Serious Sam is that sort of game that a sensible consumer won't take seriously at first glance. A boxshot of the muscularly brutish protagonist in a roundneck T-shirt and jeans lugging around a gun as big as he is makes for an eyebrow-raising first impression. Reading the teasers and brief product description only reinforces that.
However, if there is one other thing that the wonky box-art can achieve, it would be to pique the interest of the purveyor, who will be rewarded with a blast of a time if he/she considered giving this game a try.
Serious Sam concerns the struggle of the titular, namesake character in traveling through time to stop the wicked (and very crazy) plans of an alien warlord hell-bent on destroying the history of humanity. He, Sam Stone, would go about accomplishing this in the only manner he knows: up-front all-out assault.
Assisting him in his mission - other than his superhuman talent at having lots of brawn and great endurance at running - is NETRISCA, an AI implanted in his head, who helps him by analyzing enemies that he encounters and the places that he travels through. It then provides him with (sometimes) useful information such as weaknesses of enemies, battle tactics and suggestions on how to solve the few puzzles in the game and to navigate the (much more many) hazards that Sam would face.
Of course, looking up such information is completely optional; Sam - and the player - would not be out of character if he completely ignores whatever NETRISCA prints out. After all, a player who had enough experience battling the monsters in this game first-hand would eventually figure out which weapons and what tactics to use against them. Still, the encyclopedia that NETRISCA eventually compiles is a useful tool to inquisitive players who would prefer to know how best to win a fight that they had yet to participate in early on. Moreover, the encyclopedia often includes witty notes and observations that are worth reading.
An over-the-top shooter like this won't be one if it doesn't have a plethora of ridiculous weapons for the player to use. Serious Sam certainly fulfills this pseudo-requirement, and more. Sam's armory (which is himself, of course) contains pistols, shotguns, energy weapons, rocket launchers and other heavy weapons like the Minigun and grenade launcher. The actual star of this game, for reasons either intended or accidental, is the Cannon.
The Cannon makes use of the game's hilarious physics in having the bizarrely huge cannon-balls it fires bounce and roll all over the place. (They are even bigger than the mouth of the cannon - and Sam himself.) Having it is very handy when the player is about to be mobbed in a small-to-medium area. A charging mechanic for the weapon also makes it versatile in hitting faraway (& preferably large) targets.
NETRISCA handily provides useful information on these guns and tips on how to utilize them. It may seem like a token inclusion in the game, but considering that some of the weapons can be so out-of-this-world, it is a much welcomed feature, at least to this reviewer.
However, this reviewer will have to note that some of the weapons do not seem to have much worth in many situations. The pistol is just too weak for many opponents and there are a couple other hit-scan weapons that are far superior. The Grenade Launcher shares the same ammo as the Rocket Launcher and would be useful in laying down mines for incoming hordes - which can be just as easily handled with the Rocket Launcher (that also gives the player the option to perform a cheesy Rocket Jump to get out of nasty situations). The Laser Gun does massive damage against anything in the way of its laser beams - which are strangely too slow to catch any moving enemies despite consisting of intense light.
Conversely, some of them are just too useful to the point of being the most preferred for any circumstance. The Minigun in particular is useful at any range, due to its fantastically tight spread and amazing accuracy even at long ranges.
Fortunately, none of the weapons feels overpowered (at least in player-VS-player multiplayer modes). Each and every one of them has weaknesses as befitting their nature.
In addition to weapons, the player character can also retrieve power-ups and supply pick-ups that are scattered throughout the levels (and which often require some footwork and jumping to reach). Each category of item and its benefit comes in several magnitudes, from a small, pitiful amount to the highest, namesake Serious level. They are really not much different from pick-ups in similar over-the-top shooters, but the developers have wisely given each item a distinctly different model such that seasoned players will be able to know what it is in store for them at a glance.
There are also a couple of power-ups that act as panic buttons; the player character can essentially run over them and gain boosts in damage or speed, or temporary invulnerability. Normally, these appear in particularly difficult battles, though their use is, fortunately, completely optional because these battles can still be resolved without resorting to them.
With weapons that are out-of-this-world and supplies that the player character can conveniently pick up and horde, there have to be enemies which are just as crazy for them to be used on. In the case of this game, the aforementioned evil alien warlord has created whole legions of monsters with disturbing visages, including a few that repulsed said warlord itself, as well as won the allegiance of other aliens with promises of conquest and power.
Most, if not all of them, are bizarre-looking. The Serious Engine, which powers this game, has been designed to optimize frame rates and tracking of models across the level, so the models for enemies are not exactly as intricate as those in the Quake and Unreal series. However, most of their model designs do a good job of making sure that they stand out in the environment, which is very handy if a player wishes to look for targets to shoot at.
Many enemies can take more than just a single pistol shot, even at the lowest difficulty (which only adjusts how much damage enemies can take and how much they can dish out in return). Therefore, the player will actually have to be more careful about his/her ammo expenditure than the almost perpetually hectic gameplay seemingly suggests.
