Serious Sam is a throwback to when shooters were often mindless. If there was a story to the game, it was something written in the instruction manual that didn’t figure in to what was going on in the game. You were playing to kill stuff. If you were like me, you would edit maps in existing games just to put more stuff in there to kill and more ammo to do it with. There were at least a few times when doing so brought my system to a halt, but it was worth it for the carnage. Serious Sam’s gameplay happens to be dumb, but it never takes itself seriously. It’s ridiculous in the amount of violence, and there’s plenty of tongue in cheek humor throughout the game to remind us that Croteam, the Croatian team behind the game, recognizes it as such. The story is something about aliens using our planet as a “trash can”, according to the blurb on the game box, and in the cutscene that opens the game. As Serious Sam, you warp back in time to defeat the enemies. After all, “this is serious”, as you’ll hear the main character often say. Why isn’t so important as it gets you to where you want to be, and that’s in some well rendered, if a bit dated, historical levels where you can kill waves and waves of enemies. Serious Sam himself is a melding of Duke Nukem, who he actually bears at least a passing resemblance to, and any other muscle bound action hero that was around in the early days of shooters. He’s got a tongue in cheek badass attitude and some one-liners that cause more groans than chuckles. His attitude is best displayed during the cutscenes that play in between each level where he casually strolls at a leisurely pace through the various levels, formerly littered with scores of enemies, as he moves on to the next fight. Most of the game consists of wandering through various historical looking areas. The first major section of the game takes place in Egypt, and the latter half in three other areas. The game starts out fairly slow paced, though somewhat heavy on the action. Most levels include one or more expansive areas where you’ll spend much of the time running in circles while dealing with the number of enemies and collecting various health, armor, and ammo boxes. The action in this game borders on the absurd as you get further into the game. You’ll often be fighting literally dozens of enemies at a time. Many levels include large areas where all you do is fight wave after wave of groups of enemies as they spawn in. In between these spawns, various health items and ammo will also spawn in. At least on the lower difficulty settings, you’ll hardly ever need to worry about running out of ammo. Gameplay is usually not much more complicated than finding a switch or two, or picking up some key item that’s required for later use. For the most part, this game will consist solely of fighting scores of aliens and then moving onto the next area. The great majority of the levels are straightforward, with only a few requiring you first to go a certain variant path or to search for some trigger. Another throwback in the game to older types of gameplay is the way you can accumulate points throughout the level. Points are collected for picking up items, killing enemies, beating the level within certain times, discovering secrets, and through other means. You start out with three lives, and can collect more each time you earn one hundred thousand points. As you get further into the game, collecting extra lives will become quite easy. On some of the most action packed levels, it’s not uncommon to score five or six. Points can also be accumulated faster when taking down multiple targets at once, which will reward the player with a particular point bonus depending on how many were killed at once. There are usually only a few save points on this game, with no option to quick save. Though, making it from one to the next shouldn’t be too difficult on the lower difficulty settings. Controlling Serious Sam is quite smooth, though not as precise, like most console shooters, as using a keyboard and mouse combination on the computer. There’s the typical auto-aim that can be turned off. The rest of the controls are standard FPS fare, and most deal only with cycling through weapons. The white button will bring up a menu that contains messages on various enemies or on certain items and locations relating to in game puzzles. The use button is set default to pushing the right thumbstick in. That seems an odd place to put it, but it’s used so rarely in game that it’s not that much of a concern. The Xbox port of the game consists of both episodes that were released a few years back on the PC. The graphics do look dated, but they generally hold up well. The vibrant colors used in most of the textures and enemy models help the overall appearance of the game. Some of which look sometimes surprisingly detailed considering the time the game was made, while others look muddy or blocky. The sound is suitable here. Most of the weapon sounds are sufficient, as are the various noises of the enemies. The suicide bombing enemies are loud enough to stand out a bit much from the other sounds. When more than one appears on screen, this has a magnifying effect that continues until they’re close enough to explode or you stop them in their tracks. Music in the game cues when enemies begin appearing in the levels. This often starts out as a medium to fast paces percussive track. As more action occurs, this music will go into a full bore rock or techno track. This serves to not only keep the pacing of the game, but also fuels the “rah-rah” attitude that almost cheers on the carnage. This game is not without its problems, unfortunately. The load times in the game are excessive. Oddly, the last little sliver of load progress seems to take longer than the rest of the indicator by quite a bit. The first couple of times I tried to load the game, I honestly thought that the game had locked up. Turns out, you just need to wait quite a long time. This game often comes to a screeching halt during the middle of a level. This mainly seems to happen when the next set of spawns is about to start. This isn’t merely a frame rate drop, so much as a screeching halt in gameplay for the span of a couple of seconds. Often times, this halt is accompanied by a looped split second of music, which gives the impression, however brief, that the game has locked up or is about to. Other times, you can actually hear what sounds like the disc clacking in the tray. What’s odd is that at times only one or two creatures spawning in will cause almost a complete break in gameplay for a couple of seconds, but this doesn’t always happens when large groups of enemies spawn in later on. So, this appears to be more related to load times for a set of spawns than to how much is happening or how many creatures there are on screen. Overall, this game is fun in an extremely mindless way. Not all games need to be intellectual, or have some meaningful narrative. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be as many shoot em ups like this nowadays. Perhaps we’ve grown as gamers to need something more. Then again, perhaps some of us are afraid to be fond of playing something that’s quite fun, but only on a base level, the sort of fun that we indulge in gleefully when attacking friendly NPCs in game. Weighed only by its content, this game may appear merely average. There’s not a lot to the game beyond the endless shooting, but it has a fun quality that makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The game isn’t without its problems, though. Serious Sam may not have a lot of replay value in the long run other than popping it into the Xbox for a quick run. It also has a few technical issues like the halting mentioned above.
In a world where most first person shooters try to be as realistic as possible, it is a relief that Serious Sam, a parody of the very genre it represents, does its upmost best to avoid being as authentic as possible. Ser... Read Full Review
What happens when you take a 1st person shooter, mix it up with alien monsters and a humorous touch? Why, Serious Sam of course! Who is ... anything BUT serious. STORY: Earth is under attack by aliens and the only on... Read Full Review
