*cicada singing* *royalty-free country music* [H4MM3R]
Well, I'm here to tell y'all
a story about a video game, a game on the Build engine, that there weird thing
Civvie talks about all the time. and the worst game made with it
that wasn't no Extreme PaintBrawl or didn't have the mark
of the beast on it! Join me here,
in shit creek, and I'll let you in on
the whole tale, start to finish. Tits to taint,
Redneck Rampage to Rides Again! *royalty-free country music* [CIVVIE]
Are you kidding?
I can't even do my own intros now? That Patreon money
going to a location shoot? Nah, I get it, that's cool. Redneck Rampage sucks. *How'd I Do? plays* *royalty-free country music* Here's a game about two rednecks
- yeah, obviously - named Leonard and Bubba, residents of the
Arkansas town of Hickston. You take control of Leonard and
Bubba mostly just gets hit with a crowbar. Their prized pig Bessie
gets abducted by aliens. Remember this,
it's gonna be important. Those nasty aliens
are cloning the locals who are nasty drunks and crazed old coots,
and the sheriff, and this game… Bad guns, bad vibes, bad sounds. Good music, though. *Mojo Nixon's Redneck Rampage playing* Unlike Doom, or Duke Nukem,
or most games, Redneck Rampage has like licensed music
that I can't play without getting a claim but here's some of it. *Mojo Nixon's Redneck Rampage playing* It kicks ass! It's actually better
than Redneck Rampage is! And it's done in the style
of psychobilly, a genre I wasn't really familiar
with until… right now… And I gotta say, if this is what
country punk is like, this is awesome! I guess "rockabilly punk"
is more accurate but whatever it is, it kicks the shit out of singing about
how much you miss your ex's pickup truck. This kind of music fits the game's broader
themes and subject matter perfectly. This is like if you actually got
Slayer to do Doom music. There's so many interesting shit about Mojo Nixon
that I can't even fit it in this video. [PAT BUCHANAN]
There's no one violating
the constitutional rights, I think, of this… "crowd", what is it? "Crew" or something other,
Michael, that wrote Me So Horny. *Me So Horny remix* [CIVVIE]
Mojo Nixon even voices a character
in the game, the sheriff, Lester T. Hobbes, because he's an actor too, playing Jimmy Van Eaton, session drummer
for Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire, which is probably
the biggest movie he was ever in. But what's the second
biggest movie he was ever in? [MOJO]
Koopa! You're a lousy leader! [CIVVIE]
Oh god! Oh GOD! [SMB Movie Trailer]
Super Mario Brothers.
This ain't no game. [CIVVIE]
Despite that career setback, he would appear
in Redneck Rampage several years later, and contribute this song,
Redneck Rampage: ♪ Your Honor, I didn't know she was underage ♪ Okay, that got weird fast… I feel like this attitude, this gross-out,
over-the-top edgy shit here, Mojo Nixon can pull it off in a song. Xatrix Entertainment
cannot pull it off in a game. Don't get me wrong,
Xatrix can make games. They did Kingpin,
which I'm told is a good game, I haven't really played much of it. And when they went on to become Grey Matter
Interactive, they made the best Wolfenstein game. Redneck Rampage is bad though. Redneck Rampage is what
happens when someone says, "let's make Duke Nukem 3D but with more shit,
in the literal and metaphorical sense!" Shadow Warrior is
probably still more offensive… but at least it has a shotgun that… Oh, you!…
You!… I'll get to you!… Like I said,
I can't play a lot of this music, I had to mute it during my playthrough, because
despite Mojo Nixon supported free file sharing because he is, and I quote
"not an asshole like Metallica," YouTube's bots
don't feel the same way. Good thing I'm using a source port,
RedNukem in this case, recommended to me
by a team of Build experts who all died
in tragic door-related accidents. And it's good that
I'm using a source port because at least,
when I start it up, THE MUSIC ISN'T
BLASTING MY EARS OUT! *Mojo Nixon's UFOs, Big Rigs & BBQ plays* I feel like these Build engine games, the Holy Trinity and
Redneck Rampage especially, all appear culturally downstream
from exploitation movies. Sure, Duke Nukem exists
in a macho 80's action hero world, but one where he's constantly visiting strip clubs,
blowing away aliens in seedy locales, pooping down dead aliens' throats, this was more comedic in tone,
more tongue-in-cheek than Doom's heavy-metal gore and games like Shadow Warrior and Blood leaned heavy into cheap kung-fu movies
and B-movie horror respectively, I mean, exploitation movies are rooted in
sensationalized violence and other taboo subjects like, I don't know, sex, drug use, gore,
destruction, rebellion against authority, but Redneck Rampage makes it even
more explicit with fucking Troma posters on walls. A lot of Redneck Rampage works on paper. Like, using Build to do
real-life-ish locations that were never touched on
in Duke or Shadow Warrior, Blood hadn't come out yet,
but it would and had some stages that were similar
and much better designed. I wanna say something nice
about the game, which is that visually, although still limited to software rendering
and a color palette, it looks pretty good. The textures and sprites
are actually bigger and more detailed than the ones you would find
in other Build games and the designers went to great lengths
to add some atmosphere to the levels, they drew lighting effects onto textures, the kind of lighting effects
you wouldn't see for a few years in games because of low-resolution
light-maps and such. They did have a lot of good ideas. The first level wasn't one of them. Redneck Rampage has…
lots of problems… you'll notice all of them from the start. I guess it's good design to make the first level
in your game a confusing, ball-breaking mess when the rest of the game
is a confusing, ball-breaking mess. So, you're going around shops,
barns, bowling alleys, what-have-you, and I'm on the medium skill,
which is "Hard Ass", and this ain't fun, it's… You know when level designers like
to hide a hit-scanner around the corner? Well, in Redneck Rampage,
there's usually one around both corners. Fine, okay,
