Frustrating and tedious game, due to outragously bad level design !
The graphics is of course very dated by now, and even back in 2004 when the game was originally released, it wasn´t fantastic. The use of the, even by then, somewhat dated Serious Sam engine, and the use of drap and dark texture colours throughout most of the levels, makes this games visual presentation seem very bleak and outright depressing. The game tries to create an omnious and foreboding atmosphere with these dark colours, and while partly succeeding, the game is generally not omnious in a cool way, but just..well..depressing. This is made even worse by some of the worst level design I ever encounted. Especially the early levels are endless...and I mean ENDLESS. You and your hapless squad wanders around for hours, not game hours, but REALTIME hours, in enourmous, but almost empty and totally depressing, outdoors levels that just strecthes forever. Why the game have these enourmous outdoor levels, when it doesn´t use these levels for anything interesting, remains a mystery to me. The levels are almost devoid of anything, almost no vegetation, no interesting native lifeforms, almost no buildings etc. Just the same endless, drap, bleak and depressing landscapes. From time to time your will of course encounter enemies, but these encounters very quickly become boring too. The enemies are mostly very generic, the AI controlling them are moronic (most enemies charge suicidially towards your squad) and again due to large levels, your will encounter groups of the same boring enemies, again, and again, and...you get the picture. The game actually is utilizing a sort of trench-warfare like approach to wearing you and your squad down. The single groups of enemies you encounter are not hard to defeat, but as there is a very large number of such enemy groups, your squad is worn down by attrition, with the enemies slowly chipping away at your squad mates health and ammo. All this wouldn´t have been so bad if 1) You could avoid the enemy groups, by stealthily bypassing them (but you can´t. Despite the huge levels the same levels are designed so that there is usually only ONE way through the level and that involves automatically coming into combat with groups of enemies) and 2) If the landscapes themselves had been interesting and with other "features" in them, but no such thing...You just run slowly through endless, drap landscapes, encountering easily overcomed opposition with monotonous regularity...However...If you persist and plays through the early levels, the latter levels are both shorter, and generally better and more interestingly designed. Still : This game would have been better of with fewer, but more challenging enemies; smaller, but more interesing levels, with more "life" in them and an overall better design. It is a pity, because as mentioned earlier, the story and game universe in itself is quite interesting, but the level design simply is terrible. Overall recommendation : If are masocistically inclined and plays through to the latter parts of the game, you might get positively surprised in the end, but the road to get there is long and boring and (did I mention it ?) LOOOOOOONGGGG...