Do you like Redneck Rampage?

[Kwisior]

What did you like the most? What's the best way to play it with a source port? Did you ever beat Redneck Deer Huntin'?

 

I don't have an opinion since I never really played it, or its sequels for that matter.

[CAM-7EA]

I personally didn't care for any of those games. I found the characters boring, and it felt unbalanced a lot of the times too. It has some really nice looking levels that do a good job of depicting some of the more rural areas of the southern states of the US, but that doesn't translate to fun gameplay all the time. It definitely has its moments in some of the games, but there's a lot of stuff that just felt ridiculous like the dog being overpowered, some of the weapons aren't that fun to use either, and like I said, the main character is kind of boring, not that funny, and overall a bit annoying. Also didn't like the soundtrack and feel the game needed a MIDI soundtrack.

 

The deer hunting game was probably the worst of the series. Then again, I find hunting games in general to be boring, except for Duck Hunt. Plus, they never really replicate what hunting truly feels like. I've played fishing games and even they at least feel somewhat (somewhat) like the real deal.

 

In short, they are not the worst games in the world and there are fans of them, but they are not for me personally. There are far, far worse BUILD games than any of the RNR games, that is for damn sure.

 

Rednukem is the best source port to use for these games if you do wish to play them.

[Murdoch]

No. The humour is very grating to me and it's badly designed in many respects.

Edited April 27 by Murdoch

[dasho]

That's what I call my family reunions

[Ozcar]

The graphics is the one best visual i ever seen on build engine games, but gameplay.... ew.... it could be better.

[Gothic]

It looks great, but the gameplay is mediocre. Rides Again is slightly better, at least your new melee weapon can do good damage.

The music is great in both games.

[ASD]

Played through the first episode on killbilly, saving only before the exits. It's an ok game once you learn how the weapons and items work. Peeking from cover shotgunning varmints before they react is a viable tactic. It takes a million of bullets to kill a dog but any projectile weapon works fine. E1L5 has a mean start with enemies and explosive barrels surrounding you. E1L6's exit was cryptic with the shootable buttons hidden from view. It took me almost an hour to figure that out before looking from a video. Couldn't see what the E1L7 boss was supposed to be, because the fight was short. For the authentic experience, play it on DOSBox with machine set to vesa_nolfb and memory size to 64 megabytes. Select the game's resolution to 640 x 480.

Edited April 28 by ASD

[Professor Hastig]

If you get over some of the more outlandish ideas the game isn't that bad.

 

The level design is one of its strengths, with the exception of E1L6 which is one of the most impenetrable mazes I have ever encountered.

The accompanying music is some of the most annoying stuff I ever encountered in a game, so props to Raze for allowing to do proper per-level music definitions like you can find in other shooters of that vintage. This alone made the game a lot more enjoyable for me.

 

Unfortunately the sequel 'Redneck Rampage Rides Again' falls a bit flat by comparison. While it has some cool gameplay ideas the level design is quite a bit weaker than the first one. This isn't really that surprising because according to the credits the first one was made by Doom mapping veterans while the second one was made by relatively unknowns and that experience really shows in the first one.

 

 

22 minutes ago, ASD said:

For the authentic experience, play it on DOSBox with machine set to vesa_nolfb and memory size to 64 megabytes. Select the game's resolution to 640 x 480.

 

Why 640x480? When this game came out I already had a system that could run it at very decent frame rates in 1024x768, so 640x480 wouldn't feel authentic to me. :)

 

[Graf Zahl]

I've always been on record for considering RR my favorite of the Build engine games. The Route 66 add on is my favorite of all RR content.

Yes, the humor can wear thin on occasion but the overall level design (except from the aforementioned E1L6) ranks among the best I have ever seen and makes me forgive most of the problems (e.g. the hard to make out keys)

 

1 hour ago, ASD said:

Couldn't see what the E1L7 boss was supposed to be, because the fight was short.

 

I've called it ShitBoss in Raze, because that's what it looks like for me, a creature made out of stinking excrement.

 

1 hour ago, Professor Hastig said:

The accompanying music is some of the most annoying stuff I ever encountered in a game, so props to Raze for allowing to do proper per-level music definitions like you can find in other shooters of that vintage. This alone made the game a lot more enjoyable for me. 

 

The music isn't actually bad, but not really fitting for a game soundtrack. I had been used to playing the game without music back in the late 90's and when reworking the music system in Raze I saw no point for explicitly disabling Duke's music feature just because RR didn't have it originally.