at least it's not TekWar, right? Everything's here,
you got your secret areas, some of which you can access by very,
very slowly pushing things out of the way. The biggest problem
with navigating Redneck Rampage, bigger than the maps
themselves being, well, big, and… well, look at this map,
long, open road that's weirdly textured connecting all these
single areas with buildings that all seem to be designed
around the aesthetics… which are good, but I think they take
priority over the gameplay, which is bad. I like how detailed
this house is, it looks cool, throw some enemies in the corner
and we're done, right? We need to talk about the key situation. Pick up a key in Redneck Rampage,
sounds easy, how do you fuck that up? Let me count the ways! 1. The keys are tiny, hard to see,
sometimes blend right into the background. That's an art design problem, and a level design
problem because of the placement sometimes, still not the biggest issue. 2. When you manage
to see one and pick it up, it says it's a "skeleton key", which is a type of key
that can open more than one lock, in fact it's supposed to open all the locks. This may be confusing to the player,
especially on the first level since: 3. Every key you pick up in
every level is an identical skeleton key and those keys only open one door,
and you don't know which door it is. So, in every single level of Redneck Rampage,
you have to see that tiny key, pick it up, and then run around the level trying it
on every lock door that you've found. And the vast majority
of the locked doors, unlike in say Doom, Duke Nukem 3D,
Shadow Warrior, Quake, really any game that has locked doors, the doors aren't marked. You have to walk up to a door and press
the Use key to know that you "ain't got the key" or, occasionally,
"you need yet another kind of key" which is also a lie because it's the same goddamn
kind of skeleton key that's everywhere else that you need for these switches. So I hope you found this little
basement door in the first level or else you're gonna have no idea
where to go and you'll be stuck. That's an 'every level' problem. At least the shooting is good- *deep voiced "NO"* Most of the weapons are terrible. You have a crowbar
if you run out of ammo, which itself is kind of like a key because you have to whack
your friend Bubba with it to exit a level. You can't just press the use key,
you have to whack him, and he's not invincible,
you can kill him, and if you do, it's Game Over. It's difficult to do
but you can make that mistake. Next up: the pistol. A six-shooting revolver
chambered in .454 Casull rounds, now, a 454 Casull round is more
powerful than a .44 magnum, [DIRTY HARRY]
…which'd blow your head clean off! [CIVVIE]
And it can be used for killing bears. This pistol sure kicks like it, but also it takes three shots
to down the first enemy you meet and five rounds to take down the second. The Old Coots are shooting you
with these too, and then Billy Ray Jeeter shows up,
carrying the game's shotgun, it's… *exhales deeply* ooh… *royalty-free country music* "Yer scattergun!" I've never seen such a crime committed
against a double-barreled shotgun, So, we've got a shotgun
with no vertical spread. Okay, not necessarily bad. Doom's shotgun doesn't. but the horizontal spread
is Doom 3 levels of bullshit and nobody is out there claiming it's adding
tension to the survival horror atmosphere. I'm not even sure
what's going on with this thing. It defies close study. I can one hit the old coots with it,
or I can hit them four times. I can unload one barrel into Billy Ray
or both, all at the same range, it is basically a melee weapon, but I swear something is wrong with
the damage RNG too because just look at it! And another thing! Billy Ray here has this thing where he pauses
after getting shot before going into his death state, which may not seem like a huge problem until you're in the middle of a field
of Billy Ray's and you have to move on but you lose a second because
you're not sure if he's dead because of this, and the fact that the shotgun
is so unreliable! Seriously, look at all of these guys!
This is the first level! At least, there's a button
you can press to YEEHAW. [LEONARD]
Yeehaw! [CIVVIE]
While we're on the topic of…
fucking shitty terrible design decisions that are implemented badly and make me wonder
if the entire interactive medium was a mistake, the health and armor system in Redneck Rampage
is another one of those ideas that works on paper. On toilet paper. In other Build games,
you get a med-kit that has 100%, you heal yourself,
it's simple, it's easy to understand. Redneck Rampage has 3 separate pickups
that increase your health and damage resistance. Take a look at these meters here…
Alcohol and Gut. You won't see them much because
I personally hate playing with a full HUD and the alternative HUD that shows it…
yeah, get this shit outta here! You get yer cow pies, which heal a small
amount of health and increase your Gut meter. The regular health pickups, Large Pork Rinds, give you
instant 30 hit points and add to the Gut meter. The other items you can use
are Beer and Cheap Ass Whiskey. Beer gives you 5 points of health,
comes in a six pack, and the whiskey gives you 10 points of health
with each shot, and increase your alcohol meter, which, when it's in the green can increase
your damage resistance like armor, but if you drink too much,
your controls get fucked up, and if you drink even more,
your view gets fucked up and you have to puke. You can mitigate this slightly and get a couple
of health points back if you press the Piss button, which doesn't actually seem
to leave any piss behind so I have to assume that Leonard
is pissing all over himself and moving on. Now, the Piss button. I didn't even know this was a thing
until my most recent playthrough. I've only gone all the way through
these games in DOSBox. And the key for pissing
isn't listed in the setup menu. I wondered why. Pissing brings you back to life. And also leaves this message at
the top of the screen saying you cheated by using this unlisted key-bind
that still totally exists! That they left in!
