A shameless copycat of Serious Sam. I played Serious Sam, and Will Rock is no Serious Sam. But it ain't bad at all.
Nevertheless, Will Rock has its own style. Here the historic theme is Ancient Greece, and although some of the enemies seem very similar to those in Serious Sam (for example, there are centaurs – and their undead counterparts, the skeletaurs – that will buck you into the air similar to the Werebulls), many are quite different as well. And some of these critters have pretty good AI; their aim can be deadly, and they often move erratically and evasively.
Furthermore, the weapons in Will Rock feel different and unique. They look good, they sound good, and some of them are rather unusual.
I particularly like the sniper-crossbow, which fires a high-velocity flaming arrow that utterly incinerates any lesser target over the course of a few seconds. Also, there is a really useful acid gun that causes some enemies to swell up with a grotesque rubber-squeegee noise until they finally pop. The minigun looks and sounds ferocious, with a belt-changing reload animation that's pretty snazzy. And there are others. Pretty nifty weaponry, all in all.
Then there's this goofy-looking, very effective shotgun they give you. The object model is all wrong but it feels and shoots right: it's not exactly real-world ballistics, but it has far less spread than your traditional FPS shotgun. At close range it can still take down several enemies clustered together, but you actually have to aim it, even when the adversary is right in your face. And, the pattern and spread are such that the shotgun remains somewhat effective even when the enemy is far off. Thus, it behaves more like a real shotgun. On the downside, the model for the shotgun looks like a lever-action repeating rifle, and if you look closely, the shotgun-shell ammo boxes are filled with high-velocity rifle rounds – bullets, in other words. Not sure what happened there. It shoots like a scattergun but is dressed up like a rifle.
Aside from the "Henry rifle"-looking shotgun, though, the other weapon models look very good.
I played on the "you will die" difficulty setting, and while the pacing and intensity were not at the level of Serious Sam, it still offered some challenges. Some of the boss battles were quite tough – most notably, the first boss was extremely difficult. Midway into the game, ammo becomes almost too plentiful, and some of the more powerful weapons seem wasted on the machinegun-fodder enemies that are common throughout the game. Nevertheless, there are some notable moments when you get the chance to unleash your firepower, or die trying.
Considering that it was released several years ago, Will Rock looks fantastic. And it plays very, very smoothly with a good graphics card. I experienced virtually no slowing of frame rates with every visual setting maxed out. (I have an older P4 2.66 Ghz system with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 7800 GS.) Will Rock's visuals are not quite on the same level as some of the most recent games, but the game still looks good. These same praises could be said for Serious Sam.
(By the way, I've heard it mentioned before with regard to other games, but where does Gamespot get its screenshots? The images here look like the game is running at 640x480 or something. I run this one at 1280x1024 with antialiasing on and it looks very sharp – especially so because of the absolutely fluid frame rates.)
Looky here now: if you haven't yet played Serious Sam and Serious Sam: the Second Encounter, then drop everything and locate a place to purchase those titles. They are worth every penny, and those two games represent perhaps the greatest and most intense first-person-shooter experience ever devised, to this day. If you've already played those, and like that cartoonish, all-out-mayhem gameplay style, then you're probably going to get a kick out of Will Rock.
The Gamespot review says it "fails to recapture [Serious Sam's] magic." Now, that seems a bit unfair, and sounds like a synopsis coming from a very jaded gamer who is required to "play" games for their work. Serious Sam was definitely pure magic, but expecting this "knockoff" to live up to that is like expecting a Quarter Pounder to rival the filet mignon you had at a 5-star restaurant. Nevertheless, if you're a hungry carnivore, the Quarter Pounder still hits the spot, right?
The blatant "borrowing" aside, Will Rock is a pretty neat little game, and a lot of fun.