 

 

[Kwisior]

18 hours ago, CAM-7EA said:

 

Rednukem is the best source port to use for these games if you do wish to play them.

Thanks for the recommendation! My only problem is that I can't seem to get the music working. Was it disabled in the port?

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

I've always been on record for considering RR my favorite of the Build engine games. The Route 66 add on is my favorite of all RR content. 

Man, I'm sure you'll love TekWar!

Seriously though, I'm curious as to why some like it so much. It definitely gets outshined in the weapon and artstyle department by its contemporaries (from what I've seen). Level design surely can't make up for that.

[CAM-7EA]

20 minutes ago, Kwisior said:

Thanks for the recommendation! My only problem is that I can't seem to get the music working. Was it disabled in the port?

The music is in a format that used to run off a disc. Download this file from NightFright. He made a patch that should work. Just unzip the ZIP file into the Rednukem folder and you should be able to hear the music now.

[Graf Zahl]

1 hour ago, Kwisior said:

Man, I'm sure you'll love TekWar!

 

 

TekWar is a steaming pile of broken shit. Easily the worst of th Build engine games.

 

1 hour ago, Kwisior said:

Seriously though, I'm curious as to why some like it so much. It definitely gets outshined in the weapon and artstyle department by its contemporaries (from what I've seen). Level design surely can't make up for that.

 

Maybe because the game went with a totally wacko concept without making any compromises to have more mass appeal? And surely the level design could make up for a lot of things. RR had some of the largest levels when it was new.

[Kwisior]

1 hour ago, CAM-7EA said:

The music is in a format that used to run off a disc. Download this file from NightFright. He made a patch that should work. Just unzip the ZIP file into the Rednukem folder and you should be able to hear the music now.

It works! Thanks.

58 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

TekWar is a steaming pile of broken shit. Easily the worst of th Build engine games.

 

 

Maybe because the game went with a totally wacko concept without making any compromises to have more mass appeal? And surely the level design could make up for a lot of things. RR had some of the largest levels when it was new.

Right, I can see how the 'soul' and charm can be big factors for the experience. It's the reason I prefer GTA Vice City to GTA V for example. I can't comment on the level design however.

[ASD]

4 hours ago, Professor Hastig said:

Why 640x480? When this game came out I already had a system that could run it at very decent frame rates in 1024x768, so 640x480 wouldn't feel authentic to me. :)

You're right. I chose 640 x 480 because running the game on DOSBox would get flickering weapon sprites on 1024 x 768 and freezing/texture bugs on 800 x 600 (for some reason, this always occurs in E1L3). I was using GOG's DOSBox 0.74 build which isn't the best available option. Staging seems to fix the flickering but not the freezing on higher resolutions.

3 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

I've called it ShitBoss in Raze, because that's what it looks like for me, a creature made out of stinking excrement.

That's what I thought. The boss was partially in the sludge which made it harder to figure out. The horribly low-quality CG ending didn't help either. I didn't know its attacks as I was too busy shooting tougher enemies while avoiding death pits.

[SilverMiner]

Cool game, I might even try to make some maps for it

[xScavengerWolfx]

The only thing i know about that game is from Civvie 11. I personally never played it so i can't really give an option on it

[pantheon]

Is there anything like a MIDI soundtrack replacement for RR? I imagine there's a good amount of fitting music available to use. 

[The_SloVinator]

It's a fun game & so are the expansions but it's the weakest out of the Build Engine games for numerous reasons:

 

- Duke, Lo Wang & Caleb looked, behaved & felt badass while playing them. Leonard doesn't seem to fit in the gang, whenever you consider him badass or not.

- While the textures do look phenomenal, items such as keys can easily blend into the background. Various source ports fix that by introducing colored keys. Still I found it difficult to search for one.

- Enemy design is more on a goofy side rather than horror. Dogs, Vixens, sheriffs, you name it. Reminds me why I'm not too fond of Serious Sam 2.

- Gunplay felt odd in some places. Throwing a dynamite stick was extremely risky & wonky. (Apparently, this was before Blood came out?) The Alien Arm had a weird recoil, shotgun had two firing modes; you had to either hold the fire button to unload both shells or tap it to fire only one shell. Titty gun was nice, though.

- The game felt very repetitive with its map design. Nearly everything felt the same. The sewer levels were the worst offenders.

