The idea of Immortal Redneck sounds like a terrible one. A stereotypical America loving, beer chugging, plaid-wearing redneck crashes his 4X4 in the sands of ancient Egypt and is resurrected as a mummified version of his former self by a mysterious group of Egyptians. While the story is almost non-existent other than the beginning cutscene, Crema Games has delivered an ambitious genre-bending little game that will have you loving this unlikely culture clash mashup.
Immortal Redneck is a twitchy arena first-person shooter, with RPG and Rogue-Lite elements that includes over fifty different weapons, nine playable classes, and a full skill tree. At the start, be prepared to die a lot. You must clear several levels of the pyramids before you meet the final boss, die anytime before defeating the boss and you are forced to start at the beginning of the pyramid. The pyramid is kind of like a maze with many rooms for you to explore before you get to the next level. In each room is a series of unique enemies that must be defeated before you can leave. The rooms are often like tiny puzzles themselves and might require you jump, climb, or dive, to areas not easily seen to clear out hidden enemies. The rooms are procedurally generated each time you enter the pyramid but they are only randomly arranged, the rooms themselves do not change. Upon being killed the enemies drop things like gold, meat for replenishing health, and scrolls that are either helpful or not so helpful. The scrolls can be stacked but reset when you die.
Dying isn’t so bad in Immortal Redneck as you get to retain all of the gold you have accumulated and use it to buy upgrades in the skill tree that can help your redneck’s attacks, health, and ammo capacity. This is also how you unlock and upgrade the other classes that are gods with different weapons and abilities. Once you unlock the other character classes you are prompted to choose which one you want to play as before re-entering the pyramid. Later you can purchase a merchant that sells perks, such as entering a pyramid with a scroll and other helpful items that are unlocked by finding blueprints hidden in chests scattered within the pyramids. My biggest complaint about the game is, once you are done upgrading and shopping any remaining gold must be given to the gods before you can enter the pyramids. Later upgrades and characters are quite expensive to unlock and its kind of frustrating that you can’t keep at least some of that hard-earned dead mummy gold before re-entering the battlefield.
There are three pyramids, each with its own personality, style, and enemies. You must completely clear one pyramid before you can go on to another. While three doesn’t sound like a lot, rest assured each level of the pyramid contains several rooms. You won’t want to get to the apex of the pyramids too quickly because it is only in death that you can upgrade your character. There are also hidden rooms or areas in rooms that offer loot. Don’t be in a rush to leave the pyramids, explore all possibilities.
Graphics and animations are of the cartoonish art style which perfectly compliments the unlikely setting. The game is optimized for PS4 Pro. Immortal Redneck is colorful and each room was designed with great detail. Enemies are of varying strengths and include frogs, mummies, flying heads, and strange pole dancing creepy things amongst about 30 other varieties. They attack you by all means of combat styles including ranged and melee, which in turn forces you to try different weapons to take them out.
I mostly played as the Redneck because he carries a well-balanced weapon selection (a handgun, a shotgun, and dynamite) he is also quite agile which was great for the fast-paced combat and the platformer type rooms that required you to do a lot of climbing and jumping. There were times when I wished I could have switched characters mid pyramid, but once you select your god or redneck there’s no changing until death. Often you will find random weapons but in order to pick them up you will have to first drop one you are carrying and it disappears and you revert back to your respected character loadout upon death.
Immortal Redneck is not perfect, and at times having to start all the way at the beginning of the pyramid and sacrifice all of your gold to be allowed re-entry was frustrating, but it makes up for its flaws with a charming, humorous, and well-designed game that isn’t trying to be anything other than a good time.
Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.
Reviewed using a PS4 Pro
