard, at times, to know if you’re stepping on one before you’re shish kabobed up main street. Actually, I need to mention this: While the game does throw a good bit of enemies at you, this really isn’t a typical run-and-gun type game. Yeah, you can do that but, surprisingly, I found standing still or walking was a viable option, especially with the speed of most of the enemies being slow but not too slow. There’s really only a few you need to keep moving for in order to stay alive but most of the time? You can honestly just walk around or stand in place, the latter helping with accuracy, and you’ll survive most of the encounters, with the occasional jump you’ll have to do over some projectiles.
Now, of course, if you’re going to survive these pyramids, you’ll need not just weapons, but help from the gods themselves and this is where the main gimmick of this game comes into play. Before each run, you choose what god/goddess or class to play as, with each one offering differing abilities and starting weapons. For example, Seth offers the ability to send out a sphere of electricity that can damage and, if their health is down enough, outright kill enemies when it retracts and his passive makes the enemy get damaged themselves when they hit the redneck. There’s also Amunet whose active ability turns the Redneck invincible and directs the enemies attacks towards a dummy, while their passive allows the Redneck to sprint backwards (which is very useful). Each god/goddess also comes with their own starting weapons, though you can find them and many more in the pyramids randomly via chests or enemy drops. Seth offers electric based weapons like a Tesla Coil pistol and Electric Sword while Amunet offers a machine gun and kunai, which are some of the best weapons in the game as they’re able to take out most enemies in a single hit. That’s not to say the other weapons you find during your runs aren’t good as there are many stand out weapons, like a shotgun-like crossbow that does heavy damage and an AK47. I think, out of all the weapons, there were only a small handful that I didn’t find to be useful, like the sniper rifle and a fully automatic crossbow but, otherwise, the weapons here are fun to use, outside of, like I said, a small handful.
Outside of weapons, there are also scrolls you can find and this is where the RNG comes into play and where I think many may not enjoy this title. There are two types of scrolls in the game you can find, Good and Bad scrolls, and each one offers either, respectively, good or bad buffs. You may find one that grants you a ton of gold (more on that later) or grants you infinite ammo for that floor you're on or you may find one that makes all the floors on that floor slippery or you may find one that offers you nothing at all. I found a few, during my runs, that were probably the most overpowered, like one that disables all traps which made certain treasure rooms stupidly easy to do, one that gets rid of all bad scrolls in your inventory, and one that pretty much made me invincible when walking on dangerous floors such as lava and acid. These scrolls, like I said, can mean the difference between a successful run and a bad run and, since you never know what you’re going to get when you pick one up (either from a chest or fallen enemy), I can see this leading to some frustration among players. Along with scrolls, health pickups, ammo, and weapons, you’ll also find coins in chests or dropped from enemies and these are used to either level up your character or buy items from the shop, once unlocked, outside the pyramid. Leveling up is simple and I did see some differences everytime I leveled up a stat and I do like how the store offers the ability to start a run with a scroll or a medallion, the later are found inside each pyramid randomly and offers other good/bad perks, but they do get progressively expensive as the game goes on, so there’s a bit of frustration there. Speaking of frustrations, that brings me to two of the biggest issues with this game: Navigation and the RNG.
Now I don’t mean that moving around is bad. On the contrary, movement feels fine and I had no issues with the controls. No, I mean actually navigating the pyramids is a problem. Sometimes it was hard to find a door to go through once all the enemies were slain as the minimap doesn’t really do a good job of showing you where the doors are (trust me, if you see a set of stairs in a room, nine times out of ten, there’s a door up there), even if you’re on the same floor as said door. Even when you find the door, sometimes you’ll enter a room and it’s a dead-end room and you’ll have to backtrack and try another door. Granted, some dead-end rooms do offer treasure chests or a challenge you can do but, most of the time, they’re dead-ends with a few enemies to fight. That brings me to the RNG and, like I said, this can mean the difference between a good run and a bad run. I’ve had multiple cases where the RNG was heavily in my favor until one unlucky scroll pick up or lack of health drops ended a promising run or, in some cases, the enemies getting cheap shots, especially the bosses. Each pyramid has two bosses, those being a mini-boss and the big boss. The mini-boss of the first pyramid, for example, is relatively easy to fight and it’s easy to figure out what to do (just destroy the sarcophaguses and you can damage him), while the big boss, though easy to take out if you got the right gear, a right pain to fight cause of his attack patterns and just how hard it is to avoid most of his attacks. On the flip side? The mini-boss for the second pyramid is a pain and a half due to the lasers in the arena while the big-boss is a walk in the park. Now, granted, that last one could’ve been from me having RNG on my side throughout the pyramid but it still does tie into the fact that the game’s RNG is spotty.
Graphically, I think this is a good looking game and I do like the artstyle though, like I said earlier, some of the traps, mainly the spikes, can be hard to spot among certain locations. I also found that some enemies tend to blend in with the environment, making it harder to spot them, especially when you’re trying to find that last enemy to kill. Still, I like the artstyle as it does fit the whole Redneck in Egypt vibe they were going for, especially with how many of the weapons look like something a redneck would make or something out of Egypt; the double barrel shotgun, for instance, has this made-a-home-vibe to it while the dual-pistols kinda look like the old Dardick Revolver (look this gun up, it is one of the weirdest firearms I’ve ever seen). What I really love is the hand-drawn pictures for each deity as they look downright incredible. Heck, even the redneck, despite still having his overalls on over top of his mummified self, looks awesome. Soundwise, I say this is another weak aspect of the game as there really isn’t anything too stand-outish. Everything just feels like it’s there; nothing special, nothing generic, just there. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just a slight disappointment compared to the rest of the game. Even the music is lackluster as I barely remember any tracks from it, outside of the gong that’s played once the last enemy is killed. That is, until I reached the third pyramid and, no joke, the music suddenly improved. Not by much, but it was enough to be a bit more memorable and enough to catch me by surprise. Is it enough, though, to change my opinion on the soundtrack as a whole? Not really as it took too long for some good tunes to appear but, eh, what can you do?
Quite honestly, those few negatives I listed really didn’t detract from this game as, on a whole, this is a fun game. It’s rare for a game to hook me this deep but Immortal Redneck managed to dig its claws deep into me and I don’t see it letting go for the foreseeable future. Yes, the RNG can be spotty and I could be turned off by it being another roguelite but, trust me, this is one of the better games in that genre. Plus, until we see a Redneck Rampage remastering or remake, this is probably the closest we’ll get to a Redneck Rampage 2, if unofficially.