That has a game function already! But no, they couldn't possibly have put more
dev time into making more than one kind of key! Sounds a little complicated for a stupid game
about shooting aliens and saving your pig, and you're right, it is! But that's not a reason
to immediately discount it as an idea. The problem is that, at least
in the first Redneck Rampage game, I feel like I was picking up
way more booze than food, so trying to balance these little meters
out becomes a huge issue when I'm sitting around in the middle of a firefight
waiting until I sober up so I can properly shoot again. Now, the last time I played
Redneck Rampage was… kind of a while ago,
probably a decade, I didn't play it when it came out
cause I was like 9, so i have no nostalgia for it but I could
still feel that something was wrong, it can't possibly be this bad. I mean, it's bad,
don't get me wrong, but I realized pretty early
that I was having problems so of course I went back into the DOS version
to check what was happening. Wouldn't you know it, the DOS version
doesn't have an option to turn auto-aim off, the game is built for it, and I've had it off
this whole time because it fucks with me because DOS games, especially ones
on Build, had shitty mouse controls. The vertical aiming in Redneck Rampage
is pretty awful actually, The reason I turn off the auto-aim in
the first place is because it's wonky as fuck, so this option here
in RedNukem, for hit-scans only, s the happy medium because the shotgun
tends to work slightly better with auto-aim on. And now here's auto-aim on,
trying to target practice on some chickens. What the fuck? *royalty-free music playing* When you get into the second map
and you're still, you know, suffering from the constant hit-scans
and juggling health, alcohol, and ammo, my second least favorite enemy
is introduced, the dogs. I hate pretty much all
the enemies in Redneck Rampage, and there are plenty that do more damage
and take more punishment, but the dogs? Well, first of all, hitting them
without auto-aim is bad enough, because the hit-boxes
in this game are just strange. Two to four blasts from the shotgun
will waste one of these dogs. My problem is with
their attacks, they bite, and sometimes their bite
can get you from six feet away, timed completely wrong
to the attack frames. Really, everything you rely on when
playing this kind of game is borked, including the damage feedback. I honest to god was playing this
in the source port and thinking oh those independent third party
programmers don't know what they're doing. No! They were being totally faithful
to the Redneck Rampage experience by having a third of your health disappear without
any kind of on-screen indication that this is happening. Oh, Leonard says, "Ow!" That's good to know.
Horseshit! What's worse than horseshit?
Alien shit. These are alien creatures made of feces, and they make even more annoying noises than
the normal enemies, which all make annoying noises, and no, the Cusspack doesn't help! Shut up about
the fucking Cusspack, I don't care! [OLD COOT]
I'm gonna fuck ya! [BILLY JAY]
Ow, fucker! [OLD COOT]
Oh, Jesus Christ,
you god fucknut! [BILLY JAY]
Haha, I'll kick your fuckin' ass here! [CIVVIE]
Now, Build engine
level design quiz for you, if there's a really deep hole
that you can go down, that will probably cause you
to drown if you keep going, there's something down there to reward you,
the deep hole isn't placed arbitrarily, right? Right? One huge problem with the level design, that you might not even think about
because you take it for granted, there's no pacing, no escalation. Imagine you're playing, say, Duke Nukem 3D,
the second level, just like here you start off in this elevator,
clearly a direct continuation of the previous level, You go outside,
what's this? A new enemy? Flying pig-cops,
shoot 'em down, kill the pig-cop. You understand what these things are,
you get the hang of them, they're guarding something. And while Red Light District
probably blows its load a little early by having you blow up
this whole building at its midpoint, it's still escalating towards something,
which is that fight in the strip club. It's a different atmosphere from what
you've seen before with different lighting, the way it repopulates the room when you open
the curtain and raise these platforms towards the exit. It is the climax of the level. In Death Row, the climax of the level
is something different, you're escaping the prison,
you come upon a submarine. In Toxic Dump,
you're doing an underwater section, in The Abyss, there's a slow buildup
to the boss arena with platforming, seeing this enormous ship. The levels build to something. Redneck Rampage levels
usually don't build up to shit! The third level in the junkyard
actually does do this, so it's an early standout
for a competent level. It builds to this arena
towards the end with a mini-boss, these Hulk Guards who are
kinda like Duke Nukem 3D enemies, in that they fire an energy projectile
at you like the regular aliens do, and then they fire these proximity bombs
at you like the Battlelords. They're closer to Battlelords
because they're tanky as hell, but also you have to blow up their corpse
or else they get right back up and they'll give you an Alien Arm Gun,
one of the more dubiously useful weapons in the game. It does good damage,
and is the best long-range weapon you'll get which is good because this arena
has shotgunners up high on the walls. The alien arm gun kicks when you fire it
but otherwise it's good for lower enemies because it can one
or two-hit most of them. Don't let that distract you from
the atrocious weapon animation, consisting of two whole frames, one of which goes by so fast
I didn't even notice it was there at first. And you get one every time
you kill one of the Hulk Guards. And the Hulk Guards appear
pretty regularly going forward. All the time, in fact. I dare you to try and run out
of ammo for this thing. In the next level, the Drive-In,
you do not go to the drive-in first, because you need
to find a key to the drive-in, you have to go to the trailer park
which is kinda cool, it looks nice, there's a tornado happening
that you can ride on. Cool, I wish the game
itself played, you know, like a competent FPS game, because without that it's not really worth the trouble
of getting this far into it for the cool tornado. There's actually a lot of Build engine trickery used
in Redneck Rampage for room-over-room stuff. It's cool, but I still go
into this trailer for the key and could have easily missed it
because I wasn't looking closely because it's behind this bowling trophy, which, again, is like an environmental hint
because that key opens the bowling alley. The bowling alley is where
you get the key for the drive-in, where do you think that key is? Maybe in the area of the bowling alley
that the player would be naturally drawn to, the part where they made
a functional bowling alley! The bowling ball can be picked up,
used, doesn't hurt enemies, has a wind up so even
when you attempt to use it, you'll be punished by the first hayseed
who gets a shot off at you and the pin physics
if you can call them that, don't actually allow you to get a strike Xatrix, this is not 'NAM,
this is bowling, there are rules! About that key, maybe it's behind the pins,
in that back room? Or maybe just around the place,
you know, you'd immediately go to? Nah it's in the kitchen.
