Today we are going to take a look at Immortal Redneck. This rouge-lite first person shooter puts you into the shoes of your prototypical American Southerner who goes on holiday to Egypt and gets turned into a mummy and is forced to spend eternity battling monsters in pyramids – Redneck style! It is available on Steam for 19 Euros and 95 cents or your regional equivalent.
With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.

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Video Review

Text Review

Gameplay

So, the first thing that drew me the this game, was it’s aesthetic. But once I picked it up and play for a moment, I realized this essentially is one of my favorite games – but actually better. This game is really similar to Ziggurat from Milkstone studios and that is one of the best rogue-lite first person shooter games. So I will be making a lot of comparisons between these too.
So let’s start by describing the game-play mechanics you will be spending the largest bulk of time with – combat mechanics. And yeah, this is your very much casual shooter/dungeon explorer. But at the same time, it adds things like skill trees that improve your character in between games and gradually improving perks throughout the levels. And on top of that you get the procedurally generated levels we have come to expect from rogue-lite game, but here they have a very large amount of verticalality and that isn't something we see that often it these types of games.
So let’s go over the weapons and how the gun-play feels. Weapon choices are handled in two ways in Immortal Redneck. You always start with a set of weapons, but as you venture through the levels, you find different choices in treasure chests. The weapons you find in the chests aren't really better then the ones you already have, they are just different.
The second way to get different weapons is to choose a different god to follow, then your starter kit will differ from the basic “redneck” one. The weapons range from the things you would expect in a shooter game, like different kinds of pistols and machine guns, go through the “Egypt themed spiritual stuff like an Ankh that shoots beams of energy and go up to the silly, like a potato launcher. Because of this huge variety of the weapons, you will always find one that you personally like to use.
What I like very much is the fact that you start with a full set of weapons. A lot of times in rouge-lite games, you will be highly limited in the beginning or at least feel very limited, but here it just isn't the case. Plus the fact that you can choose your starting weapons makes this even better.
Other then the weapons, you also have 1 active skill that is based on what god is your character following at the moment. These range from a straight damage increase, through active ability that deal damage themselves up to weird abilities, like being able to changes all the items into healing packs.
Another thing that has a high impact on how the combat feels is the movement. And the amount of verticality the levels provide gives you a lot of freedom when choosing your path through the individual rooms of the levels. This is something I have been very much missing from Ziggurat and here, it is implemented pretty well. Though I will admit, occasionally you will feel like you should have been able to climb more up, but after a few ventures into the pyramid, you will get how high you are able to jump. So, in terms of movement, Immortal Redneck is probably the BEST rouge-lite shooter at the market.
And the last part of the combat itself are the enemies. And when it comes to the combat, they are probably the weakest point in the game. Of course they are divided into to two basic categories – melee and ranged. But all the enemies are really dumb, they just follow a simple pattern of attack, they aren't unpredictable or anything like that. But that wouldn't be a problem on itself if there was a good enough variability of enemies in game. And while at first I felt this was the case, as I played more and more I kept only seeing the same enemies over and over. Yes, they do get stronger as you progress through the pyramid, but you still see the same enemies.
The only thing that makes me feel less worried about this is the fact that there are two more pyramids to explore. And hopefully, there will be different enemies in them.

Okay, that’s it about the combat, now we should talk about the progression systems available to you in-game. Let’s first talk about the one that happens in between levels. Well, sort of. But a description first: In between levels, you are able get improve your character stats – like the damage of your weapons, your health or even the speed of your character. It’s essentially your basic skill tree. But not only can you improve your character in this tree, you also have the ability to choose different gods to follow and these gods will grant you access to essentially different builds of your character – meaning you will get a different set of starter weapons and a different active ability.
And the way you get to improve your character through the skill tree is using gold you gathered in the pyramid. I’m somewhat not too sure whether I like this skill tree. On one hand, I do really like the different gods you can choose to follow, they essentially work as character classes here, but on the other hand, the small incremental increases to your weapon damage, health etc. are really boring and feel really antiquated these days.
But anyways, the second way of character progression is done while venturing into the pyramid itself and feels almost exactly the same like the one that is done in Ziggurat. The only difference here that instead of slowly leveling up and getting scrolls that way, here you find them randomly around the levels. And honestly, I think here I like Ziggurats system a bit more, because it always allows you to feel more powerful as you progress through the game. Here you can get really unlucky and just not get scrolls. Plus, some scrolls (like my favorite that allows you to find items inside of pots) feel super overpowered compared to the others.

And the last thing I want to talk about are the games procedurally generated levels. But sadly, it’s not full procedural generation here. Instead, you have pre-built levels that are put together differently each time. While this gives you a somewhat different experience every time you venture into the pyramid, it also makes each journey feel very similar to the previous one. But the rooms are varied enough to not make you feel like you are venturing into the same exact dungeon every time.

So, when it comes to the game-play, Immortal Redneck provides a nice core game-play loop with a decent progression system. It fixes many of the issues first person shooter with rogue-lite elements often have, like not having decent weapon variety right from the start or the levels feeling really flat. Sadly, the rogue-lite elements themselves feel somewhat week, but that is probably the easiest thing to fix with either patches or later downloadable content.

Graphics

So the game-play is good, but that isn't all that makes a game. Next up on our list of things to discuss, we have the graphics of Immortal Redneck
And I gotta say, I am more then pleasantly surprised. As you can see from the video footage, the game does look pretty good. It uses this sort of cartoony style that allows to use pretty plain textures without them looking out of place or low quality. The models of everything in game are pretty to look at as well and are easily recognizable from each other.
What I like about the style the most, is the fact that it is very colorful and thus feels very cheerful. This combined with the general ridiculousness happening in game creates a fun atmosphere.

Sound and music

Now to the sounds in game – starting with the music, which unfortunately is probably the weakest part of the sounds of the game. As usual, it’s not really bad, just really generic. If you play your own music while playing games, you won’t mind.
Then we have the sound effects, these are pretty decent but not really outstanding in any way. Again, they serve their purpose, but won’t get you jumping out of your seat cheering.
The thing that is probably the best about Immortal Rednecks sounds – are the sounds the Redneck makes himself. Some of them are quite funny, but a bit too vulgar for no reason at times.

Performance

Performance wise, all I have is good news. The game ran like a hare in the mating season, I never saw any bugs and the game never crashed for me either.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion: Immortal Guardian is one of the best rogue-lite first person shooters you can currently find on the market. But there is one thing that I don’t like about it. It’s price. If the price was 5 dollars lower, I would happily recommend Immortal Guardian, but when you compare this and Ziggurat, that you can get for under 5 dollars, Ziggurat feels like a better deal – specially with the amount of content that has been added into the it since it’s release.
But if you like this genre of games, like a bit of vulgar humor and either don’t mind spending 20 bucks on this or just waiting for a decent sale, I can highly recommend this game, because it is fun and provides hours and hours of it.