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Posted by Thomas
McGuire on July 06, 2001
Developed by: Croteam
Publisher: GOD
Games
Buy Serious Sam at the lowest
price.
Levels
All
of Serious Sam takes place in Egypt (although originally it
was intended to move into the Aliens homeworld, too...
apparently), as such there's obviously a lot of desert to
see. As a result most of Serious Sam's levels occur in an
outdoor environment.
The
levels for the most part appear nice, with lots of Egyptian
architecture, as you'd expect, from Pyramids to huge arenas,
it's all here. Perhaps one thing that's lacking is that of
interactivity in the levels. Sure you can blow up trees, but
what about doors or small living quarters? At best you can
scar terrain with weapon fire (Bullet holes decals &
such) and I guess that will have to suffice. Serious Sam is
a shoot em up, not an interact 'em up as I said earlier on.
Gameplay
Serious
Sam is at its heart a top down 2D shoot 'em up from the late
1980's/Early 1990's (e… Smash TV) that’s been dragged
kicking & screaming into a 1st/3rd person viewpoint.
Although many compare Serious Sam to Doom they simply aren't
looking at the right perspective or far enough back. Much
like these old 2D shoot 'em ups Serious Sam features some
extreme weaponry, long levels, some OTT bad guys, the
inevitably huge final boss & most importantly dozens of
enemies coming at you from all angles trying to kill you
using various methods.
 Serious
Sam requires minimal thought, as mentioned earlier. It’s
more a case of How quickly can I select my best gun,
than what would be the best location to hide in to
snipe off this enemy. There's no complex puzzles, very
little flicking of switches or other boring duties like that
- Again, it's just like a top down shoot 'em up. The object
of Serious Sam is quite simple, get from point A. to point
B. killing everything that appears in-between these points.
A
typical situation in Serious Sam would be something like
this. As you’re approaching the crest of a hill, the next
thing you hear a loud wailing in the distance & suddenly
as you peer over the top you see a dozen or more Beheaded
Kamikazes running towards you. Behind them there are several
other groups of enemies also, perhaps a few Bio-Mechs along
with Kleer Skeletons & a dozen other Beheaded warriors.
Rather than take them all on at once you head back down the
hill & kill the Kamikazes as they come over the hill,
next thing you know, more of them are appearing from all
corners of the small little valley you’re in. As you’re
desperately dispatching all these guys the Bio-Mechs &
others have managed to get up over the hill & are also
attacking you. Eventually you overcome them all and move
onto the next scene where you’ll get attacked in waves
again.
Sound
repetitive? Well, to a certain extent Serious Sam is.
But given the regularly overwhelming amount of enemy you
will have to face-off against you’ll rarely ever notice
it. You’ll be too busy strafing around avoiding enemy
fire, turning around to kill the enemy who regularly are
coming at you from any of 360degrees, not to mention the
airborne threats later on in the game.
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