Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Redneck Rampage: The Early Years serves up a frantic, firearms-fueled romp through five bonkers backwoods levels, delivering the trademark blend of slapstick humor and old-school shoot-’em-up action that defined the original. Within minutes, you’re tossing moonshine grenades, wielding nail-spiked boards, and blasting mutant critters with sawed-off shotguns. The pacing is relentless, encouraging you to dart from one cover point to another as rednecks, zombie pigs, and other grotesque southern abominations converge on your position.

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As a limited version of the full Redneck Rampage package, The Early Years abruptly halts after the fifth level. Despite this, the experience up to that point remains satisfyingly chaotic. Hidden alcoves brim with moonshine health pickups, and secret switches unlock bonus areas that reward thorough exploration. The tight corridors and multi-tiered platforms demand precise movement, while the clever placement of enemies keeps you on your toes.

Don’t be fooled by the demo’s five-stage cap: the CD includes all fifteen single-player levels and eight custom deathmatch arenas, along with the tools needed to unlock them. If you’re willing to hack a few configuration files, you can transform this sampler into an almost complete Redneck Rampage experience. Even without modifications, the included deathmatch maps offer hours of couch LAN mayhem—just load up with friends and let the hillbilly shoot-outs begin.

Graphics

Powered by the Build engine, Redneck Rampage: The Early Years retains the gritty, sprite-based visuals that gave the original its gritty, industrial-meets-rural flavor. The textures are rough around the edges, but that only adds to the backwoods authenticity—barn walls creak with weathered wood patterns, and fields of corn sway eerily under a blood-red sky. The gore is unapologetically over-the-top, with pixelated slime and flesh fragments splattering across the screen in gloriously tacky fashion.

While the engine may look dated to modern eyes, there’s a nostalgic charm in every low-resolution texture and flat billboard sprite. Enemies remain convincingly menacing despite their blocky contours, and flashy muzzle-flash effects punctuate each shot with satisfying brightness. The color palette leans heavily on browns, greens, and dusty reds, evoking a swampy, post-apocalyptic bayou that never stops feeling hostile.

Multiplayer maps maintain the same visual fidelity, trading single-player creepiness for cramped corridors and wide-open arenas ideal for frantic shootouts. Whether you’re ducking behind hay bales or maneuvering around oil drums, the environments feel purpose-built for high-octane deathmatches. And if you’re itching to see more, modifying the demo to unlock the remaining levels reveals a diverse array of locales—from creaky railroad tracks to subterranean monster pens—all rendered in the same grungy, Build-engine glory.

Story

At its core, Redneck Rampage is a tongue-in-cheek take on rural stereotypes and B-movie monster tropes. You play one of two redneck protagonists—either Leonard or Bubba—armed to the teeth and ready to reclaim their trailer park from a roving horde of mutant cows, zombified chickens, and deranged moonshine-addled yokels. The narrative is deliberately thin, functioning more as an excuse to unlock progressively insane weaponry and set pieces than as a deep, character-driven saga.

The Early Years excerpt captures the series’ irreverent tone perfectly. Between levels, pixelated billboards and cheesy FMV cut­-scenes (in the full game) drip with cornpone humor, while in-game dialogue is delivered through speech balloons or garbled samples. There’s a certain charm in the delivery—gravelly voices spout one-liners about “hick pest control” as you power-slide past barns and shotgun mutant beasts.

While you won’t uncover any hidden depth in this demo, the premise’s sheer absurdity is its strongest asset. You’re not here for Shakespearean drama—you’re here to pour moonshine, wheel-barrel-flip bombs, and enact vigilante justice on butt-ugly beasties. If that sounds like your kind of fun, even a truncated five-level taste is enough to leave you hankering for more of this hillbilly mayhem.

Overall Experience

Redneck Rampage: The Early Years is a rollicking, if brief, introduction to one of the most offbeat shooters of the late ’90s. Its strengths lie in unapologetic humor, inventive weapons, and tight, fast-paced level design. While the five-level limit may frustrate newcomers craving a full campaign, the built-in deathmatch maps and the ability to unlock the rest of the game keep the value proposition surprisingly high.

For players on the fence, this demo serves as both a playground for experimentation and a promise of endless hillbilly havoc. The multiplayer levels alone can fuel countless LAN parties, and if you’re comfortable tweaking a few text files, you can break open all fifteen single-player stages right from the get-go. It’s a testament to the passionate modding community that such a limited release still offers a near-complete Redneck Rampage experience.

In the end, The Early Years does exactly what it sets out to do: lure you in with redneck one-liners, grease-soaked weapons, and mutant menaces, then leave you itching for the full game. If you’re searching for a demo that doubles as a legitimate taste of buried southern silliness and frenetic action, this truncated offering is worth a spin—just be ready to crank up the moonshine and dive headfirst into the mayhem.

Retro Replay Score

null/10