It's in the bowling alley kitchen. It's in the kitchen. Of the bowling alley. This level will start giving you
ammo for your hunting rifle too. You get it!? It's an automatic rifle
but it's a huntin' rifle because rednecks. It kicks worse than the Quake 2
machine gun but it is useful, so the game severely limits
how much ammo you get for it. Every pickup gives you 30! As soon as you get to the drive-in,
you get the crossbow, which will launch dynamite like a rocket. Good. It works. You can toss sticks of dynamite too
which are acceptable, I realize that I've been spoiled
by Blood's dynamite and I don't think it's fair to hold it
to that kind of standard. Oh, and it's missing a frame of animation. And no, they do not fix that for the sequel. [GORDON RAMSAY]
Fucking raw! [AX3]
CV-11, you're using
the Gordon Ramsay clips again. [CIVVIE]
Shut up, nobody's here to see you.
Keep 'em in, Katie. You know you wanna. *TV buzzing* *bullshit reality TV drama*
*Katie sobbing* *TV buzzing* Oh, there we go, some feedback! After this level… Oh… Game drops you
into a shitshow here. Shockingly bad design. Run it again, Katie. Run it! Again! Katie! Run it! *laughs like a maniac* LIKE STINK ON SHIT! Okay, I'mma break this down… The level drops you onto the street. You have no idea what's going on,
it looks like you lost all your weapons because you're carrying
your crowbar again. But then the game auto-switches you to the ripsaw,
a new weapon you've never seen or used before, and then you're getting shot,
so you move out of the way and the game auto selects another weapon
you pick up, the powder keg. You can throw it and shoot it
and it blows up. The explosion of the powder keg
is a little bigger than it looks. So maybe don't go
shooting one immediately. Okay, so maybe you should
pick up the powder keg so Billy Ray doesn't shoot it,
because he does that, and also you can do the same thing to the dynamite
boxes that you pick up for ammo because why not? Why would that be a bad idea?
To make your pickups vulnerable to enemy fire? So that maybe if you're trying to get to one, you know, especially that one
which is pretty much the only way to permanently deal
with another enemy in the game… And the best way to deal with this is to quit the game
and re-evaluate your life choices. Dairy Air Farms. Not even gonna react to it,
I'm just gonna move on. It is also a very bad level, but when compared to the other
Redneck Rampage levels, it's merely bad. The Alien Hulks begin
to appear pretty regularly, and I didn't have any dynamite for one so…
you know… that was… This level's main attraction is shit. You walk over shit,
and it slows you down, even in the air… because God is dead. He died in a fire
inside of an orphanage which also claimed the lives
of Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, Mister Rogers, Tom Hanks,
the person who invented cowgirl, we're done, put that last nail
in the coffin of the human race. I hope they didn't hide the item that negates
the effects of walking in this stuff behind a shack! Because I ran out of them, see, because hip-waders, as everyone knows,
can only be used for so long like that before… Let's move on,
the next level has to be better. [LEONARD]
I bet this place is just crawling
with the damn shit monkeys. *Europe's The Final Countdown remix plays* *sewer count breaks down* [CIVVIE]
This is it.