While most enemies would just charge at players pell-mell, each type of enemy has different special attacks and tolerances to the players' attacks. The one-eyed Gnaar, for example, are fast, but are easily stunned and handled swiftly. The Kleer Skeletons are just as fast, but has ranged attacks and a leaping ability, making them some of the most dangerous monsters that players will face. Some are more or less static, preferring to bombard or gun down enemy players from where they stand.
Bosses are also similarly dim-witted, often rooting themselves to a (relatively) small spot while dishing out attacks. To be fair though, their immense size makes it difficult to move about. Said size also adds to the intensity of battle with said bosses. Furthermore, their attacks are often capable of hitting multiple player characters at once (and said attacks scale accordingly with the number of players wailing on them).
With such simple enemy AI scripts, some players, especially veterans of FPSes of yore, would think that they are in for turkey shoots, but the levels are designed in such a way that every monster's advantage - including that of any boss - comes into play whenever they are spawned into the area that players have trudged into. Much of the areas in the game are wide open, with plenty of space for players to take advantage of their prodigious running speeds - the same space also lets enemies close in en masse. Furthermore, many areas have wide open skies, which can be infested with doles of flight-capable enemies, namely Harpies. However, to provide some semblance of support for the player characters' cause, the level designers have wisely included a few vantage points that players can reach and occupy.
Some levels have very simple puzzles involving switches and fetch-and-carry chores, but these are unremarkable and serve only to furnish programming scripts that trigger the spawning-in of more monsters to slay - which, this reviewer argues, is the crux of the game.
As for the environments themselves, they aren't much to look at, but objects like huts, trees, pillars and statues are effective enough at emphasizing the themes of the levels, which are usually locales of ancient civilizations, like the Mayans and Egyptians, as befitting the (very minor) theme of time travel. However, these levels appear deceptively simple: there are in fact plenty of secret nooks and crannies in them that are difficult to uncover, even with the help of game guides.
In single-player mode, some of these secrets unlock hilarious cutscenes that showcase Sam's (and his nemesis') wayward personality, Easter Egg trinkets that are otherwise useless or a detour through a special part of the level (which will often have humorous pop culture references). Generally, they also happen to yield additional supplies for the player to retrieve.
Perhaps to take advantage of whatever capability of the Serious Engine that has yet to be utilized, Croteam has added lens flare effects and impressively expansive sky-boxes into the game. The lens flare obscures enemies high up above the player at times, but is otherwise a great effect to look at. The sky-boxes mostly consist of singular texture-mapx, but serve to emphasize the massive scale of the levels (which takes a while to load in between).
What Serious Sam lacks in graphical flair, it makes up for in heaps of sound designs. Every battle will be terrifically noisy, yet the din is not so much a confused mess. This lets each sound clip serve its purpose; every weapon has different sets of sound clips for firing, other functions and successful hits, helping a perceptive player to know which weapon his/her allies (in co-op mode) or enemies (in deathmatch) are using. Every monster has its own range of noises that distinctly indicate what it is about to do. However, a player will have to focus his/her hearing to pick up some of them, which are too subdued to be heard over the chaos of combat.
The music that is currently playing takes on the theme of the current situation and/or level, in that order. To this reviewer, it is satisfactory, but quite overwhelmed by the noise of battle.
Perhaps the greatest attraction of this game is its multiplayer, which can be played online or locally, thanks to a split-screen feature that allows up to four players to share the same screen and computer. Co-operative mode is the meat of this portion of the game: up to 16 players can join an online session and kill monsters together. To foster some competition of sorts, each player has his/her own score meter, which is increased as he/she scores more kills.
Co-op is very fun, but players have to be warned here that the more players there are, the easier the sessions get. The game does a poor job - if it does at all - at scaling the difficulty of sessions to match the number of players. It does appear to increase the number of enemies spawned, but very experienced players can remove them so quickly that players that have joined a session in progress may find themselves simply wandering across empty levels, trying to catch up with the rest who are clearing the way ahead.
Playing at higher difficulties solves the issue of co-op sessions becoming too easy, but the game has little incentive and options for players to work together more effectively. The most that players can do is to attempt to lure enemies into other players' sights for some supporting fire, but that is pretty much all they can do. This makes the higher difficulties very frustrating because of the increased toughness and damage of enemy mobs. In fact, playing co-op sessions with limited lives can be a turn-off because of this, yet playing with infinite supplies of 1-Ups turns such sessions into battles of attrition, which may not be satisfactory to some players.
Furthermore, the immersion of this mode can be a bit jarring. The game uses a lot of triggers in its scripts, many of which require the presence of any player entering the area with the script triggers. Players who are lagging behind may find themselves temporarily locked out of a room or being surrounded by freshly spawned in enemies when players ahead of them have completed a puzzle and are in the process of back-tracking.
Yet, if there is any satisfaction to be obtained from the multiplayer of this game (and likely the whole game itself), it would be co-op mode, because the other mode, Deathmatch, where players fight each other, does not offer any more than that provided by other games in the (over-the-top) FPS genre. Furthermore, some deathmatch maps in this mode can be so expansive, hitting players with any weapon other than hit-scan ones can be difficult.
In conclusion, Serious Sam may not have what it takes to break its own mould. Yet, it is still a refreshingly fun game, what with its strong focus on gunning down waves of relentless monsters, a fad that was and likely still is attractive.