"Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter" Review

I picked up this game last weekend when it was only $6.79. I had played a little bit of the original back on the original Xbox, and from what I remembered, it was decent, so I decided to get this one. MegaDrive20XX also bought it that weekend as well so we could play co-op together on it. Was it worth it? Yes. Is it worth the full price? Definitely not.

For those that didn't know already, this game is a remake of a game that came out of a developer called Croteam back in 2001. From what I understand here, the only real changes are the graphics and the co-op, otherwise it's the same game. It does look pretty nice for the most part. I was impressed by the amount of options you have to adjust the game's graphics and performance. You can even changes things like number of corpses at once. On my PC, the game performed pretty well with max settings for the most part. The first few levels had some areas where the framerate really got dragged down, but this seemed to get less and less as the game progressed. However, one issue I had, and this may have been only me that had this issue, but when you go into your PDA called "Netrisca", it always took forever and a day to load, and it dragged the framerate down with that. This was really frustrating if I was trying to read a message about something in the game, in the middle of a co-op game, meanwhile I can hear the person I'm playing co-op with saying really slowly (because the framerate tanked and so the sound is slow too), "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee........aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeee......yyyyyyyyyyooooooouuuuuuuuu......thereeeeeeeeeee?" This made me want to stay away from going to that PDA. It also took forever to load the profiles about the monsters.

Now all that isn't too much of a loss, because in this game, the story doesn't matter and isn't worth jack squat. This game is all about the action. There are a lot of guns in this game. You start out with the basic revolver, which becomes 2 revolvers, and even more ridiculous guns. There are always a lot of enemies coming at you. This makes the game really challenging, especially when they throw a lot of the Kleers (the galloping skeleton things) at you. Don't even get me started on the frogs! This brings me to my next point about the co-op play. It does seem significantly easier on co-op because there is no way to "fail". When you die, you just left click and you respawn. Even if all the players die at the same time, they can still respawn. There is no friendly fire thankfully, which was a wise decision, because the action gets really hectic at times.

One particular beef I had with the game overall was the level design. It's kind of boring. At first it's okay, because you're going through some Egyptian temples, and there's secret passages and stuff, but then I feel like the developers got lazy with it later in the game. It just becomes wide open space after wide open space after wide open space. The wide open spaces always house the largest battles, but was it really necessary to keep using this level design over and over again? Also the Egyptian theme for the entire game is really repetitive. There are only two levels that are anything slightly diffferent: One secret unlockable level that is a giant oasis and the final boss, which I won't spoil. I remember back in the day on the original Xbox version of the game, the opening cinematic took place in a city where the aliens were invading, but then Sam goes into a portal that takes him back in time to Egypt.

The enemy designs are pretty good. Everyone remembers the Kamikazes (the headless guys with bombs screaming), but there are other tough enemies too. There was one time Mega and I were playing and I went toward a door only to have a giant lava golem spawn right on top of me, which killed me instantly! Some of the fights were insane and even really tough for Sam's massive arsenal. One fight toward the end has you against many of the charging bull-like creatures. The cannon has never been so useful.

Co-op mode was a fun experience. It was Mega and I playing the entire game together, but it allows for up to 16 players. It must be total chaos with 16 people. In co-op, you can choose your character model, and there are a lot of choices, from a female version of Sam, to rejected designs of Sam. I locally hosted the game myself since there were no dedicated servers. This is another issue I should point out. For some reason the servers for this game aren't up, if they're even coming at all. Croteam really shouldn't put that in the game if they're not going to utilize it. Another weird issue we had was with the Steam achievements. When we finished the game, it kicked Mega out of the game saying he got "disconnected" and put me back on the level select screen with the words "game completed" in the corner. Neither of us got the achievement for beating the game. That was all you get for beating it? Nothing?! That's like the ending of 1942, where you just get the word "Congratulation".

Overall, this game was decent. Not a great game, but a decent one at best. I would certainly not pay the full $20 for it, it's definitely not worth it. If you want a weekend of fun and this game goes on sale again, pick it up, but don't pay more than I did for it. This is why I love Steam.

Well done! If they decide to remake SS2. It better be worth it!