Introduction
When Croteam began to work on Serious Sam I’m sure they didn’t set out to make a ground breaking game in terms of gameplay features. However I suspect they did set out to make a very entertaining, if for a short while, shoot’em up game. If this is what they indeed set out to do then they accomplished their goal. The graphics, sound and fun factor are right up there with the best of them. Innovative? Certainly not. Serious Sam is a good game which offers a week or two of fun gameplay, which is probably more than a game which was released at a price of $15 US. Read on for the details.

Story Line
Story of Serious Sam? Bah! This game pretty much has no real plot at all. It’s a straight shoot’em up game. Basically aliens invaded earth and us humans are fighting them off and blah blah blah. Nothing to get excited about. Visit the Croteam web site if you really want to read the whole story line, although I’m sure you could care less. I mean, Doom actually had some story line to it but I bet only 3 people actually read it. I will tell you that the game takes place in ancient Egypt environments and showcases the ancient Egyptian architecture.

Graphics
The graphics in Serious Sam are right up there with today’s standards for First Person Shooters. The 3D engine itself is well done, running smoothly and sporting most if not all of the standard eye candy features that show up in games like Quake III and Unreal Tournament. There are a variety of indoor and outdoor scenes. The common theme is ancient Egyptian architecture and environments. The sky is just as gorgeous as well, you’ll especially enjoy the great lens flare effect. If I had to pick one area that I loved the Serious Sam graphics it’s the sole fact that it’s environments aren’t dark and dreary. Some inside places are dreary but almost all outside environments are bright and beautiful. Serious Sam is also great for bench marking your system since it has better than standard tools for doing so. You can test dual textured and single textured fill rate and more which is very handy. This game also has more graphics options than pretty much any other game I’ve seen, at least via an actual interface anyway. You can customize pretty much anything you wish. Everything considered I love the graphics in Serious Sam.

Sound Effects and Music
The sound in Serious Sam is good. Nothing ground breaking or spectacular but it does the job well. However the various monster groans, screams and so on can be very frightening! More than once you’ll have a headless zombie running at you rapidly while making a horrendous yelling noise. Quite a few times I’ve been in situations where the screaming noise would get louder and louder however I couldn’t find the enemy which made it downright frightening! Serious Sam makes good use of EAX as you’ll be able to hear if something spawns behind you and so forth. If something spawns behind you and you can’t see it, you can take a good guess that it’s a beast wanting to rip you from limb to limb. The music is better than most with a rock / techno sound to it. Overall the sound is Serious Sam is scary, immersive and sharp. I liked it.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Serious Sam is not even close to revolutionary or an original idea. It’s the same type of gameplay you’ve seen since Doom. However it is refreshing and quite fun I must say to kill hordes of monsters when in a bad mood. There’s nothing quite like ripping through 50 headless zombie things with a big gun. You have quite a few “big guns” to choose from in Serious Sam also. More on that in the next paragraph though. Serious Sam’s gameplay is very linear, meaning that there is a set path for you go through such as killing all monsters in an area so the next door opens up and lets you through. Sometimes you’ll have to find a switch but that’s about it. This game is a straight out shoot’em up, nothing like Half-Life or No One Lives Forever. I believe this game will be mostly appealing to people who were too young to play Doom when it was released but the older generation of gamers are mostly a bit tired of this type of gameplay. At least Serious Sam does it very well though.

Monsters and Weapons
The weapons in Serious Sam are fairly creative but nothing very new. You have all the standard guns such as the pistol, shot gun, rocket launcher and a few newly made up guns but nothing spectacular. The weapon models are good but way too big for the player models which makes it look kind of goofy but that’s not necessarily a bad thing since it kind of fits the Serious Sam theme. I wont go through a list of all the weapons since that would spoil the gameplay by a bit. However let me just say that in a later level of gameplay, Sam picks up a very large weapon and says “Owned” which was kind of funny.
The creatures are very creative and better than most in my opinion. There are huge monsters, tiny monsters and medium sized monsters. The models themselves don’t put out a huge polygon count but they look good. They aren’t quite as detailed as Quake III or Unreal Tournament models but more creative and there are more monsters in Serious Sam than Quake and Unreal combined! Serious Sam puts more monsters on the screen than any other game of it’s genre. The amount of monsters that come at you are amazing! I really liked the weapons and monsters available in Serious Sam. I’m very surprised a game of this price had that many different models created for it.

Multiplayer
The multiplayer is the worst aspect of Serious Sam. The lag is horrible. Serious Sam does offer up a Co-op mode however which is rare in today’s games due to the single player experience in most games today taking so much time and effort. A lot of developers say it’s too hard to develop co-op in their games due to cut scenes and the game in general being designed only for single player. I highly recommend Counter Strike and other multiplayer games over Serious Sam if multiplayer is your cup of tea.

Value
This game cost $15 US dollars most places so you can’t really go wrong. For $15 dollars this game is a great buy, whether you be a first person shooter fan or not. This game acts as a great stress reliever! However the game is a little on the short side if you go through it in easy mode, however harder modes aren’t so short. I hope Croteam makes a nice profit from this game since I’d love to see their future games. They apparently have great talent there!

Conclusion
Serious Sam is truly a great game for anyone who misses the old Doom type style of gameplay. It takes what Doom had and brings it to a whole different level. I strongly recommend this game for anyone who enjoys fast shoot’em up games. Serious Sam wont please you for a year but it’ll certainly give you some great enjoyment for a few weeks or maybe even longer if you actually enjoy the multiplayer experience. I liked Serious Sam and I think you would also.