Serious Sam HD Preview [PC]

06 Oct 2009 at 14:57:10 by John Robertson

First released back in 2001, Serious Sam: The First Encounter was a game beloved by critics and the general games-playing public alike.  Spawning multiple ports and sequels across a number of platforms – the most recent being 2005's Serious Sam II – Serious Sam is a series that understands where its strengths lie, and is not shy about focusing on them entirely.  And so, after that long hiatus, it’s time to welcome Mr Sam back into the fold with the hope of introducing him to a new generation of gamers that missed out on his adventures the first time around.  

If you’re new to the franchise and unsure of what Serious Sam can offer then the most important thing to take away is that this is a game interested in only one thing - all-out visceral carnage on a level that borders on the ridiculous.  After playing the game for the first time in a number of years, what immediately sticks out is just how much the first-person shooter genre has changed in recent years.  Whereas modern shooters tend to focus on a mixture of shooting, exploration and – to differing degrees - narrative integrity, Serious Sam focuses entirely on shooting, harking back to simpler days in which games were usually defined by a single gameplay element.

The general idea is to make it from one end of the level to the other, slaughtering all manner of bizarre enemies on the way, in a bid to score as many points as possible – or at least more than your friends.  Points are awarded in different quantities depending on your chosen difficulty, with the hardest settings providing rich pickings for those who meet the required level of competence.  It’s a simple but effective system that makes it easy for you to see exactly how well you’re performing in relation to everyone else, providing you with motivation in a way that only an online leaderboard can provide.

In terms of what the game tasks you with doing, the closest modern comparison is probably something like Gears of War 2’s ‘Horde’ mode, in that (aside from the odd ‘puzzle’) everything has been designed to facilitate death on a level thatwould go down as genocide if employed anywhere but a videogame.  Throughout the two levels that we got our hands on there was barely a moment in which we weren’t under attack from at least a handful of enemies, each one set on bringing your journey to a premature end.  Levels are predominantly made up of a series of large rooms (both indoor and outdoor) connected by doorways and/or short corridors, with the emphasis on quickly clearing out room after room until you reach the arena’s end.

On occasion there’s a puzzle thrown into the mix for good measure, although they’ll hardly keep you up at night.  During the levels we played we were tasked with finding a hidden underwater entrance to some sort of Egyptian temple, and to activate a couple of switches to open a doorway.  Both solutions stare you right in the face, with the underwater entrance located in the only body of water in the level and the switches positioned on two altars in the room adjacent to where you received the ‘hint.’ Professor Layton, this is not.

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