Serious Sam is all about insane fun and it features some of the most insane FPS battles ever seen in a FPS.
You play as Serious Sam who has been sent back in time to ancient Egypt to save the human race who are under attack by an entity known as Notorious Mental. The story isn’t that important in the end and is never really there to begin with, suffice it to say it’s less compelling then the story for the original Doom.
The gameplay is the big feature here as you are pitted against literally thousands of monsters over the course of the game. This is the games main feature and it’s what separates Serious Sam from most shooters, it takes the battles to an almost epic level with you blasting wave after wave after wave of monsters.
The game features 10 weapons in total, one of these (the knife) you’ll never use. Another (the revolver(s) you’ll abandon in the second level and likely never touch again. The remaining eight weapons are both different tool of mass destruction that you’ll find yourself using almost constantly. While you’ll likely end up favouring one weapon over the rest, you will have to draw the rest at various points of almost any given level. Also you’ll find yourself pointing these weapons in the faces of several different enemies. From skeletal horses, to walking missile turret like monsters, to screaming headless kamikaze men that explode when they get close enough. With all of these enemies there is pretty much no AI what to speak of since all the enemies just kind of run or walk towards you. Almost all of them have a ranged attack which they will stop and use if they are at a distance, but that’s about it. The idea here is not necessarily to outsmart your foes, it’s to survive wave after wave of them.
The level design is pretty uniform, enter, go into a big room, you will discover that you need a few objects to open a door at end of said room. These objects will be in nearby rooms, and you’ll have to chew through piles of enemies and ammo to get them. In fact after a while the gameplay in Serious Sam becomes highly predictable. If you pick almost anything up it spawns monster numbering from a couple to a couple dozen. But for some strange reason it doesn’t matter and the game is fun none the less. Likely as the action flows so fast and is too intense for you to care. Serious Sam features thirteen levels, two of which are secrets. Getting into these “secret levels” however is not too hard and one shouldn’t even need a players guide to find the entrances. Even if you play through all thirteen levels it shouldn’t take you more then ten hours or so. I clocked in at around six and a half hours but if you count all the time I spent dieing and reloading it was more like eight and a half hours total.
Serious Sam’s levels all are based in Egypt and as such all the levels have a hot arid temple look to them. Each of the levels consist mostly of large arena like areas where you’ll take on the hordes of monsters that the game has to offer. As said above the levels all focus on you getting from start to finish with you making a detour or two to pick up some keys to open one or more doors in your way.
The visuals in Sam are not too hard on your eyes, with the graphics looking slightly better then those found in the original Half Life. Making the game look good, but not mind blowing. Don’t expect advanced HDR lighting, particle effects, or bump mapping. The game still looks good though, and the thing that impressed me the most was the enormous draw distance the game features. You can see a few trees in the distance as nothing more then a speck on the horizon and you can walk all the way up to them to find some health or armour.
The sound in Sam is also good. Sound effects features heavily in the gameplay as you can hear most of the monsters before you see them, with each monster having their own noises you’ll learn to recognize what’s nearby (and draw appropriate weapon) just by listening. This is also useful to let you know if you’ve cleared out an area if your wondering if you can let your guard down to think about where to go or if there are any switches around. The music for each level is comprised of a quiet track for when you aren’t blasting things and a more aggressive track for when you are. The music never gets in the way, and serves to be what it’s intended to be which is background music.
Strangely the game keeps a score for every level you play, keeping track of things like kills, secrets found, and time spent. This serves to let you know if you haven’t found all the secrets in a level, or if there are still a few monsters that you missed. This could be your incentive to replay the game a few times, but it wasn’t enough for me to go back for more. Serious Sam is a game you play once and enjoy immensely and recommend to friends.
The only real reason to play the single player after you’ve beaten it is that you have to option of playing it over with a friend (or four) cooperatively which is something you don’t see in many PC games. Doing this breathes new life into the game and is amazingly fun if you’ve got the buddies to do so.
So overall Serious Sam is a great escape that’s great to replay with friends that is easily recommendable to just about any FPS fan that isn’t too bothered about slightly dated graphics. Its complete mindless fun, but on an extreme level which separates it from most shooters.