This is the one. The worst. I think they set out to make the worst,
most obnoxious sewer level in the history of gaming. They got off on it,
they thought it was funny. Maybe I'm being too hard- NO! NO! The only enemy type you encounter is
those eardrum-violating alien shit creatures, and for SOME REASON, it's more difficult
with or without auto-aim, DOS or Source Port, to hit things
when they're hip-deep in water, with any weapon really, but most surprisingly with a shotgun
that doesn't have any fucking vertical spread! And every time one of these things hits you
with their poop projectiles, it resets your vertical aim! The screen doesn't flash red to show you
damage or anything but that happens. This is the worst level
in Redneck Rampage, which puts it pretty close to
the top of worst FPS levels ever made. Being the worst level
in Redneck Rampage is like being the Hollywood producer
you're most afraid to leave your kids alone with! None of them are a good idea,
but one is obviously the worst. This here, this section, which is just ladders and pits
smashed together like a child playing with a Lego set where you have to get to a ladder at the end to take you
to this part of the level that you've already been to. this isn't layout design,
this isn't arena design, this might not even be design! Where is that goddamn
dripping sound coming from? Oh, and the ending here, You need to first
find this switch, this one, on this one wall above an alcove
that you will never, EVER notice, which opens four doors
with other four switches. This sign, A0, B0, C1, D1. Right? It's like binary,
1 = on, 0 = off. Binary, as one would use
in this absurdly large sewer for this tiny town in Arkansas
where people would have septic tanks. You gotta flip that map upside-down
for it to be easier for you because… No, you know what, just don't play
this game, it's fucking terrible. *royalty-free music* The next level, the final level
of episode 1, is Smeltin' Plant, which isn't worse than the sewers,
no, it's bad, don't get me wrong, and I was able to sequence break
even with the pitiful jump here but that didn't matter because I didn't see the key
I was supposed to get because well, look… See, here's a place where you can see the art design
and texture work and stuff were really on-point. Let's move on. It feels like they just throw monsters in
without even considering where they go this Alien Hulk
in this doorway before the… This isn't really a smelting room
because it's full of crap. You know what would be cool and fun,
if I had to platform over the poop, and cause it slows you down in the air,
it makes it way harder than it needs to be? At the end of this,
you get to the boss, Ass-Face. [ASS-FACE]
You hurt me! [CIVVIE]
No, that's what he's called. The fight is over before you know it and… [LEONARD]
Chew on that, you pile of crap! [CIVVIE]
That's it. That's the cutscene. I don't even think
this game was finished. And also, if it wasn't finished, I don't even see the point of having
that cutscene because it adds nothing! And it's just confusing if anything. We're only halfway through this. Next up, Downtown Hickston! Is it good? NO. But all the key doors are pretty close together
so you won't spend a lot of time backtracking. But don't worry, things get worse. *royalty-free country music* These alluring Kirk-bait aliens are
the worst enemy in Redneck Rampage. They are… imagine if someone made the
tommygun cultists from Blood into mini-bosses. But this hypothetical developer
also sucks at making video games. [VIXEN]
Is that all there is? [CIVVIE]
They phase in and out,
sort of teleport around, they take an ungodly amount
of time and resources to kill, they throw some kind of projectile
at you that saps at your health but doesn't give you
any kind of feedback, but don't worry,
they have another attack that does. Coincidentally,
the best way I found to kill them was emptying my huntin' rifle
into them and stun-locking, which works most of the time… You do get a better hit-scan weapon,
them titties! The Alien Teat Gun, which is like the game's
most powerful weapon, doesn't kick like the rifle,
but finding ammo for it, in this game, well, I didn't even get the Alien Teat Gun
until I opened a secret with it three levels after this. After Hickston, you get sent to an asylum
where you get your weapons taken away. The asylum isn't as bad as the sewers, but it has a definite "amateur
Duke 3D user level" vibe to it. The layout is kinda trash,
rooms are copied and pasted, there might be the most backtracking to doors
you think you might be able to open but you know, you need another key, that is not the key you picked up
that's identical to the key you need. There's a front door that leads out
to an enormous courtyard that doesn't seem
to have any real gameplay function, except I'm able to lead this Alien Hulk
out there from the lobby. there are two of them in that lobby,
which is… pretty bare. It all seems genuinely unfinished. Some of it LOOKS cool. Bubba's just chilling in the basement
waiting for you to whack him. Next up is J. Cluck's,
a chicken slaughterhouse, not much to say about this one either,
it feels like filler. The Ruins, I'm not sure what they're ruins of,
some kind of factory maybe it feels like another level where the intended
progression feels like finding secrets. While trying to find my way out, I surfaced from the water into
a completely different part of the level… Vanilla bug or source port bug?
I don't know. But I didn't live too much longer because
I accidentally shot a crate of dynamite. That one's on me. The intended progression for this level
is shooting this bit of rock wall with a sign on it that says
"unstable area". You know, instead of having a crack
on the wall like every other Build game, and also Redneck Rampage. No! I'm not mad at this
one FUCKING bit! Once you get outside,
you can see Bubba up there but how do you get
to that crazy cracker?… You have to do some platforming. Do you see this?
Do you see this bullshit? You're making me platform
while I'm hitting the goddamn sky! And with the pitiful jump this game has,
that's an accomplishment! Kill the Hulk, detonate his leftover
proximity bomb, head into the- Fuck! Okay, I'll toss some dynamite on the body,
jump back through the teleporter… No, this game is fine,
I can see why people enjoy it. Another filler level,
Grimley's Mortuary. I realize I haven't talked
about the Sheriff clones yet, the ones voiced
by Mojo Nixon himself. They talk a lot,
they're a little funny. [SHERIFF HOBBES]
I'm the law around here, boy! Lester T. Hobbes is my name,
and ass-kicking is my game! Slow down, boy,
I'm tryna reload mah gun! [CIVVIE]
They aren't unreasonably tanky,
they don't annoy me very much so the game doesn't use them
as much as any other enemy. The key to get inside is right here. No, it's right here. It's here,
I'm telling you. The key is right here. You see it? How about in 320x200?
