A brilliant remake of the first game. If only it wasn't so buggy.

User Rating: 7.5 | Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter PC
This is a remake of the first Serious Sam using the Serious Engine 3, which is the engine that Croteam intends to use for development of the third game. The First Encounter was very impressive and me being part-Croatian, I am sure it is obvious why the first game was fairly special to me. But do understand that I do not love the (first 2) games because of the nationality of the developer, but simply because of their style and over-the-top fun. To back that up, I was very disappointed with Serious Sam II for it's cartoonish portrayal, slow action, and for removing the great environmental atmosphere, and making everything too lively. This is why it was a good thing in my opinion for Croteam to develop the old games with a more advanced engine while we wait for the exciting Serious Sam 3.

Since this is a remake, and since I have already written a review of the original version I will not dwelve too deeply into this game, but just focus on the new features and flaws. The gameplay, level design and sound is all the same. The only thing that is different is the much improved graphics along with larger amount of gore, and that the gore level can be set in more ways; either blood and guts, or kids level where enemies pop into kid's sweets like lollipops etc without anything bloody present. The graphics are pretty good for 2009 and show plenty of promise for the upcoming title in the series and Croteam's announced war game. Ignore IGN's complaint that it's no Crysis, because it isn't meant to be, and since they considered Mass Effect 2 to have amazing graphics in 2010 worthy of a 9.5/10 and this HD game only a 7/10 in 2009, then you gotta wonder if reviews are just being biasd these days.

So in my opinion these are sweet new features for a remake so if you really enjoyed the original than this would be even more fun. Unfortunately, while the game runs very well and does not even take up 1GB (off steam at least), there are a number of technical issues, and I have a pretty strong PC. For example, the first game's engine was famous for avoiding slowdowns no matter how many AI was on screen, and while I was using (another) new feature in the HD version where a part of the interface shows the frames-per-second, I noticed that it was dropping as more foes appeared. Even though it was never major, it gives me worries about whether the third game will be able to keep the old magic. Another problem was that at certain moments the game would crash every time Sam was swimming so I had to keep starting again. These are just to name a few.

Despite the very buggy performance, the remake makes the original experience even better and gets me more excited about the Second Encounter HD, as well as the third instalment in the series. Despite all significant flaws, gamespot's overly harsh rating should make it's reviewers feel ashamed. For those of you complaining about the lack of new content this is a REMAKE, not an EXPANSION. The fact that it costs the same as the first game back in it's time might be discouraging, but I still think it is worth it because the prices of the two versions combined still do not make up the average price of a newly-released game.