Well, Serious Sam is fun. A particular type of fun. Like two boys playing a game of ‘Let’s kick each other in the nuts’ (or ‘rochambeau’ for South Park fans). Everyone laughs, has a good time but essentially the entire process is a little bit painful. First word of warning, you’ll be running backwards. A lot. Shooting at things with your pitiful gun. And if you’re not running backwards, something will be stuck on your head, chewing on your brain. Or yelling aggressively at you as it runs towards you with bombs for its hands and no head. Sometimes you don’t know where they’re coming from, but you can hear them. Yelling at you. With the same voice sample. Again, and again, and again. I can hear the yelling in my head even now. Like I said, painful. But fun.
For those you of who played Serious Sam on PC or previous generation consoles, you won’t see that much different here. Of course, it’s HD – which makes it a lot smoother – but it’s just the same cheap girl from the estate, but this time she’s wearing her fake tan. Not that cheap can’t be cheerful – and sometimes you want to indulge in a little bit of rough. Which is what Serious Sam is. Baddies spawn out of nowhere. The unfair number of baddies with the slow reload (and power) of your gun means that you will die again and again and again, especially on the higher levels. That being said, although I found myself really frustrated and sometimes annoyed. I couldn’t stop playing – and having the quick save mapped to a simple press of the Y button takes the menu hell of the previous versions out of my super fun blasty time.
Serious Sam has some of the freakiest enemies of any video game. Ever. They’re not really that scary, they’re just seriously disturbed… things. At first, I thought that the screaming bomb hand things (how do they scream with no head?) were the worst. Until I came across the (I want to say) cow skeletons that spit chain bolas at you. That was until I saw the flesh wedge bull that continually charges you. Then there was the scorpion centaur with the chain gun (with a very satisfying old school death squeal). Then the scary blimmin’ floaty teethy head things. Then the winged angel things that swoop down from the sky to claw your eyes out. I guarantee, you, like me – will say ‘I hate those bloody things’ when you encounter them again. Which is why it’s all the more satisfying to blow them up into gibby bloody chunks. You do make an awful mess after. Maybe if you finish the game on the highest difficulty, you unlock another game called Serious Samantha, where Sam’s mum follows him round with a mop, cleaning up the bloody messes he leaves behind. You would imagine that Sam would be put off by the smell after a while, but as his health doesn’t seem to go down in water, perhaps he can hold his breath for a long time.
I’m fairly sure that there’s some sort of story – not that I can remember it – but that’s not what Serious Sam is about. It’s about shooting things. Lots of things. Lots of times. The weapons are fairly standard, the enemies aren’t that varied and the arenas look very similar. Then again, sometimes all you want is a decent, honest, balls to the wall shooter. This isn’t Quake IV, or Halo ODST or Dead Space, where most of the time seems to be spent finding the enemies, or conserving ammo. This throws ammo and enemies out like nobody’s business. It’s not a tactical shooter, it’s an ‘Aargh, aargh – why won’t you die you bastard’ shooter – with a good single mission, good co-op and decent multiplayer. It won’t win any awards for originality, but it doesn’t need to. It does win my award for ‘I’ve had a bad day at work and I just want to blow the shit out of something’, which I’m going to call a ‘Blammy’.
Summary
So Serious Sam HD looks nice, plays well, has a wide range of options, co-op and competition over X Box Live Arcade – and you get achievement points for it. The quick save, although it seems like a minor thing, does make a difference to the gameplay, especially on the higher settings – although you can still paint yourself into a ‘very little health and very little ammo’ corner. If you were a fan of the originals, then there is probably just enough to justify you dropping the Microsoft points. If you’ve never played Serious Sam before – then download the free trial from the Marketplace, and see if you can make it through the demo. If you can, then it’s well worth the money – if you get scared off by the brain chewing and shouty bomb men, you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly if you don’t like it. As a game it’s kind of like Marmite. Well, the enemies end up looking like a sticky brown mess anyway.
Well, Serious Sam is fun. A particular type of fun. Like two boys playing a game of ‘Let’s kick each other in the nuts’ (or ‘rochambeau’ for South Park fans). Everyone laughs, has a good time, but essentially the entire process is a little bit painful. First word of warning, you’ll be running backwards. A lot. Shooting at things with your pitiful gun. And if you’re not running backwards, something will be stuck on your head, chewing on your brain. Or yelling aggressively at you as it runs towards you with bombs for its hands and no head. Sometimes you don’t know where they’re coming from, but you can hear them. Yelling at you. With the same voice sample. Again, and again, and again. I can hear the yelling in my head even now. Like I said, painful. But fun.
For those of you who played Serious Sam on PC or previous generation consoles, you won’t see that much difference here. Of course, it’s HD – which makes it a lot smoother – but it’s just the same cheap girl from the estate, only this time she’s wearing her fake tan. Not that cheap can’t be cheerful – and sometimes you want to indulge in a little bit of rough, which is what Serious Sam is. Baddies spawn out of nowhere. The unfair number of baddies with the slow reload (and power) of your gun means that you will die again and again and again, especially on the higher levels. That being said, although I found myself really frustrated and sometimes annoyed, I couldn’t stop playing – and having the quick save mapped to a simple press of the Y button takes the menu hell of the previous versions out of my super fun blasty time.
Serious Sam has some of the freakiest enemies of any video game. Ever. They’re not really that scary, they’re just seriously disturbed… things. At first, I thought that the screaming bomb hand things (how do they scream with no head?) were the worst. Until I came across the (I want to say) cow skeletons that spit chain bolas at you. That was until I saw the flesh wedge bull that continually charges at you. Then there was the scorpion centaur with the chain gun (with a very satisfying old school death squeal). Then the scary blimmin’ floaty teethy head things. Then the winged angel things that swoop down from the sky to claw your eyes out. I guarantee, you, like me – will say ‘I hate those bloody things’ when you encounter them again. Which is why it’s all the more satisfying to blow them up into gibby bloody chunks. You do make an awful mess after. Maybe if you finish the game on the highest difficulty, you unlock another game called Serious Samantha, where Sam’s mum follows him round with a mop, cleaning up the bloody messes he leaves behind. You would imagine that Sam would be put off by the smell after a while, but as his health doesn’t seem to go down in water, perhaps he can hold his breath for a long time.
I’m fairly sure that there’s some sort of story – not that I can remember it – but that’s not what Serious Sam is about. It’s about shooting things. Lots of things. Lots of times. The weapons are fairly standard, the enemies aren’t that varied and the arenas look very similar. Then again, sometimes all you want is a decent, honest, balls to the wall shooter. This isn’t Quake IV, or Halo 3: ODST or Dead Space, where most of the time seems to be spent finding the enemies, or conserving ammo. This throws ammo and enemies out like no body’s business. It’s not a tactical shooter, it’s an ‘Aargh, aargh – why won’t you die you bastard’ shooter – with a good single player mission, good co-op and decent multiplayer. It won’t win any awards for originality, but it doesn’t need to. It does win my award for ‘I’ve had a bad day at work and I just want to blow the shit out of something’, which I’m going to call a ‘Blammy’.
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