REDNECK RAMPAGE

A comedic FPS that still leaves me in hog heaven. By Robert Jones

- Robert Jones

Let me set the scene. The year is 1997 and the first FPS golden age is in full swing. Following Doom’s genre-defining release in 1993, a whole host of other boomer shooters have poured forth into the burgeoning genre, and many of them are following the same technical and creative formula that id Software had pioneered. 2D sprites in basic 3D worlds, gated by access keys and statically placed monsters, were the name of the game. The environments, guns and monsters changed aesthetic, but the basics remained the same. And in just three years following Doom’s release, a huge wave of new FPS games had been launched on PC from other developers using this formula, including Heretic, Rise of the Triad, Hexen, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D, The Terminator and many more.

But, just as id Software had changed the game with Doom in 1993, it had just done so again with its release of Quake in 1996, a fully 3D FPS that once more shifted the goalposts of the genre, albeit at the cost of fracturing the studio. Suddenly, the old formula was no longer the cutting edge of FPS design and, as PC gamers would shortly see, there was no going back. By 1998, just one year from now, legendary FPS titles such as Unreal and Half-Life would be lighting up the genre with high-fidelity polygonal worlds and radical new FPS gameplay. Shortly Gordon Freeman would be squaring off against the dynamism of packs of marines in Half-Life's iconic We've Got Hostiles level. But, back here in 1997, the genre is still very much in flux, and the old ways of doing things have not yet shuffled off this mortal coil.

WELCOME TO HICKSTON

Enter Redneck Rampage in April 1997, a now little-remembered FPS developed by Xatrix Entertainment which, despite releasing a year after Quake, was firmly a product of the