 

You aren't missing much by skipping it. But if you are willing to play it, buy it at the cheapest price & get yourself a source port.

[OpenRift]

The singleplayer sucks as far as I'm concerned, but the multiplayer is surprisingly decent and fun. Kind of a Daikatana-type situation if you ask me.

[LexiMax]

Didn't like it.

 

The game certainly looks the part of a BUILD classic, and I always thought that there was some mechanic or signposting I was missing when I first played and bounced off it, but nope, turns out it just had issues.

[DeathWalkerGT]

Good detail... according to Build Engine standards (I guess...)

Gameplay wise... well... *cough... I guess it wasn't for me... When it comes to Build games I prefer Blood or Shadow Warrior with Duke Nukem 3D here and there but Redneck Rampage... nah... not for my cup of tea.

[Ludi]

I played thru the first episode of RR (including the dreaded sewer level) and it's god-awful. It's incredible that these people turned the ship around and made RTCW.

[LadyMistDragon]

Mal Blackwell is a talented designer....but um, that really wasn't one of the highlights of his career.

[HorseJockey]

It's already been stated, but I don't enjoy them. The level design is well done in some areas, but I just find it irritating to play because of the whole vibe of the game. Not a universe I enjoy spending time in.

[TimeOfDeath666]

RR is awesome, I used to play it on my winxp computer but it's been several years. It's got some interesting level ideas like a nut house, haunted mansion, chicken slaughterhouse, trailer park with tornado, bowling alley, junkyard, etc. Sverre Kvernmo made some of the levels in it too.

[Graf Zahl]

9 hours ago, pantheon said:

Is there anything like a MIDI soundtrack replacement for RR? I imagine there's a good amount of fitting music available to use. 

 

No. The original game has no MIDI support, and neither do RedNukem and GDX. It either was that "8-track-player" or no music at all.

In Raze you can define map music like it's done in Duke but I guess that's not enough to get some interest to do such a thing.

 

[DeathWalkerGT]

12 hours ago, Ludi said:

It's incredible that these people turned the ship around and made RTCW.

You got that alright. A fantastic turn over... To the point of a good plot twist or something.

 

Ahhh RTCW... GREAT GAME...

[FistMarine]

I don't like the Redneck Rampage games. Although they can be fun at times, I found them to be mostly on the mediocre side and they aren't as bad as the worst Build engine games (unless we are talking about Redneck Deer Hunting, that one was a putrid pile of shit) but still nowhere near as good as the Holy Trinity (Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and Shadow Warrior). Oh and in my opinion, Tekwar can't be the worst Build engine game when Extreme Paintbrawl, Legend of the Seven Paladins and Redneck Deer Hunting exist!

 

I played the RR games (main game, route 66 and rides again) in DOSBox for the first time in summer 2017, so I don't have much nostalgia for them. RR gets a lot of criticism as of lately and for the most part it is justified, as there's too many awful things that drag it down, so whatever good is left gets lost in the sea of bad. I will say the only things I liked about the game are the soundtrack, the atmosphere, the textures, some of the levels looked really good and the food/alcohol health system is quite clever, especially if you get them in green zone.

 

Gameplay wise, it's kinda meh and there are too many issues that drag the game down. Such as the game being quite glitchy, dumb mechanics, keys are tiny and identically looking, confusing progression (at least a few levels), many enemies being overpowered (dog, hulk, sheriff and vixen are the worst offenders, as they have a lot of health while dealing heavy damage in return), the humor isn't that funny, weapons aren't as satisfying to use (when compared to other Build games), etc.

I wouldn't mind if RR gets remastered one day and fix all of the issues, although I would rather see other 90s games get remastered first (such as Heretic and Hexen). I also think that Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior deserve better remasters than what they got years ago.

[AmeliaNightly99]

id say I like the idea and how goofy it can get but it definitely gets a little bit graining at times, the gunplay is ehh and the maps can be frustrating beyond belief but like civvie said, if you want better levels play rides again, I'll admire the texture work however, the prebaked lighting on certain textures and the fact they are so huge is pretty, you DONT really need a upscaled texture pack at that point if you wanna look into some high res textures...cause you already have them by default

 

all the games need would be to someone go back into raze and do a proper redo of the games in its entirity, give them better weapon handling, improve the levels, etc but not many people would be interested in such a thing 

[Coopersville]

I liked blasting through it with cheats when I was 12, and that's kind of where I'd like to leave it. I remember the slaughterhouse and underground mine levels being really cool.