Redneck Rampage: Suckin' Grits on Route 66

The Good
Suckin' Grits on Route 66 is an expansion pack to Redneck Rampage. Instead of fighting in Hickston, Arkansas, the two rednecks go to Washington.

In order to succeed, Suckin' Grits needs to stay true to the original game. And in that, it succeeds. In Suckin' Grits, you'll go to truck stops, flea markets and even an alligator farm. All the levels are both creative and designed well. The new art is also well done and fits with the theme.

Suckin' Grits does not feature new weaponry, which is good because the old arsenal fits well in these missions. There's one new enemy, alligators. They move slow and bite you up close (I'll explain the downside in the negative section). The pigs have also been altered so some of them attack you on sight.

The Bad
Suckin' Grits doesn't have too many mistakes. The only minor one I found was that the alligators can bite you through walls. But, Suckin' Grits has one huge mistake; its vacation theme. It's shocking to me that this was made by the same people that created Duke it out in D.C. and Duke Caribbean.

Suckin' Grits is supposed to take place in a vacation atmosphere. Not really. You'll see no national monuments, unless you count the Hoover Dam. The closest thing to a vacation is in the first level, a very small amusement park, and a mini golf park. After that you'll go to Flea Markets and Meat Packaging Plants.

The Bottom Line
If you enjoyed Redneck Rampage you'll probably enjoy this too - But if you expect it to change the Redneck atmosphere then you'd better stay away.

The Good
Redneck Rampage in its day was a graphically excellent game on the whole. Hi-res textures, coupled with the then advanced BUILD engine, created an aesthetically pleasing first person shooter that pushed Ken Silverman's 2.5D rendering technology to its limits in terms of what it was capable of.

But sadly, when Interplay commissioned Sunstorm Entertainment to create an expansion pack for the franchise, they had quite clearly lost the plot. The very same company who conjured up the mixed-bag Shadow Warrior expansion Wanton Destruction, Sunstorm has a well-deserved reputation for creating sub-standard products that suffer from lackluster and amateurish design. Whilst three or four levels did indeed stand out in terms of design competence, many, unfortunately, are indicative of Sunstorm Entertainment's inability to hire more than one accomplished level designer. As a result of this, we are subsequently left with a monstrosity that people are expected to pay for right here. At best, the upside to this is at least the texture artists did a reasonable (but still slightly sub-par) job with some of the artwork. But that's where the praise effectively ends.

The Bad
Most of it. Aesthetically, it is truly awful. The level design is reminiscent of an amateur who has been mapping for mere weeks. Architecture is abysmal - scaling is way off, nothing looks particularly realistic and subsequently the resemblance to any real life structures is exceptionally vague at best. Texturing is often appalling - I'm yet to find a truck stop that looks like a bathroom from the outside! Lighting is occasionally OK, but for the most part shading is very light, and rooms and sectors are quite evidently too bright. Navigating the levels is quite bad too - it is all too easy to get lost, and finding keys is particularly time consuming. Ammo and health distribution is bad as well.

The Bottom Line
It is rather insulting to one's intellect to expect a company to hire substandard designers to create their products and expect consumers to pay for them. The clear lack of professionalism in making this product is solid evidence that the almighty dollar prevails, and that quality is never guaranteed. Unless you are bored and have money to burn, you may wish to check this game out, but my advice would be this - avoid this game like you'd avoid catching the Ebola virus.

The Good
This game had a vacation feel to it. Lots of fun, and some very interesting levels. I really enjoyed the single player part of this game. It has excellent textures, like all the redneck games, real world levels with the classic peeling wallpaper and other imperfections that give you a more realistic feel to it, the ambiant sounds really make the game enjoyable and I really loved the levels with lots of trees etc... you could play this game with no enemies and just enjoy exploring alot of the levels.

The Bad
Too short. There isn't enough levels in the game. You can finish this faster than any other redneck game. It is alot of fun, but it could use another episode.

The Bottom Line
Fun addition to your redneck library. Single player is alot of fun, worth buying, like all the redneck games. The rating it got on here doesn't do any of the redneck games justice, I suggest you make up your own mind about it because I think they all deserve a 4+ rating at least.