An Egyptian vacation gone wrong.
As any lovable redneck would do with extra time and money, a vacation to Egypt seems like a great idea. Unfortunately for our hillbilly pal, this dream vacation quickly turns into a nightmare after wrecking his dune buggy. Upon waking up mummified and curious who did this to him, the redneck goes on a quest through the pyramids where he’s put up against labyrinths full of ancient monsters in this roguelike arcadey first person shooter.
The controls in Immortal Redneck are extremely smooth, making the game a joy to play. Even after going in without looking at the control scheme, I felt right at home shooting, reloading and changing weapons. The default movement is fast, and when you factor in the dash button, you’ll be blazing through levels with ease. Aiming can be handled with the right analog stick, motion aiming, or a combination of both. The freedom with the aiming is excellent and really brings the best of both worlds to the control scheme.
There are three pyramids to clear here, each containing a mid-boss, a main boss and numerous baddies leading up to these encounters. Upon starting the game, players have one load-out but are able to pick up weapons that can appear in the procedurally generated levels. The pyramids are basically floor based mazes which require you to keep diving deeper to eventually reach a set of stairs that will bring you closer the top of the pyramid. Once you enter a room, you are put up against a handful of enemies. Other room types appear as well, for example, challenging the player to survive various hazards to reach a treasure chest or sometimes even just a danger-free treasure room.
The fast movement also feeds into the gameplay. As I mentioned above, you typically will be stuck a room until you can kill all of the baddies. To avoid damage from projectile shooting enemies, club wielding foes or smaller enemies like jumping frogs, you will need to constantly be on the move. Bosses will still put you in frantic situations, but are a bit more puzzle-like and require players to figure out what to do in order to inflict damage.
Don’t let the name of the game fool you. Death is a huge part of Immortal Redneck, however, you are able to retain any gold that you collected from enemies or treasure chests. This gold can be used to upgrade your character on (quite literally) a skill tree. Players can increase health, defense, unlock additional character classes (which offer different starting load-outs and statistics) and whole lot more. These “rogue lite” elements give skilled and unskilled players a chance to have more of an advantage the more they play the game. With the difficulty of this game, you’ll need all the breaks you can get.
While players are trekking through the pyramids they will sometimes obtain scrolls that can either help or hinder them. These can be things like infinite ammo, an increase in overall health, or even a curse that forces the player to be constantly moving. The scrolls appear in random enemy drops alongside gold, ammo or weapons and present a huge risk/reward type of scenario that players will have to decide in the heat of the moment.
The visuals are bit low key, however this is made up for with the excellent framerate. Immortal Redneck runs at a consistent 60 fps and never shows any hiccups during the gameplay. Enemy design and animation are fun and believable and the environments look great. The sound in Immortal Redneck is also well done. From funny one-liners from the Redneck himself to gun and enemy sound effects, the developers have crafted a nice experience for players.
Despite Immortal Redneck’s somewhat mediocre graphics, the framerate runs super smooth, the controls are excellent and the roguelike elements are fair. The arcadey-ness and super high speed of the gameplay take some getting used to, but they are excellent and really set the game apart from other shooters on Switch. The high level of difficulty is sure to scare some away, but for those looking for a challenge, this quick paced shooter is a game you shouldn’t miss out on.
Final Score: 7.5
Language Note - Immortal Redneck also supports subtitled Japanese on top of French, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Polish and Korean.
Review code provided by the publisher
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