The game's original resolution? HOW ABOUT NOW?! Bullshit! And then there's a graveyard with ghost enemies
that aren't ghosts as soon as you kill them, which I guess makes sense
in a kind of spiritual or holistic way. Get to them… Get to them Uranium Mines
where I get the titty guns and I can be instantly killed
by mine-carts traveling at 2 mph. It's one of those levels where
you can see the exit at the start, or rather hear it at the start, and you have to go down
a few elevators that are locked with keys, in order to hit a switch
that opens a door a mile up, a switch in the middle
of a uranium mine which has an EXIT sign over it, you get it, it's… signposting…
except it's not how you… Some good ideas, some cool designs in these completely
sloped areas where everything is all tilted, which must have been a bitch
to make work in the Build engine. But I'm still playing Redneck Rampage!… Beaudry Mansion
is a big, annoying level where I have to find a bunch of keys
and I don't know where any of them go. Here's a tip: any aspiring
level designers out there, if you want your player
to fight an enemy in an arena, make sure they get into that arena
before the enemy spawns or is alerted. Otherwise… What's that? A new enemy type?
Flying saucers! A field full of explosive barrels with
hard-to-define radius of splash damage! This is just a fucking re-skin
of the pig-cop patrols? Get abducted! Don't waste your time
and ammo outside, because I did,
and that was a HUGE mistake. [ALIEN QUEEN VIXEN]
I see you dispatched all
of my minions and clones. And you withstood
the awesome force of Ass-Face. Impressive.
Very impressive. [CIVVIE]
Now, on this ship,
there's a couple vixens, and the final boss,
which is a vixen palette swap, you're looking at her! This is one of the things
that SCREAMS "unfinished". She's got the same awful attacks,
just lots more health. Maybe it just felt like lots more
because the game gives you some health, a couple teat gun pickups and…
nothing else in this arena. NOTHING. NO MORE AMMO. Did you waste your resources
fighting the monsters outside? Tough luck, shithead! I don't respect this game enough
to start the level over so I'm gonna save scum and use my super
powerful .454 Casull pistol to win the day! I hate this game. Who the fuck
doesn't stock a boss arena with ammo? That's like not labeling your keys. *Super Mario Bros. 3
Sky Land theme plays* [ALIEN QUEEN VIXEN]
Ah!… I'll be back!… [LEONARD]
Hold on there, madam!
Let me get that bad ball outta your mouth. [BUBBA]
Ow! Thank you, Leonard. Ho!… [LEONARD]
Bubba? [BUBBA]
She was bad mean to me! *cries* [LEONARD]
Bubba, is that you? [BUBBA]
Yeah, it's me, Leonard.
I done been transmogrified! [LEONARD]
Holy shit! [CIVVIE]
That's the end of that. Good thing there aren't any more… *royalty-free country music* So Redneck Rampage apparently sold
well enough for an expansion to be made by our old friends
at Sunstorm Interactive, who took the awful foundation of Redneck Rampage
and made some decent levels to play through. It's still not… "good"… cause the weapons and the enemies
and the balance are still kinda bad but the level design is vastly improved. You can tell Sunstorm
took a look at this and said, "Yeah, no one can see the fucking keys
so let's highlight them!" "The level layouts are terrible
so let's make ours mostly not terrible." With the exception of the Bigfoot convention,
I really didn't care for it. There's another slaughterhouse map. It seems like you're given more ammo
for the rifle and teat gun than before, which is great, you know, because
those weapons are useful, and hit things. There's a Fun Park
as opposed to a park that isn't fun, although you are playing
Redneck Rampage so you could be forgiven
for assuming that the park isn't fun. Surprisingly, it's also not a park, it's mostly indoors except
for the mini-golf course but it's fine. There's one really vixen heavy level, is the House of Ill Repute
which - yeah I guess that makes sense. A lot of the maps are themed
after roadside attractions, tourist traps, stuff like that,
you go to the Mystery Dino Caves. There is one new enemy
introduced in the first level, the gators. After that, you get to
Campy Crystal Lake! It's just like the movie! Sleepaway Camp! Blood still did it better and this level feels
a little more like classic Redneck Rampage, by which I mean
it sucks and I hate it. Similar shitty key hunting,
but it's still easier to navigate and they give you the ammo
for your good weapons. Any interest I ever had in Redneck Rampage
is long gone by Episode 2 of the original game, and this Bigfoot convention level,
is also not really very fun. You can only do so much
with a bad foundation. I can appreciate the ambition
of the next level, the Hoover Dam, but it's still a bit messy and confusing. Switches that raise water levels,
a door that you can see is open but when you go back, it's not, because
of Build engine bullshit trickery and portal stuff… it's fine I guess. The final map, The Museum of Oddities, has you do the vixen boss again. It's… better this time around, I guess… It's still Redneck Rampage. Trying to put together a timeline is weird, this was released in December of 1997,
Duke It Out in D.C. was released in March of 97, Cryptic Passage for Blood was released in June of 97,
and Duke Caribbean was released in January of 98, damn Sunstorm was busy. As far as I can tell,
during the same year, they were also working on the unreleased
Shadow Warrior expansion Wanton Destruction, I can't believe Redneck Rampage
had more success than Shadow Warrior. You wanna know the worst part? Of the Build engine games…
