Mmm... carnage.
Serious Sam: HD is a remake of the first SS game released back in 2001 on the PC. It features updated visuals as well as an updated engine, and a whole shit ton of enemies waiting to do one of a couple things: smack you, bite you, hurl balls of lava at your face, shoot you down with lasers, and even blow you up via kamikaze techniques. And there’s more where that came from.
The first thing I should mention about this game before we actually get into the review itself is that this game is all about mindless killing or, if you prefer, fun. There’s no deep storyline or involving characters here. Serious Sam is about blowing waves of enemies into chunks of fresh meat by yourself or with friends with all the weapons you could want in an FPS and a few surprises.
Serious Sam has one of the most fun concepts for a game ever, which makes me kinda sad that I really knew nothing about it until now. You travel through levels killing all sorts of monsters and such with different weapons while collecting power-ups along the way. There is some diversity here – nothing serious though (heh). Sometimes you’ll have to get something to open a door or pull a switch hidden underwater, but it’s nothing that surprising. The enemies themselves though are what make this game. They employ one of two tactics – either run at you, or shoot at you. Sometimes both. So basically, the gameplay is fun as hell. It’s so fun to have enemies just run towards you instead of actually finding cover and attacking you strategically like they would in say… Halo or Call of Duty. You might think there’s no challenge here then – but you are wrong. Things will often get pretty intense, you’ll be fighting enemies from all sides with almost no chance of survival especially on harder modes. But this is where the co-op comes in.
Jump online and you can do the same fun shit, but with friends. While the co-op isn’t totally polished, it’s still fun and stable enough that you will have a good experience playing it. Other modes such as Deathmatch are on the way to be included in a patch.
SS:HD also looks really good. The textures are all very well done, and everything looks good from the weapons to the enemies. And the gore, oh man. This game has one of the best gore engines I have ever seen. Get up close to an enemy and blow their body into chunks, which will then fly across the ground behind them resulting in some beautiful blood streaks. It really is art.
The best way to describe SS:HD is that it’s Quake and Doom but modernized. Like the Painkiller series, if you’ve played that. It’s not really supposed to be taken seriously, it’s purely for your amusement and really nothing else. It’s got some glitches here and there, and the sound is recycled from the 2001 release, but I can’t think of another game that has you running through Egypt-themed levels with guys with buzzsaws for heads and bombs instead of hands running towards you in groups screaming their heads off.
And that my friends, is why Serious Sam HD is a beautiful thing.
Related posts:
