Serious Sam HD Review

Monday, 23 May 2011 22:09 | by Ryan McMurtry

He's as serious as ever, but this time...he's in HD...

Serious Sam HD

Back for another round of mass, alien revenge is Sam ‘Serious’ Stone, only this time in sparkling HD. In what is up there with the most ironically named games of all time, Sam embarks on a quite bizarre adventure back in time to stop aliens, simply known as Mental, from taking over the planet. It’s a game which certainly takes you back to a simpler time in gaming, which mostly involved running, killing and collecting ammo and health. However, Croteam’s cult classic is certainly a refreshing change from the FPS’ of today.

Story

For those of you unaffiliated with the original Serious Sam concept and past, don't fret - this game can still be appealing due to its simplistic methods. Without any hesitation, this game is one that you can simply pick up and get into; a marvel, especially amongst the complicated FPS' of the modern day.

In all honesty, Serious Sam HD is nothing other than an all out gore-fest, slaying enemies of all shapes and sizes - left, right and centre - as they continuously respawn from nowhere before throwing themselves at you. The only problem with this is that there are only a handful of enemies in the game, so be prepared to kill the same species over and over...and over. Yet this is part of the beauty of Serious Sam HD - nothing is really meant to be taken seriously; Sam’s continuous, and extremely cheesy, one-liners emphasise this.

In hindsight the few characters on offer still succeed in entertaining, with a personal favourite being the headless suicide bomber whose weapons of choice are simply a bomb in each hand. Despite the obvious handicap of having no mouth, they still manage to scream relentlessly until they reach you; quite an achievement really! And the sight of plastering a giant scorpion with a gattling gun is sort of a timeless classic; in that it never really gets old.

Gameplay

The game play is solid and the new graphics engine really helps bring the game to life. It certainly enhances a game which, from the get go, has been designed to be played at a fast pace, without really stopping to take a break; apart from when working your way through the puzzle based elements of certain levels. The levels themselves tend to vary in turn between a wide open space and being inside somewhere, generally a tomb or temple. This is nice as it helps to break the game up - after all, what you do in each level doesn’t really change.

The game throws in the odd surprise every now and again, usually by sending some enemies - from the darkest of corners - to surprise you, although this can be very frustrating as there are points in the game when you cannot progress until every bad guy in the zone has been killed. Unfortunately, the hidden ones tend to get lost from time to time, so finding them can be a bit of a chore; but essentially the game is all about one thing, killing aliens.

Sam wastes no time in getting stuck in and tearing apart some extra-terrestrial flesh. There is no doubt this is when the game is at its best, as Sam bounds through the heaps of opponents like a man on a mission (which of course he is). There is no stopping him or his freakishly oversized - and seemingly endless - weaponry, all of which aid him in taking down some outrageously large characters.

Teamplay

With four difficulty modes on offer, playing the game on tourist mode is a bit like mowing the lawn with a remedial lawnmower; it seems like, at times, you’re never going to get to the end. Sure the moments when hundreds of aliens bound towards you ferociously are frantic and unlike anything out there today, but the actual process of completing levels becomes monotonous and toe-curlingly predictable. When the waves of attack eventually perish you are left to find some way through what is either a door or a gate, which is fine at first.

After three or four levels however, it begins to dawn on you that you’re probably going to have to go back and look for a mindless addition - such as a set of stones that are pushing out of a wall or a statue. Worse still, you get a message each time saying “This door appears to be locked, but I think there might be some kind of mechanism which could perhaps open it”. Yes, somehow I think there probably will be. This is undoubtedly where upping the difficulty level comes in handy. Playing the game on its hardest setting is almost impossible without hours of practice, which is really what completing a game should be about isn’t it?

The main new addition to the game is the four player co-op mode, which can be a fun change to making your way through temple after temple on your own. It certainly makes the task of completing the game seem less of a mammoth. Obviously, this is a big reduction from the 16 player mode offered on the PC, but one useful tweak can be making the game even harder, so it definitely adds to the experience.

Conclusion

Even when compared to today’s sky high standards, the graphics hold their own and - dare I say it - remain somewhat pleasing throughout. However, take note of the fact that, by ‘HD’, Croteam mean putting the game into maximum resolution, as opposed to the 'High Definition' we have come to associate with the term.

Yet that aside, I did occasionally find myself stopping for a few moments - after wiping out a wave of some 300 headless suicide bombers - to admire the realistic look of the sky and the nice palm trees which sway poetically in the breeze. It is a testament to the original Serious Sam release that the game can still stand up in today’s market, all be it not at the very top level. The game isn’t really up to the standards of today's market; the likes of the Killzone or Gears of War franchises simply blow it out of the water.

But what they cannot offer is the charm element of Serious Sam. Sure there is the odd, minor glitch; and, when you look at it, there is not a whole lot to the game, yet there is something satisfying about playing a game while knowing that all you have to do is shoot at things and move forward. It is bound to be a nice nostalgia trip for past fans, and possibly even a nice little gaming history lesson for newcomers, and the lowered price tag makes this title certainly one to check out.

3 stars