Redneck Rampage probably got the best sequel. *royalty-free country music* I don't wanna have to come back
and do another goddamn video later for a game that's still, at its core,
fucking Redneck Rampage!… No! I am not playing
Redneck Deer Huntin'! Sorry, kids,
I bet it's exhilarating! Rides Again starts off
where the last game ended, with Leonard and Bubba on a UFO
crashing through MIR, you remember MIR,
the Russian space station? No, you don't, god I'm old. [LEONARD]
Yeehaw! [CIVVIE]
It doesn't count as vehicular manslaughter
cause there's no laws in space. [LEONARD]
Damn, it's a good thing
we got that transmogrifier workin'! [BUBBA]
Yeah! Them heels was killing me! *fart* [LEONARD]
Jesus! How the hell is a man
supposed to take a dump in zero gravity?! *fart* [CIVVIE]
I'm glad the game
didn't forget its roots. [LEONARD]
Let's land her, Bubba. [BUBBA]
Okay. [LEONARD]
Bubba? [CIVVIE]
Bubba accidentally does
a thing and then this happens… it's all an excuse to get us
to this crash in the desert, this is more of a road trip game. You know like Route 66. They even have
another level in a whorehouse! I feel like I don't need to go
into as much detail with Rides Again because for the most part,
it is just more Redneck Rampage, with some key differences, you know. except for
the key bullshit, that's still the same. But they try to put them in places
you can actually see them. The effort is still there, they went through the trouble of making
this sector here specifically brightly-lit and eye-catching. Right off the bat,
you're gonna Area 69. Get it? Is this a New Blood game? You're immediately
introduced to new enemies, the Jackalopes,
and I mean immediately. They're kinda like
the dogs with less health. After that, the Old Coot
is back, with a makeover. Game is still visually pretty, good use of textures,
lighting effects and all that. Area 69 is thankfully less obtuse
than the first level of Redneck Rampage. It's not too hard
to find your way around. There's a new enemy,
this biker guy here. [LEONARD]
Turn around, boy,
let me see if I recognize you from prison. Who rapid-fire-shotguns you
and says annoying things, so you know, he fits right in. And they didn't make him tanky as hell
which is much appreciated. This guy is frequently seen with
this cheerleader, and sometimes even… *Me So Horny remix* Exactly the class
I expect from this series. You can quick-kill these two with one stick
of dynamite if you're fast enough. This whole things feels more like a game
and less like a shitty Duke 3D mod. They've worked on
the food/alcohol balance, given you more useful ammo,
enemy placement seems less random, but the real big thing that must have been
all over the promotional material for this game… As soon as you're in the second level, you get a motorcycle with
twin machine guns attached to it. Don't get excited, I'm pretty sure
they're just a re-skin of the teat guns. which are also still in this game and
it actually gives you ammo for them too. Now, about that auto-aim thing,
just leave it on, forever, because you can't
aim vertically on these vehicles, so unless you turn auto-aim on,
you're not gonna be hitting anything. As far as how the vehicles handle,
they're terrible! But it was 1998, and vehicles
in FPS games were limited to like… Shadow Warrior and
Terminator Future Shock and SkyNet. And both of those games
had vehicles that controlled better. And you didn't have to wait for them
to come to a complete stop to get off of them. Yeah… You have this new rake
weapon I barely used, as well as different kind of
dynamite ammo with a chicken on it and it's supposed to act like a homing
missile and sometimes it does. It's still easier to move around on foot
in this map designed for the use of vehicles… And you might wanna do that because you're gonna have to run
up and down the whole thing to find keys. It also has these turd aliens again,
except re-skinned and it doesn't seem
to let me blow them up so I have to rely on
my guns hitting them… *sighs* The next level, El Peso, is probably
the best of all the Redneck Rampage levels. It's so good they recycle it
a few maps later in El Peso again! The whole map isn't the same,
it's half this Native American ruins kind of deal, where they do the ghost thing
from the last game, except they do it more convincingly
by recoloring the sprites green and removing their death
animations entirely. While Rides Again doesn't fix all the problems
inherent to Redneck Rampage, they're trying, and
God bless 'em for doing that. This level here, the Jackalope Farm, could have easily been as shitty and confusing
as a standard Redneck Rampage level with the branching paths
and different buildings, but they scale it down a little, and- What the fuck?! Oh okay, a big Jackalope,
I getcha, lemme… I should complain but they are bikers, and I promise I wasn't gonna be
that asshole who says, "They're dressed like bikers
but never get on a bike." With the exception of this barn here, most keys and objectives are clearly
marked or you can see the goal. There's Bubba,
I know I have to get this gate open. Next up is: Wako, Wacko! [LEONARD]
Now, if there's anything I hate worse
than Bible thumpers, it's Satan worshipers. [CIVVIE]
I guess… Wow, this is almost satire.
You're spoiling me, Rides Again! [ATF]
This is the ATF! Come out
with your hands up, your Bible down! [FBI ON RADIO]
This is Reno. For Christ's sake, get the lever,
blow those maniacs to kingdom come! [CIVVIE]
There… So shines a good Build engine
explosion in a weary world. You did it, Redneck Rampage!
