Summary
Yep. It’s Doom with humour, though some clever touches and particularly atmospheric scenes make it a fun ride.
The Good
Space-Aliens have invaded Earth! For what precise diabolical reason you may ask? To kidnap a prize winning Pig named ‘Bessie’ from a southern rural town of course.
The misfortunate owner of this here swine, Leonard, will do whatever it takes to rescue his hapless pride & joy. On top of this, Leonard’s brother, Bubba, who incidentally hasn’t been quite right lately, keeps getting his bacon snatched by those alien varmints’ as well. Those alien-critters are a clever bunch, and I aint’ just whistling-dixie neither. If things just seemed as if they couldn’t get any worse, the local towns’ folk - Billy-Ray (the skinny guy) and the ‘Coot (fat-dude in overalls) has been cloned into an army of subordinate replicas’ to stop you from accomplishing your quest to right the wrongs of the heinously evil injustice that has taken place. So that boy Leonard sets off on a rampage of sorts, to um, sort out those aliens scoundrels. Yea-Ha!
Developed by Californian-based coding team Xatriix Entertainment (now
Gray Matter) RR is an old-school shooter which was released in the latter part of the nineties, and was built upon Ken Silverman’s incredibly versatile BUILD engine. Ultimately it was nipping at the heals of the hugely successful Duke Nukem 3D, which for the benefit of those who aren’t in the know, was in essence a very clever Doom clone which featured more realistic set-pieces, interaction, scripted events, and probably most notably for the inclusion of a sense of humour - that was chiefly provided by a protagonist which was granted a genuine personality, unlike the faceless/speechless no-nonsense space marine of the aforementioned game. So effectively, the nuts & bolts of RR remain the same. You toast countless monsters’, explore the maps by way of finding the usual keys to open them up, interact with the environment in various ways, collect ammo & other items, etc. So we have it basically established. That is, yeah, it’s essentially Duke 3D in new clothing. But this isn’t to say RR doesn’t have a personality of its own.
The various environment’s presented herein do manage to give a suitable feeling of being in an outback farming setting. You negotiate old beaten dirt tracks lined with dried out hedges, sneak into barns, come across rusted old sheds & silos, encounter chicken pens & pig styes, and can even pay a visit to the general store. The high resolution textures employed go along way for selling the scenes with an impressive level of vivid detail. Similarly for the weapons and monsters, here they have been pre rendered first in high-detail 3D, and then converted to the three-quarter perspective 2.5D tile-art structure. This method produces a result which gives a much better illusion of three-dimensional solidity not previously achieved with this game engine. Your six-shooter pistol actually looks tangible, and sports genuine styled curvatures & moving parts. Translation: graphics appear rather realistic.
There are a lot of neat little touches brought to the game which make you think to yourself, “Hey, that was kinda’ cool”. In one instance a tornado blows through town, and it could throw the enemies around, or even throw you a way to a completely different area. In another scenario you could go into a bowling alley, and actually be able to pick up a ball, and play a few frames! It is these inventive little interactive bits which crop up along the way which just make it fun.
Something which is definitely unique about RR is how your health restoration is handled. This game forgoes the tired old med-kits and armour in favour of more jolly means of heightening vitality. You can chomp on some pork-rinds for a quick health boost, or you can store a six-pack of beer, a bottle of cheap whiskey and also a few cow pies in your inventory for use at your discretion. On the HUD two gauges are presented. One is for alcohol, while the other is for your gut. Each gauge has an arrow pointing to one of three states: green-light, yellow-light and red-light. The trick of it is to strike a good balance between food, and booze. If you down too much paint thinner without eating anything, you get toasted. Vision goes blurry, swirling and generally erratic, you controls are in reverse, and puking commences directly. To get out of this drunken stupor, you need to have to eat something, or alternatively take an extended whizz - which you can do anytime by pressing a key. As well as this there is burping, flatulence, and more squelch-like effects which can bypass explanation. Its not quite as vulgar as it all sounds, but its certainly close! Of course there is more crass humour in the form of the wisecracks delivered by Leonard, with things like “Your arse is grass and I’m the lawn mower” or “I’m better than a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest”. Even the bad guys’ have their one-liners, Billy-Ray incessantly exclaims “I’m gonna get cha’ boy, I’m gonna get cha”. You hear all the speech repeated a lot through the course of the game, and it’s all completely memorable in the worst way possible!