I'm so proud of you! The rest of the level isn't
that interesting but it's fine. And that's a huge step up
from pube-pulling torment. After that is when
you back to El Peso Again, and it's fine. I have a hard time trying to figure out
where I'm supposed to go, you're supposed to jump down this pit
that I would normally think would kill you. You get back to El Peso from before
and it's a ghost town now. I made it that way and I gotta
re-kill these ghosts of clones. Do clones have souls? This is getting a little heady, I don't like the philosophical implications
of cloned hillbillies having souls… The next level Refinery
is pretty standard for the most part. It is good to know that certain
explosions are still deceptively small. You blow the place up and escape
and it's okay, I don't hate it. That's the end of the first
section of the game, you're out of the desert,
now you're at Sunny Shores, and they've got another vehicle for you. I don't know if anyone's ever made
an air-boat in a game fun, but Xatrix shouldn't feel bad
because Valve couldn't do it either. It's still sad to see all this cool visual design
in the Build engine done in service of THIS… Sunny Shores is more in the vein
of a Redneck Rampage 1 map, because it's way too open,
the keys are kinda hard to find, whole sections of it
are underwater for no reason. Oh, I'm sorry I'm confusing it
with a later level, Lummockston, because they're both big swamps
you ride the air-boat through. They're the same fucking level! However, sandwiched
in between them is Gamblin' Boat, which is a riverboat level that's,
for the most part, kind of awkwardly designed and it's not as good
as the one in Cryptic Passage until the end when it's sinking
and you have to escape it, which is pretty cool. Good job, Xatrix, you pulled out
your Build engine vehicle level! Well, not vehicle like that. You know what I mean. Disgraceland
is a parody of Graceland and it's kinda like that manor level
in the last game except better and in terms of the atmosphere,
level design, presentation, the environmental detail
of the whole thing, even though it is literally piss
and shit and such, it's admirable. And it ends with a gag I don't hate. See, Bubba went
grave-robbing, as you do… Whacking him with the crowbar
feels like a nice punchline and the end-level
screen times it just right. [LEONARD]
Hey, Bubba, watch me pull
a tractor outta my ass, haha! [CIVVIE]
Moto Madness gets you back
onto the motorcycle for a while, see how the roads aren't just
pasted awkwardly onto the floor? I mean, look at that!
Look at that! And with the exception of trying
to drive a motorcycle through mud, we'll say it's mud for right now, it's pretty okay. Then it gets to what I consider the high water mark
for the entire Redneck Rampage series. *royalty-free country music* *Derby announcer spouting nonsense* Sure this is janky, and weird, and for some reason,
you have to use the moonshine, which I'm not sure I talked about before, well, the moonshine is a power-up
that doesn't get you drunk, it speeds you up. It is literally the steroids
from Duke 3D. And for some reason it also
makes the motorcycle faster. Maybe you pour it into the gas tank. A bunch of ideas just came together here
and worked in harmony, perfectly, just once! And then it's the whorehouse
level with vixens and air-boat stuff. Where at one point I peek through
a hole into a shower to see this girl here and then I violently murder her- What? Is there something
weird about that? I thought this was gonna be the last level, because you find these transmogrifying
machines with fake Bubbas in them, you fight a super-powered
Alien Hulk which, let's face it, when the final boss of Redneck Rampage
was a super-powered vixen, I wasn't gonna expect
more from Rides Again. But it's NOT the last level, the last level
is this quaint little town square of Hickston USA, and the final boss is NOT
a bigger, meaner Alien Hulk. It's a bigger, meaner Jackalope. [LEONARD]
Mother****ing
Jacka-****-alope! Hey, where's the big fancy ending
y'all talked about?! [CIVVIE]
They could not have possibly
talked about a big fancy ending. [LEONARD]
Hehe, just kidding. THE END! [CIVVIE]
Okay… Everything is just done
better in this game… So if you absolutely have to play
Redneck Rampage, play Rides Again… I'm not sure you can even
buy them separately anymore. I'm surprised they haven't done
a reboot of this series. No really, I know it's filthy,
politically incorrect, and all that, but they still rebooted Shadow Warrior. And interplay tried to milk this series to death
with so many re-releases and two spin-off games! Redneck Deer Huntin' and
Off-Road Redneck Racing in 2001. Which Xatrix didn't even make. Hey, whatever happened
to that pig they were looking f- *How'd I Do plays*
Man, I fucking love Civvie. Thanks to him I went back to play Duke Nukem, Blood, and the more modern interpretations of the 'classic fps' like Amid Evil, and Overkill. Dude knows his genre and just kills it.
Minor note, his "sewer count" gag hits me in the Spoony Experiment zone everytime.
I thought this game was just a fever dream from my childhood. I remember playing it on our computer way back when and no one ever knew what I was talking about when I brought it up!
Oddly enough as much as Civvie badmouths it it still looks rather fun. Also of the 50-or-so old school shooters I've been marathoning, Redneck Rampage and Powerslave are the only two I have yet to play.
It looks like it sits in that realm of "Kinda bad you'll have some fun with it" like where you'd find HacX and Ken's Labyrinth.
The music in this game is top-notch. I still have it on my playlist today.
As for the gameplay, it’s using a version of the Duke Nukem 3D “Build” engine but takes place a lot more outdoors which the engine doesn’t handle so well, so that’s not so hot. There’s not a lot of enemy types but the weapons are fun and the multiplayer is a riot.
I hope we get some kind of gameplay mod for it at some point. With just a few changes to the weapons/enemies etc it could be a lot more fun.
Also a note on the keys: I did a playthrough via the BuildGDX port and there was an option for colored keys, which negates the whole annoying skeleton key thing.