The arsenal you get to play with is generally fairly orthodox, and somewhat compliant to Doom-standards, but there are a few surprises along the way. The sawn-off double barrel shotty is a classic - you can shoot one barrel at a time, or both at once. An AK-47 is your automatic machine gun solution, and you have to be careful, it’s got some kick! (The booming echo sound effect is fantastic) You can shake things up with sticks of dynamite, which you can delay between lighting the fuse and throwing it, but you have to be heedful it doesn’t blowup in your face, or else it’s reloading time. Probably the most interesting weapon is the alien arm?! Where by you mount the arm on your shoulder, and pull on the exposed muscle tendons in order to make the laser gun its holding fire. Inventive, no? Then there’s a heavy machine-gun brassiere . . weird. The standard pistol is refreshingly useful - you can pick off the enemies from medium-long range, while the shotty will be lucky to do any damage from this kind of distance. This applies to the enemy shots’ as well - you could get cut down at point blank range by a shotgun, but from a distance you may only cop a little buckshot. I know it probably doesn’t sound like much of a big deal, but the damage model here is noticeably well balanced. The power of the various weapons at your disposal has been tuned well, and the arsenal is spread out nice & evenly to collect over the fifteen levels. Finding ammo wasn’t ever a daunting task, however at no time did I feel overpowered.
Some of the set-pieces are very atmospheric. One of the levels which I thought was really cool took place in some abandoned asylum. The art decor style was for checkered blue & white hallways branching rows of padded cells. The light sourcing was used exceptionally well here. This level took place at night. At one point you would sneak outside into a court yard surrounded by the starry night sky, and you could even hear ambience like owls and crickets. There were frail old trees, and an old decrepit statue in the centre, all of which cast somewhat realistic-looking shadows. Again, I stress - It is the attention to detail which goes along way to bringing the game world to life.
The Bad
Much like most of the similarly fashioned titles which came before it, RR is generally let down by a simple lack of overall variety. Particularly in the enemy classes, where I clock in about a total of eight different types. Of these you will find about 75-80% of the nasties you face are Billy-Ray and The Coot’ clones. Some of the different enemies which only show up in the latter part of the game, e.g. the Sheriff, and the lycra-clad Vixens’ seem to be spread very thinly indeed. I got the feeling that Xatrix must have already had the
sequel in mind, in which these enemies are used far more liberally. And yes, the environment textures can get quite repetitive over time here as well. Last up, the game doesn’t like the mouse-aiming one little bit - just say you were standing on top of a haystack and aiming up a monster down below. This would cause the display to become all warped & skewed in a rather disorientating manner.
Quick note: I read somewhere that some older versions of the game crash frequently before the final level, so make sure to play the final CD-ROM release: Moonshine Ver. 1.0.1.
The Bottom Line
I have to say. I rather enjoyed this game. For one reason or another,
BUILD engine games tend to be a lot of fun to play, and that’s what I found to be true here. I thought it seemed as though Xatrix managed to squeeze that bit extra out of the technology, and came up with some very respectable results. I think a game like RR is really easy to pick up & play, and I found myself sneaking in a couple of hours on it every day. Yes, the game does have its ups and downs, and the finding keys to open doors scenarios and switch-hitting is hardly fresh, but I got the feeling the designers put a lot of thought into some of the level architecture which brings into play some logically, (but far from easy) observational puzzle-solving elements which will test some brainpower at times, which is totally a good thing. The game only consists of two episodes, which doesn’t sound like much, but the majority of the levels are l-o-n-g and suitably intricate, which contributes to a solid longevity. Now if you will excuse me, I’m off for some grits on
Route 66 . .
